Pious Prayer and Social Action
Which is more important? Worshiping God or working for God? Personal piety or social justice? Acts of devotion or acts of service? The New Testament way of framing that issue is "faith" or "works."
John Wesley left no doubt about his answer for the early Methodists.
"It has been the endeavor of Satan, from the beginning of the world, to put asunder what God hath joined together; to separate inward from outward religion; to set one of these at variance with the other. And herein he has met with no small success among those who were 'ignorant of his devices.'
" For disciples in the Methodist tradition, "inward" and "outward" religion are inextricably bound together. They are two side of the same coin. Try to separate them, and you end up destroying the whole thing. The epistle of James simply says, "Faith without works is dead." (James 2:14-26)
Eddie Fox, the leader of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council (our mission partners), says that it's like breathing. You breathe in and you breathe out. If you don't do both, you die. You know which is most important by asking which you did last.
The Prophet's Challenge
There's nothing new about faithful people wrestling with the connection between personal piety and social justice. It's a relentless theme for the Old Testament prophets.
I hope you'll take time to read Isaiah 58. I think it's one of the most eloquent and disturbing passages in the entire Old Testament. The prophet goes after the covenant people for maintaining their religious practices (fasting in particular) while ignoring the needs of people around them. But God's word of judgement becomes a magnificent word of promise as the prophet describes how wonderful life can be when we act in ways that are consistent with the heart of the God we worship.
Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann describes Isaiah's critique of "elaborate and passionate religion" that "completely disregards the character and intention" of God and results in "self-serving religion." But the prophet points toward "a new spirituality" that expresses itself in engagement with the painful dailiness of human wretchedness and need...a spirituality that yields joy and well-being."
I love Isaiah's promise that if God's people act in ways that are consistent with God's love and justice, "then your light shall break forth like the dawn...you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorers of streets to live in. " We could use some "repairers of the breach" in our politically, economically, and socially polarized country today.
The Prophet of our Times
It's providential that Isaiah 58 appears in the lectionary for the Sunday before we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr's, "I Have a Dream" speech. If you've never actually heard the speech, you can watch it here. The first half of the speech is a carefully reasoned argument for social justice, delivered like a professor in a classroom or an attorney in the court. But the moment comes when Dr. King became a preacher and the lecture became a sermon. Some say it was when Mahalia Jackson piped up, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin." In the chapel service this Sunday, Danny will interview local
attorney, Delano Stewart, who will share his memories of that day.
God's word that came to the people of Israel through Isaiah came to the people of America through Dr. King. It is still the prophetic challenge to live into the unfinished dream of "liberty and justice for all." May the same Spirit who inspired the prophets equip us to become the "repairers of the breach" in our own time. As Dr. King said, 1963 was not the end, but the beginning.
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