They're busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people-- law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?' and love having me on their side. But they also complain, 'Why do we fast and you don't look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?'
"Well, here's why: "The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit. You drive your employees much too hard. You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight. You fast, but you swing a mean fist. The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground. Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, GOD, would like?
"This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The GOD of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, GOD will answer. You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.' "If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places-- firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.
(Isa 58:2-12, MSG)
Have you ever had one of those weeks where it was too noisy on the inside? Where hearing your own heart was like trying to listen for the ring of your cell phone at a metal concert? I don't know what happens in my mind, but it has this amazing capacity to facilitate a huge amount of cross-talk. But I'd venture that not one of those conversations includes God's voice.
How can I be so sure? First, there's no peace to be found. Second, there's nothing resonating in my heart. Third, they all vibrate with the dissonant chords of fear. And that music just sounds like so much noise!
The fear that stirred things up last week was an old familiar one... finances. The drought of cash flow continues and at times makes me want to alternatively scream, cry and curl up in the fetal position. "Why", I ask God, for the nine-hundred thirty-second time, "is this so hard for us? I've obeyed you to the best of everything I know. I've laid down every strength of myself at Your feet? Why aren't my needs being met?"
And of course, I hear nothing. Because I can't. Too much music in the key of fear. Too much noise. And as the week went by, nothing changed. I felt desperate. Alone. Forsaken. Useless. Confused. Numb. Still getting nothing to guide me from my heart. And still broke.
One night near the end of the week, I found myself doing something, perhaps just for sanity's sake. I wish I could say I had a revelation and faith overtook me. I wish I could say I broke the dark force that has shut down the money flow. I wish I could say I just had peace. I wish I could say I found money to pay my electric bill on my doorstep. But I can't say any of those things. No, what I did was just pray something I don't think I ever prayed before. It went something like this:
"Jesus, I ask you to please just send someone who can carry my heart and break the weight of this need off of me. Send someone who can help."
And it dawned on me. I was praying for Jesus to rescue me, but I understood it to be for a person or persons here and now.... for a Jesus with human skin. For a person sent by Him. I was praying for Him to send a "savior" into my life and onto my path. I was praying for a hero.
And then I saw it all at once from another side. Suddenly I had entered into the place of the "oppressed". I was the underdog. I was the "poor". I was the marginalized one. And now I needed a hero! And I realized in a moment just a little bit what it feels like to be out on the streets of life, desperately in search of a "rescuer", only to find them all out partying at the superhero nightclub. And I realized just a little bit what it feels like to be stuck in quicksand just outside a beautiful home, crying out for help, yet being muted by all the noise of the party going on just inside.
And so it must be to live in this great bastion of freedom and opportunity called America and know that deep inside you are locked in a prison from which you cannot seem to escape. And the voices of despair and hopelessness taunt you, sounding so familiar day after day. These voices of your past still whisper - even shout out, like a deafening noise sometimes. Yeah, they're still there. The voices of anger and abuse and lies and broken promises. The voices of racism and poverty and rejection and abandonment. The voices from hell. The dissonant music of fear. The noise that becomes your friend, because at least it covers up the darkness and silence of your imprisoned heart.
I have a struggle financially, to be sure. But I have yet to miss a meal or lose my home or go without clothes or heat. And I know God has an answer, even when it is too noisy to hear. Just like He did for this time of challenge, since He has since met the urgent need of the week!
But what about the ones to whom God's voice has gone silent? Who is going to enter their prisons and stop the deafening noise and get them out? Who are the rescuers? Who is Jesus going to send? Who are the heroes?
In the scripture above (Is. 58), it's apparent that God has decided who the heroes are. They are me. They are you. But where are we? Are we trying to impress God with our personal piety and synthetic spirituality? Do we really think that we can ponder for years our very mission and yet never quite get out to the field and live it? Are we so comfortable with the "music" we've made for ourselves that we have forgotten that the dance of the Spirit calls us outward as it calls us upward? Are we full and fat and wanting more? Are we so out of shape that we are no longer able to run the race to win? Are we actually fit for a rescue?
Or do we need to fast?
And the fast He has called us to requires we stop eating from the endless buffet of spiritual treats. And that we turn off the party music. And stop our solo dancing. And that in fact we just leave the nightclub. Because heroes are needed somewhere out there tonight, right where there are people to rescue. And they aren't hard to find, if we would just look right outside our own doors. And although their voices are muffled and weakened with stress and pain and fear, they are crying. Are you listening? Am I? Can we even hear them? And will we even care if we do?
One way to be sure: fast the fast of heroes. Not so much the fast of food or drink, but of our selfish use of time and resources and energy. As the scripture above says, it's the fast of putting away our myopic self-interests to look out for those of others, especially those that have yet to find anyone looking out for them.
Such a fast moves us out of our petty little lives. And it will surely remove lots of the noise of our self-focused internal worlds. So that we might hear. And see. And understand. And save the day.
The fast is always about the flesh we put down. And the self we leave behind. And the cross we pick up. So we can indeed hear them. And come to their rescue. And then perhaps do what any real hero would do... introduce them to the Real Hero of this whole story. And that's called happily ever after indeed!
So as the cries go out for help, and Jesus turns to each of us, where will we be? And what will we choose to do in response to them... to Him?
Whose hero are you tonight?
