Isaiah 58:1-12
Today’s scripture reading comes late in the tradition of Isaiah, long after the original prophet, and possibly even after the Israelite elite had been freed from the Babylonian Captivity and allowed to return to Jerusalem, rebuilding their city under the good rule of the Persians. At least that is the official version of events. That would make it around the late 6th century B.C.E.
The passage echos key prophetic themes from before the catastrophe, themes of earlier prophets like Amos and Micah, themes written into the Torah itself that would later be central in the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus. In a nutshell, it comes down to two points: 1) What was important to the Israelites in their religious practice, showy displays like public fasting and Temple sacrifices, were not what was important to God. God did not need their burnt offerings and attention-seeking acts of public devotion. 2) What was important to God was justice.
The passage closes with a call to help those already oppressed, to provide food and shelter to the destitute, but this comes only after the call to establish justice.
In fact, the passage first calls out the mistreatment of workers, making clear that it is not bad luck that has left people hungry and homeless, not locusts or drought or plague. Those who are suffering are suffering because of human decisions, and not the decisions of some foreign invader, but the decisions of their own people, seemingly religious people. God, as voiced by the prophet, is a labor activist.
Then there are these four direct commands. Loose the bonds of injustice. Undo the thongs of the yoke. Let the oppressed go free. Break every yoke.
The yoke, of course, is y-o-k-e, the wooden crosspiece used to bind two animals to one another in order to pull a plow or wagon. Think of a pair of oxen.
Yoke is in there twice, and that might be worth considering. Undoing the thongs of the yoke is enough to allow the oxen to run free. Breaking the yoke means eliminating the possibility of anyone else ever being placed in the yoke again. It is a preventative measure.
But then, we get to the gospel, and circle back to the yoke, for just as Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross and follow, so too does he use the language of the yoke, encouraging his followers to voluntarily accept the light yoke of discipleship.
So which is it? Are we the pro-yoke party or the anti-yoke party?
And as I wrestled with where to go with all this, how to give us language for the core belief in our particular progressive Protestant tradition, I heard about the guy arrested in Montour Falls this week, charged with criminal anarchy. Specifically, he had threatened to behead government and military officials, which was bad enough, but then he threatened this nation’s real houses of worship, banks. That is anti-yoke, but definitely not our kind of anti-yoke.
And then there is the Federal Reserve, the mother of all banks, that has decided that the solution to high inflation driven by corporate price gouging and soaring profits is to increase unemployment among the middle and working class by driving up interests rates, a failed strategy they doubled down on this week. That is most definitely a yoke, and not a joke.
No, seriously. You listen to the same corporate news I listen to. This is what they keep saying.
It is the Emperor’s New Clothes, something so boldly insane that we simply go along because we must be the ones missing something. Everyone can’t be that nutty, right?
So let’s do this logically, step by step, and see if we can land somewhere that is useful, that can help us in our life together, for together is where we end up, unless we want to have a Unabomber life in some remote off-the-grid cabin in Montana. But hey, look up! There’s a Chinese spy balloon up there, so maybe you’re not as remote as you think…
Humans are sinful, and by sinful here I don’t mean offending the honor of some giant co-dependent old man in the sky. I mean we do bad stuff to other humans and to the living and amazing planet on which we live. And I didn’t say some humans are sinful. In one way or another, at some point, every single one of us has acted in a way that was less than loving, less than selfless.
Sometimes our sins are conscious acts that we can’t be proud of. Sometimes they are instinctive reactions, the little lizard brain that is all about flight and fight and other base behaviors. Sometimes our sins are non-acts, our refusal to act when action is needed. And sometimes our sin is in our knowing participation in systems which benefit us but harm others.
This is why the standard prayer of confession asks forgiveness for what we have done and what we have failed to do.
Stop sinning. Remove the yoke that you have placed on others. Here, specifically, the prophet calls out an economic yoke, exploitative labor practices. Elsewhere the prophets call out exploitative religious practices, but those are actually economic as well, for organized religion, then and now, is an economic activity, and it can be sinful at times.
And here we are, like some ancient Oprahs, removing yokes and shouting “You’re free, and you’re free, and you’re free!” And we could stop there, in the most dishonest and toxic form of anarchism, libertarianism, except there’s one problem. Liberty is a lie, if by liberty you mean the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want.
We do not have total liberty. That is just the nature of creation. The ancient stories may depict Jesus as walking on water and floating up into the sky, but I live with the law of gravity.
We evolved as social animals, with vulnerable young. None of us is Mowgli, raised by wolves, and even then, Mowgli was governed by the law of the pack. To be human is to be part of a social network, one that predates Facebook by thousands of years.
We are bound to one another and to all of creation in ways we know and in ways we acknowledge and in ways that are as mysterious as quantum entanglement, which is pretty darn mysterious, even to quantum physicists.
Elizabeth Warren famously called out those who claimed they got rich through their own efforts, noting the many ways we are inter-connected. Goods travel on publicly funded roads. Our food is safe because of standards and inspectors. Most of our workforce went to publicly funded schools. Etcetera etcetera…
So one, stop sinning, in this particular case, stop exploiting people. Step two, hidden in there, break the systems that lead to oppression, and step three, attend to the immediate needs of those who have suffered, providing food and shelter and care.
Now, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that Christians have been far better at the third step, feeding and healing and sheltering, than we have been as the second, breaking systems of oppression. I mean, we do get it right at times, like the Abolition of slavery, though there were plenty of so-called Christians on the other side of that struggle as well. Sadly, Christianity is the source of oppression just as often as it is the source of liberation.
One: stop oppressing. Two: break oppressive systems. Three: do triage with the newly liberated.
And I think there is a four, implied but not stated in this passage, found elsewhere in scripture. Re-integrate the oppressed back into the community.
Re-integration was a pressing issue for the residents of Judea when today’s scripture was written. There were conflicts between those who returned from the Exile and those who had never been taken away, the people who had been left at that scene of carnage , traumatized and surviving on that ruined land for a generation.
And I think we struggle with this last piece as well, particularly in the United States, the worldwide leader in mass incarceration, especially as an instrument of systemic racism, as the living legacy of the slave state. But it isn’t just ex-cons. Or recovering addicts. As I was recently reminded, poverty is not just an economic condition, it is also a way of thinking, an expectation of powerlessness and victimization, of learning to operate outside of the system because the system has never worked for you. It is not enough to provide opportunity. You also need mental first aid, cognitive first aid, and in many cases, reparations.
One: stop exploiting others and participating in systems of oppression, whether you are active or passive in your participation. Two: break the systems that oppress. Three: Triage and provide care for those newly liberated. Four: Reintegrate them back into the community, for they are part of our tribe.
That’s a pretty tall order.
Finally, let me draw your attention to what happens to you when you do these things. You earn titles, good ones, like repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets. And hey, in a place like Elmira, there are some streets that need restoration. Best of all, your gloom will be like the noonday sun. Sounds pretty good to me. Amen.