God is not like the gods who fail us

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/022920.cfm
Isaiah 58:9B-14
Luke 5:27-32

We’ve known all along that the true God who expects an intimate relationship with us is not like any other god we have already rejected. I’m assuming, of course, that you and I share in the disappointments from failed gods that have jaded us. I also assume that you’ve rejected these false divinities. Most of them, that is. 

What gods am I talking about? The god of restoration, who takes the broken things in our life and repairs them like new. Sometimes this happens, but the true God is not defined by performance of miracles through our bidding, our command. The broken things, if we’re hopeful enough to save them all in our garages and closets, pile up faster than rain down a gutter. That same gutter that leaks, by the way. That god does not answer to us. We'll never get even 1/2 the cracked up things repaired.

Also, there’s that failed god of safety and security who protects us from harm. The litanies of transgressions against us would fill several books. If we had the time we could write an encyclopedia of traumas and difficulties and downright unbearable pain. I can blame quite a bit of my physical and emotional angst on myself. In fact, more than a few could have been avoided if I paid attention to the little hints and reminders, which I assume came from God or one of his angels. I ignored them at my own peril. Just as many invasive enemies, though, have broken through the many firewalls I’ve constructed that I had no way of preventing. The god of safety is a liar.

There are other false gods that we’ve depended on. Like the god of organization and reward, who has shown to be specifically incompetent in competitive sports. A decade goes by before that god shows up. Sometimes, several decades pass with a trail of losing seasons. There’s no god of competitive sports or any form of organized efforts with due rewards. No god worth paying any attention to, anyway.

And that god of happiness. That’s a myth if ever there was one. Happiness isn’t anywhere in the equation of godly management. I’ve learned more from sadness than from happiness, and the short-lived happiness arrived quite often from overcoming a drawn out experience of depression and sorrow. Total waste of time to wait on the god of happiness. 

In Isaiah 58, an entire chapter devoted to fasting, the Lord explains to Isaiah exactly the kind of God that he is. He is nothing like these failed gods. He expects us to be like him, not to order him around. For our edification, he outlines pretty clearly what that means. Fasting does not bring God to us by making him happy that we've starved ourselves. Fasting is just a tool.

Isaiah offers up one verse, made up of two phrases that explains God’s way. I’ve reversed the two phrases, because in English our brains work from “if” something, “then” something. The Hebrew does it backwards.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the accusing finger, and malicious speech;
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: “Here I am!”

(Isaiah 58:9)

First, we need to stop acting inappropriately. Then we can call upon God. He will arrive, and then he’ll ask us to work with him. He doesn’t show up and do stuff. He shows up and takes our hand. He puts his arm around our shoulders. He lifts one end, and we lift another. He's right there, and wants us to join him.

While safety, competitive endeavors, happiness, and restoration appear to be high on God’s list, in our point of view, the real goal for God is to follow him and work out what he wants done in order to effect those very things. Indeed, fasting isn’t what’s important to God. Isaiah spends Chapter 58 explaining that fasting, a key spiritual exercise in Judaic (and also  in our Christian) life, is simply a way to focus upon adjusting our character toward God by setting aside the distractions of resourcing food, food preparation, and eating food for our own benefit.

In a strange sense, God's got better things for us to do, and fasting gives us more time to do them. The fasting tool helps explain who the true God really is.

Fasting helps us concentrate on the removal of the awful things he noted we must exclude in verse nine — the oppression of others, false accusations, and malicious speech. Once we remove them, we shift our efforts to bestow food to the hungry, and to satisfy the afflicted. I wasn’t exactly sure how that worked, but then it started to make sense. Oppression, accusations, and gossip make our world awful. If we each stop these activities, the world can look like it’s supposed to because we’ll be constructive in the creative and cooperative sense. Rather than whining, we'll feed people. Fasting means giving our food to someone else!

God can successfully design and operate a highly effective and wonderful world if he didn’t have us in the way. He didn’t design that world. He designed an entire universe where he has chosen to live with us, and operate with us as we are. 

God wants us actively engaged with him (if we’d only cooperate) from creation to miracles. We’re the catalyst for restoring the world, keeping people fed, providing for each other’s safety, and cooperating with each other. He isn’t a puppet god whom we control, but the one who wants us to join him in the tasks that we see as vital for our lives — safety, repair, feeding, and cooperation. We find those things important, because God too wants those things too. He isn't going to do it by himeslf. We aren’t supposed to slog along trying to save the world without him. We’re supposed to be joined to him at the hip and recognize his leading, his guidance, and act with him.

Listen to the images of how God works with us  — the light shall rise for you in the darkness, the Lord will guide you always, He will renew your strength, and ancient ruins will be rebuilt for your sake. The two images of how we engage in our world express awesome, wholesome functionality. We are a “watered garden … a spring whose water never fails.” The powerful, life-giving pictures of a garden and a spring weave us into the earth, rock, and air of our planet. 

In addition, the “sabbath,” the day of rest set aside for the Lord, represents more than just that Jewish holy day. As temples of the Holy Spirit, the sacred residence of God with us, Emmanuel, makes not only the day holy because we are in it, but every day, and every place we inhabit.

If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD’s holy day honorable;
If you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice--
Then you shall delight in the LORD

(Isaiah 58:13-14)

The holiness of every day wraps up the way the true God is. He lives here, in us and with us. He knows the pathway to all the things we keenly desire with him.

Finally, the rewards we seek so fruitlessly in competitive endeavors are nothing like the titles he gives us when we eagerly join him in our divinely inspired, and because he is here, his holy world.

Your people shall rebuild the ancient ruins;
the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined dwellings.”

(Isaiah 58:12)