Shalom, Justice, and Grace

Isaiah 58:1-14

In verse 2 God begins to describe a particular group of people “seeking” out God. In this it is talking about those worshiping God, going to Temple, the sacrificial system, prayer... These are people that are very diligent in seeking out God, not just a burst and then its over. These are people that sustain. “They seem eager to know my ways.” contrasts with verse 1 and so the translation tries to come to terms with it. In Hebrew, though, it actually says that they are passionate to know my laws. Verse 3 tells us, in spite of the fact that they are religiously diligent, that God is not answering their prayers. Bad things are happening to these people. ‘God, why aren’t you helping?’ they say...

God’s response is startling: ‘Let me tell you what a fast is. Let me tell you what worship is. Let me tell what it really means to seek me. Is it not to loosen the chains of injustice, to untie the cords of the yoke and set the oppressed free, to share your food with the hungry, to provide the poor wonder with shelter, to see the naked and clothe him.’

Matthew 25 draws greatly from Isaiah 58, but also from many other places in the Old Testament. Proverbs 14:31, 19:17... According to Matthew 25, this is what God will say to the people who are lost on the last day: “Depart from me you who are cursed into everlasting fire for I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was naked and you did not clothe me, I was a stranger and you did not give me shelter, I was sick and imprisoned and you did not look after me. ‘Lord when did we see you in these conditions?’ they will say. And the Lord will say what ever you did not do for the least of these you did not do for me.’

Summary: God says, ‘If you do not love the poor, the hungry, then no matter what you say you don’t love me. You do not have a relationship with me. It is a formal relationship full of compliance and ordinances, but you really don’t have a relationship with me. The way you treat the poor tells me the reality of how you regard me. Or a deep social conscience and a life poured out in deeds of service to others, especially the poor, is the inevitable sign of real faith and a real connection with God. This is a real index of the condition of your heart. In other words, justice is the grand symptom of real faith, of a real relationship with God. It will be there, maybe slowly, but it will develop. If it never develops in your life then you don’t have the relationship you think you have.

This is at the heart of Biblical faith.

In Isaiah 1:17 - Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow... If you don’t do this you don’t have me He it in a sense says. ‘You may think you do, but you don’t’ God says in a sense.

The big question we need to ask and eventually answer in some way is why would God say that a deep concern for justice for the poor goes together with a love relationship with Him? that it is the inevitable sign of a love relationship with Him?

Let’s talk about this word ‘justice’ that we see in our Old Testament, that we see in Isaiah 1, 58. We don’t have quite the same definition for justice orignally intended as we do in our western culture. What does the Bible mean by justice? I think we kind see a definition if we look at Isaiah 58 a bit more.

Behind the biblical idea of justice is the rich concept of shalom. Verse 7 - provide the poor wonderer with shelter... What is a poor wonderer? It is more sharply defined as a stranger. According to the Hebrew commentators, a poor wonderer was basically an alien from another country who came into your country with virtually nothing. A refugee basically... Later in the verse it says do not turn away form your own flesh and blood, your own blood relatives, your family. But how can God apply this to a refugee of another race?

In ancient times, family was everything. You never conceived of your individual progress and happiness apart from your family. If your family wasn’t moving ahead in the world then you couldn’t. It was impossible. That was good in a way, but in another way it led to tribalism and racism because blood was everything in this world. And here God is saying that another from a different race who is hungry and poor in your neighborhood, that person is as much your flesh and blood as if you were related to them by blood. God says, ‘I hold you responsible for them’. There is a solidarity between you two that your idolatrous cultural attachment to race and blood has blinded you to, but I am not blind to it.

Shalom is at the very core of the Old Testament, of the whole Bible in fact. Shalom means peace. But it means something much more. God created the world to be a fabric woven together, interdependent. The Bible says that all of the entities of the world were meant to be in a beautiful, harmonious, interdependent, knitted webbed relationship to each other similar to fabric threads stitched and woven together in hundreds and thousands of ways.

3 examples to more clearly define shalom: (1) the human body. When all of the parts of your body are working harmoniously together you experience health. But if you have cancer, it means that part of your body was not working with other parts of your body and you experience the unraveling of physical shalom. Death is the total unraveling of physical shalom. (2) your inner psyche. If your conscience, reason, and feelings are all working together you experience inner shalom. But if your feelings really want something that your conscience says is wrong you experience guilt, the unraveling of psychological shalom. Anger, fear, meaninglessness, emptiness are other expressions... (3) When people have money and resources and they invest it into the human community, into the parks, schools, and community places, the strong social fabric created is social shalom. But when those that have ignore those that have less or none and hold onto everything then the social fabric or shalom unravels.

In It’s A Wonderful Life - George Bailey, head of a family who has been pushing, sharing, and investing their resources into their town for many years meets an angel named Clarence. Clarence shows George what his town would be like if it were without him. Bedford Falls becomes Potterville. When George is taken out, the rich people of that town hold on to their money and the result is the social fabric falling apart.

A definition of shalom as used in the Bible - the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in equity, fulfillment, and delight

We translate shalom in the Bible as peace. It means a lot more then that. Universal flourishing, wholeness and delight, a rich state of affairs where natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts are faithfully employed all under the arc of God’s love. In other words, shalom is the way things ought to be.

This is different then Western culture’s idea of justice. With justice you think of individual rights. Justice as freeing an individual from the constrictions of the group. Freeing individuals to do what they want no matter what the group says. Biblical justice is different. It brings people to see that your stuff is not just yours.

I read in a commentary of Proverbs that whenever your read righteous and wicked here is what you should think if you want to read how it was intended to be read: the righteous people are those who disadvantage themselves for the community and the wicked people are those who see their resources as belonging to just them. Your reading of the Bible dramatically changes when you put that definition in place of our stagnate, just scratching the surface English words of righteousness and wickedness.

According to the Bible, to do justice means that you go to the places that the fabric is breaking down, where the weaker members of the society are falling through, where the interdependence is not happening. Look at the place where it says share your food with the hungry (in Isaiah 58). Hebrew commentators point out that this more sharply means ‘to serve and wait on the hungry’. This is an example of doing justice according to verse 6. If you don’t share your food with others it is not just stinginess, it is unjust. And this is NOT just saying to give money so that somebody else can serve the food. This says literally to get involved. In other words, to do justice means that you take all of the threads of your life (your emotions, your body, your time, your stuff, your money) and interweave it with people through thousands of involvements. Over, under, around, through.... shalom...

In many cities around the world, you have children growing up in which the combination of their families and school put together creates illiteracy. And when you get to High School age in this state this kids are ruined. It is nearly impossible for social and economic flourishing at that point. They are locked into poverty for the rest of their lives. Why is this happening to possibly millions of children around the world? There is a liberal analysis and a conservative economic, political analysis. The liberal would say that is happening because of unjust social structures. The conservative would say that it is happening because of the breakdown of the family. But nobody says it is the kid’s fault. Nobody is saying that the 7 year old should move themselves to another school district, should make sure that their parents read to them at home. It is not their fault. But the simple fact is that my child will have a potentially insurmountable greater percentage of chance of social and economic flourishing (and happiness in general) then those kids in those neighborhoods. This is proof of the enormous inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities in this world. This is just one example of how the shalom of this world has been broken, of the injustice of this world... If I do not share the advantages that this unjust world has shared with me with them then that in itself is unjust.

Isaiah 58 also talks about injustice as a yoke. A yoke is something you put on an animal. This is God talking about unjust situations like the previous situation of kids growing up illiterate. It is a yoke. They are being ground down by this social structure like an animal... Notice also that it says don’t just loosen the yoke, but break the yoke. It does not just say get those kids out of those schools, it says change those schools. Change those neighborhoods. It is not enough to just do individual charity. You have to handle social structures. That is what the Bible says...

Are you feeling guilty yet?

Guilt blows over though. You get use to it. It does not last. As a motivation it does not last. And it will never make anyone do justice as the Bible talks about justice. Guilt will not be enough....

So then what will be enough? What will make a person really do justice?

To answer that question let’s first answer this question - Why would Jesus say (in Matthew 25 and many other places): if you really have a love relationship with me you will care for the poor?

Let us be very careful here. When you look at the three passages that I have written about Isaiah 58, 1, and Matthew 25, you may see it as just another addition to the to do list to get God to answer your prayers, to have Him give you the life you want, to have Him bless you, to have Him take you to Heaven... If that is what you think (and this is what I have ALWAYS thought) then you have missed the whole point of these passages. This is a critique of that kind of religion. What is wrong with the people from Isaiah 58:2-3 is that they are trying to put this pressure on God. They are saying that, ‘We have lived a very good life and now you owe us.’

If you say ‘now I am going to be biblically orthodox, religious, personally moral, I am going to worship and pray, and now I am going to give my money to the poor then God will bless me and take me to Heaven...’ If you do this you have not only done zero to change the fundamental self-absorption of your heart (the self-centered default mode of the human heart which is making this world the unjust mess that it is) then you have made it worse! Now you have hidden it under the guise of religion! Think about it, if you live a moral life, if you read the Bible and pray, you are not doing it for God’s sake, the poor’s sake or even for goodness sake, you are doing it for you. You are being good out of self-absorption. That does not help a thing.

Most of the way we get people to be good is through this way, through self-centeredness. We increase their self-centeredness to make them honest. We use fear and pride. Fear based ways: ‘Be honest and you won’t get in trouble.’ ‘Be good or God will get you.’ Pride based ways: ‘You don’t want to be like those awful people who tell lies do you? You are better then that!’ But why is it that people lie? Because of fear and pride. When you use fear and pride in this way you are nurturing evil in another’s life. You have not changed the heart, you have only restrained it. That will never produce anyone who does justice the way the Bible pleads for it, says how it ought to be - full of radical sacrifice, radical giving, plunging oneself into thousands of involvements into ones community.

What will change soneone then to do justice??? Beauty

The very end of the Isaiah 58 passage speaks of beauty saying when the Sabbath day (a worship ordinance) is done out of delight, not because you have, but as an end in itself, and when your joy is in the Lord...

Why do I like to sit by the lake, listen to music, watch a great movie... Because it is beautiful, because it is satisfying in itself. It is a delight in itself. It is not a means to an end, it is an end...

How can we get to the place where we obey God and love the poor and do good for God’s sake, the poor’s sake and not for our sake? You have to have an experience of beauty.

Overwhelming beauty can get us out of ourself and can distribute our attention to those around us. Beauty can stop us, transfix us, and take us away from our preoccupation with ourself and prompt its distribution to others.

When Jesus says when you love the poor you love me and when you step all over the poor you step on me - it is saying that God identifies with the poor. What does that mean? Is it just empathy, feelings, and sympathy? Only Christianity tells you how far God really went to identify with the poor. When God came to earth He was born in a feeding stall. He grew up as the poorest of the poor (his parents sacrifice during his circumcision was only 2 pigeons which delineated that they were the poorest of the poor). He was essentially homeless at least during the last three years of His life. He ate His last meal in a borrowed room. He died and was buried in a borrowed tomb... God became poor...

God also became oppressed. Centering solely on His final night you can see a blinding example of injustice.

Author JoAnne Terrell - grew up quite bitter, living a life filled with injustice being a black American woman. She wrote about suddenly realizing that Jesus Christ did not just suffer for us, He suffered with us. Jesus Christ had been lynched, lynched by a corrupt justice system. Jesus knew what it was like to be under the lash.

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross... In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” - John Stott

Only Christianity says that God was not. Only Christianity says that on the last day, if we say, ‘When did we see you hungry, thirsty, a prisoner?’ Jesus will say, ‘They cast lots for my clothes, while I was naked. I cried out ‘I thirst!’ I was imprisoned, I was beaten, I was flogged.’ God literally became one of the oppressed. He literally went under the yoke. Why? Jesus said, I who deserved justice got condemnation so that you who have torn the shalom of this world to bits, who deserve condemnation get pardon and justice.

Jesus plunged Himself into our lives. He took all of the threads of His glory, at infinite cost to Himself, and threaded Himself into our lives and saved us.... and that is the beauty that will get you out of yourself.

When you see what He did for you that gets rid of your fear - He died for you so what is there to fear... It gets rid of your pride - He had to die for you so what makes you think you are anything but a sinner. And when the fear and the pride go away and all you see is the beauty of what He has done... now you can love Him just because He is beautiful. Because of all He has given me. You can say that you don’t have to do anything to get anything. You just want Him. And in this you can love the poor for the poor’s sake and you can love God for God’s sake. That is the beauty that can change your heart and not just restrain it. That is the beauty that will get you out of yourself forever.

And through this most profound experience of grace, I personally have found myself finally seeing justice for the first time.