Friday, February 19
Isaiah 58:1-9a. Thus says God: “Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; Tell my people their wickedness…They seek me day after day…They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. ‘Why do we fast, and you do not see it?’ Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw.”
| God is pretty
upset with the people in this passage. They believe that their fasting,
sackcloth and sorry expressions are good indicators of piety, deserving
of God’s smile. Instead, they’re about to be blasted by a trumpet call
demanding that they end injustice, break down oppression and meet
everyone’s basic needs. God is sick of their mean smugness, no doubt. But it’s not clear how God’s proposed revolution is supposed to happen. After all, it’s unlikely that we can, on our own, “break every yoke,” and God seems to be demanding large-scale change. Might the response need to be communal rather than individual? The only sense I can make of this is that God wants us to merge our personal religiosity with collective action. I wonder if, during this sacred season, we are called not only to individual efforts, but to working seriously with each other to realize God’s intentions for all. - Cynthia Rolling, Professor, Sociology and Anthropology |
