I’ve been away, being creative, most of January. Away too from my usual routines, including the reading of newspapers or watching news channels.

But inevitably it seems, the machinations of the self-serving and politically powerful, and the resulting chaos and misery they make in the lives of others, conspire to disturb, and then anger us, wherever we are.

So Iran. So Minnesota. So Kiev. So Gaza. So the backward steps of our government regarding climate action. So much to lament. So much to despair. So much to repair.

Isaiah 58, our Pānui Tahi today, is set in the context of the Jewish community exiled in Babylon (from 597 BCE). There they plead and seek answers from their God. The book of Zechariah says they fasted every fifth and seventh month, for seventy years(!), seeking a response, an answer to their troubles. “Why us, why me??”

So, fasting, unlike in our day, has nothing to do with dieting or detoxing or ‘clearing/cleansing the mind.’ Rather fasting is an action of prayer. A bit like how some Christians kneel to pray, or raise their hands in the air.(Though, of course, fasting takes a lot more discipline than kneeling or hand raising).

Prayer, at its most basic, is about connecting with God. Even if our prayer is meditative and entails stilling the mind and not trying to think about anything, it is still about connecting with God.

The author of Isaiah 58, sometimes called Second Isaiah, is disturbed and angry. He sees in this fixation with the ‘why us, why me’ question, this question that focuses on one’s own woes, a deliberate neglect or indifference to the suffering of people less fortunate than themselves.

So, daring to speak for God, he thunders:

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?

The yoke is a reference to animals, yoked together for ploughing or other tasks. Second Isaiah uses it as a metaphor of oppression. And we today might ask, what ‘yokes’ keep people poor, living in substandard homes, toiling long hours for minimal wages? What are the yokes, the systems that entrench poverty in certain places, certain families, more prevalent in some cultures than others, a heavier yoke for women than men?

And likewise we might ask what stops those of us who have enough sharing more of what we have, housing the homeless, clothing the cold, seeing those in need as kin, trying to make a difference and repair the rips in the enveloping and sustaining fabric of the Common Good?

Second Isaiah though doesn’t want us to form think tanks, or Bible study groups, or listen to seminars that will answer these questions. He just wants us to take our focus off ourselves, our misery of being in Babylonian captivity, our feelings of being let down by God, and instead turn our focus towards those around us who are suffering, and then seek to do something, anything, to alleviate it.  

This passage though is very importance in the whole context of the Bible for understanding prayer. Prayer is not just about oneself; it is fundamentally about others. Connecting with God is not just something we do in churches, or holy sites, or on mountain tops; it is fundamentally about helping liberate others by both attending to the causes of oppression and alleviating hardship.

To liberate is to pray. To give is to pray. To protest injustice is to pray. To get off our kneels or pews and do something for others is to pray. So prayer is an action.

When the nurse, Alex Pretti, was killed by US Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis two weeks ago for trying to shelter a woman from being beaten by those same agents he was, in Second Isaiah’s theology, praying.

That’s the other thing about prayer as liberating and alleviating; anyone can do it. You don’t have to be Jewish or Christian or Muslim or of any faith at all. Connecting with God, or maybe it’s better said as God enveloping us, is not the preserve of the religious.

So, God who is in all and through all, is best praised, worshipped, and adored (to use traditional language) by liberating, alleviating, collaborating with any and all who are being oppressed.

+++++++++++

The Pānui Rua today (Matthew 5: 13-16) , part of the Sermon on the Mount, is, like Isaiah 58, trying to expand our theological thinking. Jesus uses two metaphors, salt and light, to talk about how his followers should be in the world. Note that this is the context of the Sermon on the Mount – discipleship – how to be a follower of Jesus in this world, right now. There is no sense in the Sermon of Earth being some sort of training ground for a heavenly afterlife. It is a sermon about how you practice, or do, Christianity now.

Salt, while today (due our excesses) is not beloved by the Heart Foundation, in the past was an essential ingredient in food preparation – in terms of flavour and preserving. Here, in the Sermon on the Mount, salt is a metaphor for a little affecting a lot. The quantity of salt needed is minimal in cooking, but its effect is significant.

The primary title of my last two books is ‘Pinches of Wisdom.’ Like today’s reading, ‘pinches’ is a baking metaphor, usually referring to a pinch of salt. It’s the idea that even a tiny amount can change the whole. It suggests a pinch of the wisdom, a tiny amount of goodness, is able to bring change for the better.

So followers of Jesus were being encouraged to think of themselves as salt, as bringing wisdom, goodness, and hope to the whole of society, in order to enrich the whole of society.

So salt wasn’t an ‘us versus them’ metaphor. The role of salt was not to make everyone into salt. Or to condemn those who weren’t. Or to give up on society. Or to tell non-believers they are going to hell. Or to walk around in black T-shirts with slogans implicitly stating how great disciples of Jesus are (and inferring everyone else isn’t great). It’s not a winners-losers metaphor.

Rather the role of salt was to dissolve, blend, or mix into society in order to promote the values of the Common Good, or in Bible language, “the Empire of God.” The salt metaphor is about faith and religion being for the good of the whole Earth and all its people; and in the end indivisible from it. So, in language that fundamentalists might understand: “If the world is going to hell, we Christians are going with it.”

You may puzzle about the part in the verse where it talks of salt losing its flavour, becoming useless, and being trampled underfoot. You’re not alone. Interpreters do too. Because salt doesn’t lose its taste. Greek (the language the text was written in) does not actually mean “loses its taste,” literally at least, but means “becomes stupid.” And far be it from me to suggest that some Christians could be stupid!?

Let’s move on to light. The metaphor works similarly to salt. The goal is not for everyone to be lights – for then in total brightness we would be able to see nothing at all. Neither is the goal for the followers of Jesus, shining in their brightness, to leave the world and society in its darkness, and go make their own glowing habitation.

Rather, like salt, the faith and practice of Jesus followers is to add to the whole world, bringing their insights, illumination, in order that others can see things they otherwise might not have. The light is given freely to all in society, for the benefit of all in society.

And the metaphor doesn’t preclude other people of other faiths also adding their light (their ‘salt’) to the mix.

The substance of this ‘light’ and ‘salt’ is spelt out in the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. The wisdom of not judging, loving your enemies, where your heart is your treasure will be, etcetera. All of it, or at least most of it, is wisdom about building a common good.

The phrase ‘Common Good’ has a long history in philosophy (from Aristotle &Plato) and in church teaching (Aquinas). One definition is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.” Yet it is not merely a utilitarian "greatest good for the greatest number," but a commitment to justice that ensures no one is excluded. The Common Good also requires active participation from citizens, who must balance personal freedoms with the needs of the wider community.

The ‘Common Good’ is a way of talking about what many of the early Jesus’ communities assumed about the Empire of God and their role in making it happen. It wasn’t about judging others, or excluding others, or saying they were better than others. Rather it was about offering the wisdom they had, mixing it with the wisdom and gifts others brought, in order to build a society where all, especially the vulnerable, could find a home, a community, and flourish.

.

‍