“You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?

Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?”

– Isaiah 58:4,5

Day 35 : Holy Monday

Yesterday, with the celebration of Palm Sunday, we entered into Holy Week – Semana Santa. This is the one week of the year when the church calendar slows to meet us in our humanity, and we walk with Jesus in real time through his final days on earth before his crucifixion.

We can see the end of Lent in sight, but before we can celebrate His resurrection, we must witness and walk with him through his betrayal, his passion, and his death. That is what our Lenten practices have been building toward – their telos – and it is also the foundation from which they spring – their raison d'être.

This Lenten season, we have spent our time digging deep into Isaiah 58, and harnessing it as a lens through which we can understand our Lenten calling to “true fasting.” Fasting has always been one of the historical Lenten practices of the church, along with prayer and almsgiving.

But in Isaiah 58, God makes a distinction between the perfunctory kind of fasting that we might engage in simply because it’s “what we do,” and the kind of fasting that he himself has chosen. He is clear: he doesn’t want our "bowed heads;" he doesn’t want our "lying down in sackcloth and ashes," even if those motions come from a humble heart. He wants us to show love in action, on behalf of the vulnerable, the downtrodden, the left-out, the not noticed—in the biblical language of Isaiah— those oppressed and the poor.

"See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious,

lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

He will proclaim peace to the nations.

His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.

As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you,

I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit."

– Zechariah 9:9-11

On the day after his “triumphal entry,” Jesus cleansed the Temple from the merchants and money changers. They were there to sell animals, such as doves, so that even the poorest of God’s people could fulfill his command to make sacrifices in the Temple.

The fact that they were selling animals and changing money wasn’t the problem – the problem was that they were using “unequal weights,” or “dishonest scales,” in order to make more profit, at the expense of the poor. Rather than "set[ting] the oppressed free and break[ing] every yoke," they are tightening the yoke, and increasing the burden of oppression. Essentially, they are engaging in the very kinds of practices that God condemns in Isaiah 58.

“The Lord detests double standards; he is not pleased by dishonest scales.”
– Proverbs 20:3

Jesus “took up the cause” (Isa 1) in the Temple of injustice, dishonesty, and selfish gain. He was outraged that true worship had turned into an opportunity to make life more difficult for the poor through self-serving tactics.

In Isaiah 58, God’s people are called to rid themselves of injustice and selfishness, accumulation for own-gain that burdens others.

And now we, as the church, are also called the temple of God – both communally and individually. “True fasting” necessitates that we show love in action, on behalf of the oppressed and the poor. The language of Isaiah is that we are called to:

Take up the cause
Plead the case
Defend
Do right on behalf of the vulnerable

Isaiah says, without this your worship is not worship of a true God, and that God doesn’t count it as worship at all “When you spread out your hands in prayer,I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening” (Isaiah 1).

What would it look like for us, individually and corporately,

To worship as God desires?

To enter into true worship and true fasting?

To allow Jesus to cleanse the temple of indifference, unawareness, distraction, and lack of attentiveness to those not flourishing in our cities, near neighborhoods, unseen in pockets of our community?

God is inviting with the strength of kindness that leads to repentance and with commitment to lead us into our own flourishing in which our lives become like well watered gardens, our healing appears quickly, and our light rises in the darkness (Isa 58:8,10,11).

Christ and the Money Changers, by Anthea Craigmyle

"Come to your Temple here with liberation

And overturn these tables of exchange

Restore in me my lost imagination

Begin in me for good, the pure change."

– Malcolm Guite