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PREACHING ABOUT POVERTY 'The Feasts and Fasts That God Chooses' Dr. John D. Paarlberg Minister for Social Witness and Worship, Reformed Church in America

The New York Times best-seller list includes a listing of books under the heading "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous." Often included in this list are books giving spiritual advice. Among the paperback best sellers listed a while ago was one entitled Chicken Soup for the Soul. Some of these books provide helpful and practical advice. Many of them purport to offer some kind of plan or formula for spiritual health and happiness. The danger in this kind of thing is that sometimes they can sound like little more than an attempt to manipulate God. Sort of a twelve-step program to get God to do for you what you want. "You do this and this, and then God will be this way for you." It is a way of thinking very much a part of our current culture.

David Wells writes:

We have turned to a God that we can use rather than a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. God is a God for us, for our satisfaction-not because we have learned to think of God this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of God this way through the marketplace. In the marketplace, everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction; and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well. And so we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy.

God in the Wasteland, p.114. Eerdmans, 1994

Apparently something like that was also the prevailing attitude among the people of Israel in Isaiah's day. They thought they had a plan, a formula for spiritual health and happiness-only it wasn't working. God was not responding in the expected way. In fact, God was not responding at all. "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why do we humble ourselves, and you do not notice?" As if to say, "What's wrong with you, God? We're doing our part; what's happened to you?"

Isaiah reminds the people-as we all need to be reminded every so often-that worship and ritual, if they are divorced from daily living, if they are separated from our family life, our work, our leisure, our politics, may in fact do more harm than good. The Orthodox speak of "the liturgy after the liturgy"-the worship after the formal service of worship. Which is to say that worship does not end with the benediction and postlude, but continues throughout the week, and that what happens here in this meeting between God and God's people ought to guide, shape, empower our living Monday through Saturday. We worship on those days too. We give our devotion, our energies, our time, our adoration, to something or someone. The only question is to whom and how. We all participate in "the liturgy after the liturgy." The only question is, "Does this Sunday liturgy shape, inform and guide our liturgy-our worship-throughout the week?"

What does this "liturgy after the liturgy" look like? What shape should it have? Did you hear Isaiah's description? Here he says nothing about prayer or praise or ceremony or ritual. Rather, the liturgy after the liturgy, according to Isaiah, looks more like a program for economic reform and social liberation. It involves loosing the bonds of injustice, freeing the oppressed, breaking down everything that enslaves, sharing our food with the hungry, welcoming the homeless, and clothing the naked. That is what worship looks like Monday through Saturday, according to Isaiah. It is to practice compassion and justice in our daily living, and to have a special concern for the weakest and most vulnerable in society.

A Presbyterian church in Washington, D.C., which carried on an extensive ministry to poor and homeless people, was necessarily relocated to a different neighborhood. The new neighborhood was a bit more upscale than the previous one, but the church continued its ministry. And the hungry and the homeless continued to come to its doors seeking help. Some of the new neighbors didn't like it much and brought the church to court to try and stop them from caring for the poor and hungry. It violated zoning laws, they argued. But the court ruled in the church's favor. Freedom of religion is protected by the constitution the court said, and feeding the hungry and housing the homeless is "a practice akin to worship." Isaiah couldn't have said it better. That is excellent biblical theology.

The fact that 40,000 children a day die from hunger or hunger-related diseases is not just a matter of morality; it is a matter of worship.

The fact that there are homeless people in the streets of our cities is not only a matter of economic and social policy; it is a matter of worship.

The fact that there are people in our neighborhoods, our places of work, within our own congregations or families, who are lonely or hurting and need our care, is not only a matter of human kindness, it also concerns the God we worship.

In his instructions concerning the Lord's Supper, St. Paul admonishes the church in Corinth for failing to "discern the body of Christ." This is not about doctrinal statements concerning the bread and wine, but about discerning the body of Christ, the church. The Corinthians were failing to discern Christ in their brothers and sisters. Some were going hungry while others were eating and drinking too much.

John Calvin wrote this about the Lord's Supper: The Lord communicates his body to us so that he is made one with us and we with him. "We shall very much benefit from the Sacrament if this thought is impressed and engraved on our minds: None of our brothers or sisters can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us without at the same time injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in our brothers and sisters. We ought not allow a brother or sister to be affected by any evil without being touched with compassion for them."

When we keep such concerns the focus of our day-to-day living, when we learn to practice compassion and to work for justice, then God will respond, says Isaiah. "Then you shall call and the Lord will answer: you shall cry for help, and God will say, here I am."

"Here I am." The words in Hebrew convey a "ready availability"-"here I am, ready to do your bidding." Almost everywhere else in the Bible these words are used as the response of a servant to his or her master, or the response of the faithful person who is about to receive marching orders from God.

When God calls Abraham (in Gen. 22) Abraham responds, "Here I am."

When God appears to Moses in the desert in the burning bush and calls, "Moses, Moses!" Moses responds, "Here I am."

When the boy Samuel hears the voice of God calling him in the temple, Samuel responds, "Here I am."

When Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up in the temple and hears God calling, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?" Isaiah responds, "Here I am, send me."

When the angel appears to Mary and announces that she is to be the mother of Jesus, Mary responds, "Here I am, the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word."

But here, God says to us, "Here I am, your handmaid-at your service-ready to do your bidding."

When you loose the bands of injustice;
when you let the oppressed go free;
when you share your bread with the hungry;
when you welcome the homeless and do not hide yourself from your own flesh and blood....
then, then you shall call and the Lord will answer; then you shall cry for help and the Lord will say, "Here I am."

Now, before this sermon is quite finished we need to ask, have we arrived at a point any different from where we started? Or do we not still have a God we are trying to manipulate, a God who is at our mercy? Are we not still seeking a formula for spiritual health and happiness? It’s just that we've just come up with a better formula. If fasting and ceremony and ritual worship won't do it, then try justice and compassion, then God will respond to you. Is that what is happening here?

Well, maybe-but certainly not in the sense that our actions and attitudes can change the nature and character of God. God is always a God of compassion and justice. God is always ready, and not only ready, but eager, to say to us, "Here I am." It is what God says to us on the cross. "Here I am, here I am-for you. Here I am-my life poured out for you."

Our practice of justice and compassion-or our lack of it-won't change that. It's just that sometimes in order for us to really hear God's "Here I am" we need to get outside ourselves, and our own self-interest. If we want to know God then we need to let our lives be shaped by the God we are trying to know. The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus said, "Knowing demands the organ fitted to the thing known." Our lives need to be shaped by the truth we are trying to apprehend. If we want to study trees we can learn much from books and from other people, but sooner or later we had better get into the forest. The kinds of lives we lead are huge factors in influencing our access to the truth, especially the truth that is God. When we offer our lives for others, for the hungry, the homeless, and the hurting, then we come close to this God who is the God for others, the God who is love, the God who is justice. When our lives become cruciform-taking the shape of the cross-thinking more of others than of self, when our "Here I am" answers God's "Here I am," then we have not only a conversation with God, but communion with God. Then we will know, not merely a God who does our bidding or we who do God's, but God and God's people so close, so intimate, that we can say God is in us and we in are God.

And that finally, may be the difference between "chicken soup for the soul" and coming to feed on Jesus Christ through his word and through the sacrament of bread and wine. It’s not just comfort food we're after, but something much more profound and much more wonderful. Here we come, not for chicken soup, but to take in Christ so that he-who in his great love for us became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh-might more and more take shape in us, and we become bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, spirit of his spirit, love of his love. This is not a God who is at our disposal, but a God who deigns to become one with us, a God with whom we can be in communion, so that we are in Christ and Christ is in us.