Part two: ,What is it that God Asks?

Part two of three

4 Look, 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. 5 Is 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? 6 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? 7 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? 8 Then 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.(Isaiah 58)

Clarification:  The Hebrew word for fasting, very  simply put, means an offering to God. Or in God's name. 

As I was writing all of those statements, from Isaiah the other day, my mind went back two years.  I was sitting in a huge assembly hall, during our Church-wide Gathering, in New Orleans. What I perceived, actually what I  experienced, was a grace filled, powerful trend, moving in rhythm, with God’s original plan for his people.

As I was writing all of those statements, from Isaiah the other day, my mind went back two years.  I was sitting in a huge assembly hall, during our Church-wide Gathering, in New Orleans. What I perceived, actually what I  experienced, was a grace filled, powerful trend, moving in rhythm, with God’s original plan for his people. 

The original plan for them to take care of all creation. 

The question put to us throughout the week was:  What does it mean to be a Lutheran (Christian)? A follower, a believer, in Jesus Christ, in a multiculturally diverse world?

The answer got clearer and clearer, as I sat there with thousands of my sisters and brothers, day after day.  To be a follower of Jesus means to do what God asks!!   That is to do justice, act with humility, kindness and compassion. For all!  All!!

I was reminded again that the ELCA is actively modeling all of the above and more all over the world.  As Christ’s Body practicing what it preaches.  

We are an active participants in all major movement to advance, and heal, multi-religious  and multi-cultural mis-understanding and conflict.  End human trafficking.  Speak to the danger of fossil fuel. Enabling displacement of families to find safety in strange countries. We are first responders to world hunger and disaster relief.  The list goes on and on. 

Isaiah is clear!  When you do those things then!  “Then you shall be able to take delight in the LORD!”

It was brutally hot, in New Orleans, on those summer days.  And I truly hate hot!  Yet, as walk, in that heat, I felt blessed!  God had opened my ear to possibility happening!  Possibility happening all over the world!  Not just in the good-o-USA! 

I felt blessed because, what became very evident to me, that week, was that we live in a very, very small bubble.  A small bubble where we don’t truly know, nor can we  experience, the diversity of the wide world outside of our bubble.  

The only real connection with the wide world around us is by the news.  Tainted as it is!  

We live, and breath and have our being, in a white-middle-class.  For the most part!  Who are protected from the multifaceted conflict, unrest and oppressiveness known in the larger worldview.  

I must tell you, that even feeling so blessed, I also felt helpless!  Quite inadequate!  Inadequate to know how to speak.  I came away from that amazing week knowing, that like Jesus in the synagogue and Isaiah speaking to people who couldn’t hear, words fail.  

How do words relate the powerful truth I witnessed in that assembly room.  Words are simply not enough!  What our words tell, in the long run, simply do not matter. 

I felt helpless on how to share the passionate faith, the energy, that filled that room with the promise of Jesus’ mission in the wideness of our world living deep inside my/our being.  

I feel that same help-less-ness as I sit here this morning writing all these words to those who read my thoughts. 

This is were the precious Spirit of God must speak!  And guide those with ears to hear and eyes to see! 

I believe that what God asks of us is, to be generous, kind, caring, and live with true integrity.  Those are the qualities we desire for ourselves.  Why then is it so difficult to realize that is what others want as well? 

You know! The golden rule kind of living!