For millennia, Isaiah 58 has stood as a harrowing text, reminding its readers of the dangers of divorcing worship from justice. “Shout out, do not hold back,” the Lord tells the prophet, “Announce to my people their rebellion…” (58:1). In contrast to some other prophetic texts, the sins of the people in this case are neither blatant idolatry nor the failure to observe religious practices such as prayer and fasting. Rather, the people of Judah are engaged in the worship of the true God without faithfully reflecting God’s commitment to the justice and peace of the community. The people inquire of God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (58:3). They claim to be religiously observant, and God seems not to respond. To this complaint, God responds through the prophet: “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? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry…” (58:6).  Faithfulness to Torah – the “weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith” (Matt. 23:23) – cannot be conjured by religious ceremony alone.

Our passage is constructed as a series of conditional statements: “If you offer your food to the hungry… then your light shall rise in the darkness…” (58:10). There is something powerful at stake in how the people worship God; it is the clear contrast between a community of violence, hunger, oppression and strife (see 58:3-4) and one in which the Lord satisfies the needs of everyone (58:10), restores the broken foundations (58:12) and feeds the people with “the heritage of your ancestor Jacob” (58:14). While worship apart from the practice of justice threatens the very life of the community, worship characterized by justice will be a light and a witness of God’s love and mercy to all nations. This theme resonates throughout the writings of the prophets, from Micah (6:1-8) to Amos (5:21-24) to Jesus (Matt. 23:23, Luke 11:42).

Hunger plays a central role in Isaiah 58, because the prophet’s indictment of the people hinges in particular on their practice of fasting – abstaining from food in order to devote themselves to prayer. To obtain favor from God, the people are fasting (choosing to go hungry for a time) even while they deny food to their sisters and brothers who are actually starving! In other words, they are simulating hunger for the sake of religious piety while ignoring the real hunger around them. Rather than being drawn into solidarity with the hungry, the oppressed, and the marginalized, the people are merely serving “their own interests” by their fasting (58:3, 13). This passage makes clear that God has little room for such vacuous “spirituality,” as the prophet calls his people back to a worship that is not self-serving but genuinely directed towards the divine and neighborly Other. Some Christians misread such passages as an authorization for abandoning rituals – such as fasting or Sabbath – that seem to detract from a more immediate kind of spirituality. Such a reading is foreign to the prophets, however, who continually call their people not away from Sabbath but into a deeper practice of the Sabbath that weds works of piety with works of mercy, out of which flow springs whose “waters never fail” (58:11).

By Chris Liu-Beers, Program Associate, North Carolina Council of Churches