Isaiah 58, Revisited (Giving III)

God invites us into this posture of open hands—in no uncertain terms—through Isaiah the Prophet, as discussed in ‘Chapter 2: Ambassadorship and The People Jesus Gives Us to Love’:

“This is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
and your wounds will quickly heal.”[1]

The principle is straightforward: If you focus on others (on bringing life, on blessing, on making wrong things right for others, on giving to others, especially to the bankrupt and downtrodden and forgotten), then your own light will break forth like the dawn. The discipleship process we developed at Long Beach Christian Fellowship is founded on this verse and others like it, because Jesus’ entire discipleship process was built this way. Jesus teaches, in essence, to open your hands and give, and you’ll discover who God really is. There’s a reason Jesus gets his disciples “out of the classroom” and into the field, feeding the poor, healing the broken, lifting up those who are caught in shame and guilt. By focusing on others, Jesus knows that a windstorm of salvation will be released all around, in, and through both him and his disciples. Discipleship without this focus on loving others (above acquiring more information and group accountability, as important as those things are) is not apprenticeship in Jesus.

To get a sense of the context of this Isaiah passage, imagine a wasteland, full of reeking darkness. On this landscape, people are walking about doing all sorts of religious things. They are dressing up in their finest clothes, praying long, ornate prayers. And they are patting themselves on the back, thinking God must be looking down on them with a thumbs up. But they aren’t seeing any of the people around them who have fallen into pits, who are covered in smoke and darkness.

Their problem? They are self-focused. They have replaced caring for others with mere religious observance, attending festivals or religious gatherings, just as we would attend church. They fast from food as a demonstration of their own piety, but with hearts that are closed in on themselves. They can’t see past their own religious noses.

It’s not incidental to note that, seven hundred years later, Jesus had the same rebuke and same message for his generation. And now, two thousand years after Jesus, I think we can find our own story in those who heard (and were rebuked by) both Isaiah and Jesus. After all, we live in a world that inculcates our hearts and minds into endless self-focus, ultimately leading us to live with closed hands, even if we don’t realize it. As Catholic theologian and author Ronald Rolheiser writes:

If we are not a generation in love with itself, we are, undeniably, a generation obsessed with itself… When we stand before reality preoccupied with ourselves we will see precious little of what is actually there to be seen. Moreover, what little we do see will be distorted and shaped by self-interest. The outside world has little power to penetrate or even distract you. Your reality has been reduced to the size, shape, and color of your own inner world. It is not surprising that we have trouble believing in the reality of God when we have trouble perceiving any reality at all beyond ourselves.[2]

Both baby boomers and millennials have been called “me” generations. And indeed, we are often supremely focused on our own selves. Me, me, me; my schedule, my wants, my needs. And yet, this is not some historical aberration. This sort of self-focus lives deeply within our human DNA, in every generation. But perhaps the prosperity and technology of our present historical moment have amplified our ability to focus on our own selves.[3]

Augustine defined sin as a state of being curved in on yourself, the opposite of living with hands open.[4] Imagine a body and a heart curved inward, hands closed, head bowed down to see only its own body, focusing only on its own self. We live in a world that, now and always, encourages us to adopt this posture! This is a tragedy, because hell is basically the loss of the ability to see others. Heaven, on the other hand, is very close to self-forgetfulness and a full awareness of God and others. Heaven is communion with others; hell is being trapped in yourself. As John Paul II said (to paraphrase), hell is not primarily about a place but about a state of mind and heart.[5]

And again, even religion can be curved in on itself, as Isaiah points out. It can have the appearance of wisdom with very little real spirituality or care or compassion in it. And what does the prophet say? Stop! Stop thinking that this—your ability to keep the letter of the law and get all the prayers right—is what God cares about! It sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn’t it? Like Jesus, who said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”[6]

And what is the remedy? The way out? To care for others. God always directs us to give. To take action. Not just to agree or give mental assent that God cares for the broken, but to take some sort of action for the sake of another. This is how we throw ourselves out of the boat and into the water of God’s love.

If the people will do this, the prophet says, the wasteland will turn into a garden.

Take that picture of the wasteland, then, and imagine it being transformed, filled with light, with grass and flowers. Rebirth. Resurrection. Dawn breaks out, the divine dance is unleashed. Imagine that resurrection in your own life. Picture yourself living with hands open, such that warm sun and refreshing rain fall on your palms and you are able to joyfully receive it. This is the prophetic invitation. We are to become people who can hold the light and love of God’s goodness.

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[1] Isaiah 58:6-8.

[2] Ronald Rolheiser. The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, NY. 2005.

[3] As Neil Postman so presciently saw.  See his classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Books. New York, NY. 2005.

[4] incurvatus in se, in Latin.

[5] See his papal statement made July 28, 1999.

[6] Cf. Matthew 15:8.