Bible Hourglass
Photo Courtesy of Interpreter Magazine
A United Methodist Insight Column
For all our debates about how to read and interpret the Holy Bible, the longer I read it the more I marvel at how clearly and precisely many of its passages speak to human nature that hasn’t changed over 5,000 years.
For example, several news stories recently reported that some Southern Baptist pastors have been referring to Vice President Kamala D. Harris as “Jezebel,” the notorious, scheming, Baal-worshiping queen of 2 Kings. In one article on The Lily website, experts outline why the term isn’t merely insulting, it’s dangerous, since it has long been used as an excuse to harm Black women. I’m not Black, but I was once called “Jezebel” when I helped lead a community campaign to recall a corrupt city council member, so I know firsthand the unjust sting of the epithet and the false biblical sanction for violence it conveys.
In these tumultuous days many of us who follow Jesus find ourselves advocating for more responsible uses of holy writ than name-calling. My latest encounter came recently during daily Morning Prayer with fellow members of United Methodist Insight’s sponsoring congregation, St. Stephen UMC in Mesquite, Texas. St. Stephen has been holding daily virtual sessions of Morning Prayer and Compline since mid-March 2020. We use resources from two ecumenical monastic associations: the Northumbria Community based in northeastern England, and The Order of Saint Luke, a U.S.-based organization for liturgical scholarship founded by Methodists in 1949.
Against the intertwined backgrounds of the past year of pandemic restriction, racial unrest and political turmoil, a passage of scripture, Isaiah 58:6-12, leaped out as a framework for Lent. The verses begin with a description of human misery:
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, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
While the past year of misery has been forced upon us, we’ve still had the capacity to choose our responses to events. In every case, we could choose whether to wear a mask and keep physical distance to stave off COVID-19 infection; to march in protest against police abuses such as the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer; and most important of all, to choose our political leaders in democratic elections.
The overarching responsibility laid upon us, however, is whether our choices reflect God’s desire for equity and justice. As I read on, the next verses caused me to gasp with an insight: Isaiah 58 records what will occur in a society that follows God’s call to “loose the bonds of injustice.”
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
Surely there could be no greater comfort after this past year of anger, fear and grief than to hear that changing our behavior, returning to godly ways, will lighten the emotional burdens we’ve borne? Not only that, Isaiah describes the human behaviors that have contributed to an unsafe, unhappy atmosphere even as it promises the fruit of redemption.
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Like a flash, these verses caused me to consider our divided American society, struggling to overcome its recent history of obfuscations and lies, of false conspiracies such as QAnon and fake narratives such as those that sparked the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Surely these encompass “the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil” that scripture rightly identifies as the opposite of satisfying the needs of the afflicted.
Likewise the phrase “repairer of the breach” reminded me of its significance for some contemporary activists. That’s the name of the national organization founded in 2015 by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, which conducts the Poor People’s Campaign – a National Call for Moral Revival. Repairers of the Breach roots itself squarely in Isaiah 58, declaring that the great moral issues before us are not prayer in public schools, abortion and property rights, but “how our society treats the poor, women, LGBTQ people, children, workers, immigrants, communities of color, and the sick--the people whom Jesus calls ‘the least of these.’”
Of all its gifts to us, scripture reminds us of God’s covenant with us, and of how many times we’ve broken that covenant. After all, the Latin root of the word religion, ligare, means to join, or link, “classically understood to mean the linking of human and divine,” according to Wikipedia. If religion has anything to teach us about the year past and the year before us, it must be that our links to the Divine and between humans need acute attention.
Scripture gives us a mirror that reflects our human behavior, if we open ourselves to its enlightenment rather than using it to confirm our own biases. The season of Lent gives us time and space to examine how our behaviors link or separate us to God and one another. This is the “fast” we can choose.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor and Founder of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.