Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2

Lent through Eastertide

David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor, David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780664231057
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611641103
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

With the twelve-volume series Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press offers one of the most extensive and well-respected resources for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes will cover all of the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with moveable occasions.

The page layout is truly unique. For each lectionary text, preachers will find brief essaysÂâ€"one each on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homiletical challenges of the text. Each volume will also contain an index of biblical passages so that nonlectionary preachers may make use of its contents.

The printed volumes for Ordinary Time include the complementary stream during Year A, the complementary stream during the first half of Year B, the semicontinuous stream during the second half of Year B, and the semicontinuous stream during Year C. Beginning with the season after Pentecost in Year C, the alternate lections for Ordinary Time not in the print volumes will be available online at feastingontheword.net.

ASH WEDNESDAY

Isaiah 58:1–12

¹ Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!

Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.

²Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.

³“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.

⁴Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.

Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.

⁵ls such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?

Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?

⁶ls not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

⁸Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

⁹Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

¹⁰if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

¹¹The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.

¹²Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Theological Perspective

This passage is one of the highlights of Third Isaiah (Isa. 56–66), and it serves as a poetic re-presentation of the redemptive theology that runs throughout the book.¹ Whereas the social location for most of Isaiah has been of a community in exile, in this passage it is of a community in conflict. The passage finds the root of this conflict in a hypocritical gap between the conduct of the community and the community’s worship.

The community’s fasting is ineffectual, because its purpose is to cloak lives that are selfish, unjust, and violent. “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist” (vv. 3b–4a). The true purpose of fasting is to instill the virtue of humility and the commitment to justice: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (v. 6). True fasting involves not just solitary abstinence, but the deliberate choice to give to those in need: “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” (v. 7). Those who fast in this way will encounter God’s abundance, an overflowing of light and life.

Early Christian commentators tended to spiritualize the connection between abstinence and justice. In his commentary, Jerome (ca. 347–420) read the imperative to attend to earthly needs as a typological anticipation of the greater imperative to attend to spiritual needs: “When you see people freezing outside the church in the frigidity of unbelief, without the warmth of faith, impoverished and homeless, lead them home to the church and clothe them with the work of incorruption, so that, wrapped in the mantle of Christ, they will not remain in the grave.”

It would be wrong to read Jerome’s typological interpretation as counsel to ignore those who suffer from material poverty. Clearly, early commentators also recognized the call for justice in this passage. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) asked, “Will your fast be approved of when you fail to acknowledge your brother?”² It is clear, however, that such readings eroded the connection between abstinence and justice in the church’s liturgical life, particularly those practices connected to Ash Wednesday.

On Ash Wednesday, in addition to reading this passage, it is customary to impose ashes on the forehead with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19) or “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel” (Mark 1:15). This observance signals the beginning of Lent, when many Christians fast or abstain from certain foods in order to focus on the things that need to be set aside, or taken on, in the course of Lent—things that stand in the way of a living, vibrant, and wholehearted relationship with God.

Given this setting, today’s reading from Isaiah is particularly appropriate, because it addresses the role fasting and similar penitential practices play in the spiritual life of both individuals and communities. At the root of these practices is a relationship with God from which flow personal piety and social justice. Getting back in touch with that relationship is the very meaning of repentance, the deliberate work of repairing a relationship that has been broken or thwarted by our own sin and selfishness. So the passage ends with a promise: “you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (v. 12b).

What does it mean live into this relationship more deeply? If early Christian commentators tended to emphasize personal piety to the detriment of social justice, contemporary readers have tended to identify the imperative to do justice and their own favored policies for social renewal and change. It would be misleading to draw from this passage specific imperatives to increase international aid or to oppose globalization, as worthy as these may be.

Rather, the connection in the passage between worship, fasting, justice, and reconciliation creates space for the renewal of a faithful imagination that prayerfully tries to develop a way forward. Consequently, the purpose of this passage is to bring the personal and political together and to renew a particular community that seeks to practice God’s redemptive politics in its own location. For this reason, T. S. Eliot in his poem “Ash Wednesday” ends with the following prayer that resonates with the imagery in this passage and speaks to the personal and political at once:

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.³

If, as contemporary commentators believe, communal conflict lies behind the text’s origin, then the reparative actions promoted in the passage prompt contemporary churches to imagine practices that bear witness to the peaceful politics of the kingdom in their immediate community. Ash Wednesday provides not only the opportunity for individual Christians to mark the beginning of Lent, but for churches to renew their corporate life, in order to learn, as if for the first time, what it means to be a “spring” of “waters” that “never fail” (v. 11b).

WILLIAM JOSEPH DANAHER JR.

Pastoral Perspective

Ash Wednesday is not merely a time to meditate on our mortality (“Dust you are, and to dust you shall return”) or to confess our individual sins and failings. The words of Isaiah 58 save us from wallowing in introspection by forcing us to acknowledge our social sins. Especially for those in the North American church, this is not easy.

Because the words of Isaiah are so powerful and applicable to life in our society, the pastor is well advised to stay close to the text itself and let its words sound “like a trumpet” in the ears of the congregation. An “in-your-face” overpreaching of the text will likely result more in resistance than in faithful response. Here is an opportunity to engage the text in a way that invites the congregation to overhear its “word of the Lord” to them.

On Ash Wednesday it is particularly appropriate we be reminded that the Lenten discipline God desires has nothing to do with “giving up” things of little consequence and has everything to do with taking on a more disciplined concern for meeting concretely the “needs of the afflicted.” In any good bookstore you will find shelves marked “Self-help.” Some may even be labeled, ironically enough, “Christian Self-help.” Is it not clear to every thoughtful pastor that our programs of self-help offer precious little help? We vainly seek self-fulfillment through what we think will build up our self-esteem, instead of through the giving of ourselves to concerns larger than ourselves. The words of Isaiah 58 call us to the larger purposes of God’s own mission among us.

Before we announce to God’s people “their sins,” we first must deal honestly with our own complicity in the sins unmasked by Isaiah. To what degree are we more concerned with the aesthetics of worship than with the “fast acceptable to the Lord”—the worship that requires personal participation in God’s own passion for the hungry, the poor, and the naked?

If worship in our churches seems tame and boring, could it be that it has too little to do with the worship God desires? Instead of attending to God’s agenda, we take matters into our own hands. We seek to jazz up our worship by hiring a band, getting the pastor to take guitar lessons, and projecting the banal words of a “praise chorus” on a big screen. However entertaining it may be, it is not the worship God desires and demands—at least not if we leave worship unchallenged and unchanged in the ways we treat the weak and vulnerable among us.

Isaiah makes it clear that the worship God desires is both inescapably social and compellingly personal. It calls us “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke…. to share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house … to cover [the naked] and not to hide [ourselves] from [our] own kin” (vv. 6–7). Authentic worship is not a matter of elegant ritual or self-congratulating piety. It is a matter of both social justice and costly personal concern for the bruised and battered of the world.

Seeking to “satisfy the needs of the afflicted” is not merely an obligation that is laid on the covenant community. It is a way of life that makes for the fullness of life, both for the individual and for the whole community. In attending socially and personally to the needs of the afflicted, “[our] light shall break forth like the dawn, and [our] healing shall spring up quickly…. Then [we] shall call, and the LORD will answer; [we] shall cry for help, and [God] will say, Here I am” (vv. 8–9). Just as earlier in the presence of the awesome holiness of God in the temple, Isaiah had responded to the call of God, “Here I am, send me” (Isa. 6:8), so now the Lord responds and becomes available to our cries: “Here I am.” I will send you.

The result is more than we might have expected. The “gloom,” which pastors know painfully well, “will be like the noonday” (v. 10b), and the Lord, guiding us in ways of life abundant, will make our lives flourish “like a watered garden” (v. 11b). The true fulfillment of self comes through the giving and investing of self in God’s own passion for the poor.

Not only will our own lives flourish; so will the life of our whole society: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt” (v. 12a). What a precious promise that would be to a people returning from exile to the ruins of what once had been their homes and temple. “You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (v. 12). In the gathering ruins of our society—which for too long has neglected the foundations of common life by allowing its essential infrastructure to collapse in order to continue cutting taxes on the wealthiest of our citizens, by neglecting public education, and turning its back on the neediest and most vulnerable among us—the promise of Isaiah can give hope and energy for the struggles ahead.

Youth and young adults often seem to understand this better then their elders. Youth return from mission trips with a new sense of what it means to experience the presence of God in the faces of the truly poor. College students volunteer their time to tutor children and build Habitat houses, not just to “do good,” but to find meaning and purpose for their lives exactly where God promised. People of all ages come to their pastors asking for more of life than they have yet experienced. Do we offer them second-rate entertainment? Do we set before them God’s own promise that the fullness of life is to be found in the giving of life to the larger purposes of God’s liberating love in the world, and call them to live into that promise?

ALLEN C. MCSWEEN JR.

Exegetical Perspective

The postexilic Judean community, living under the rule of the newly empowered Persian Empire, provides the societal context for today’s passage and the surrounding chapters of Isaiah 56–66. For this vulnerable, disoriented population, it is a time of political and religious restoration, as both the exiles who are returning from Babylon and the people who never left the region of Judah stake out their claims on the land and important theological issues.

The biggest question, perhaps, is this: What does the future hold after such great destruction and displacement? This inquiry quickly engenders more specific ponderings: How does the nascent Jewish community rethink the status of the Jerusalem temple and Davidic monarchy in light of their recent dissolution? What are the religious priorities to consider when rebuilding and starting afresh? Where is God in this process?

The prophetic literature of this time period testifies to the sustained role of prophetic figures in answering these seminal questions. Third Isaiah, as scholars often call Isaiah 56–66, addresses especially relevant ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Series Introduction
• A Note about the Lectionary
• Chapter 1 - Ash Wednesday
• Chapter 2 - First Sunday in Lent
• Chapter 3 - Second Sunday in Lent
• Chapter 4 - Third Sunday in Lent
• Chapter 5 - Fourth Sunday in Lent
• Chapter 6 - Fifth Sunday in Lent
• Chapter 7 - Sixth Sunday in Lent (Liturgy of the Palms)
• Chapter 8 - Sixth Sunday in Lent (Liturgy of the Passion)
• Chapter 9 - Monday of Holy Week
• Chapter 10 - Tuesday of Holy Week
• Chapter 11 - Wednesday of Holy Week
• Chapter 12 - Holy Thursday
• Chapter 13 - Good Friday
• Chapter 14 - Holy Saturday
• Chapter 15 - Easter Vigil
• Chapter 16 - Easter Day
• Chapter 17 - Second Sunday of Easter
• Chapter 18 - Third Sunday of Easter
• Chapter 19 - Fourth Sunday of Easter
• Chapter 20 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
• Chapter 21 - Sixth Sunday of Easter
• Chapter 22 - Ascension of the Lord
• Chapter 23 - Seventh Sunday of Easter
• Contributors
• Scripture Index
• Author Index