Repairers of the Breach

Repairers of the Breach

Texts: Isaiah 58:6-12

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 2-5-2017)

 The picture that first introduced me to this congregation is now nearly a year old. It is a marvelous photo of many of you standing up front holding signs that read, “We Choose Welcome.” Why? Why choose welcome when there is much talk today of building a separation wall along our Southern border and restricting the travel, if only temporarily, of select neighbors from the Middle East?  

Read Scripture from start to finish and you will find that “We Choose Welcome” is far more than an immigration slogan; it is an expectation from God for all who claim to put their trust in God. Just ask Isaiah.  

For just a moment, imagine the most devastated urban landscape that you have ever driven through or lived in or seen on film. When you do, you may come close to imagining the devastation met by returning refugees to Jerusalem. They returned not to the city of their dreams, but to a city that fifty years earlier had been torched by the Babylonians, left to decay in ruins, and tended to by the weakest and most vulnerable citizens who had been left behind.

Where do you start when facing such devastation? How do you find the resources to rebuild what your parents and grandparents had built only to see go up in flames? How do you fight the urge to take the next bus back to Babylon, after all, Babylon has been your temporary home for half a century?  

Into the devastation and to a people overwhelmed with the tasks before them, the prophet Isaiah speaks a word from God. The word is not: “Fear not, I will take care of you. Everything will be just fine.” Actually, the word from God is not about what God will do at all. It is an invitation from God to returning refugees to claim a new name and to live into that name. God says to those devastated by what they witness in their homecoming: “You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isa. 58:12).

The “breach” is far more than a Temple in rubbles, houses in disrepair, streets largely unpassable. The “breach” is the loss of confidence in God, in what God makes possible in people of faith, what God can accomplish in those who trust that God joins them even in the ruins. “Repairers of the breach” are those called not simply to restore devastated buildings, but to restore the faith and future of devastated people. “Repairers of the breach” welcome others into the land because they know what it is like to be unwelcome in another land. “Repairers of the breach” is a name worth claiming by any people of God. It is certainly a name and a calling worth reclaiming in 2017.

The Sufi tell a story in their tradition:

Past the seeker, as he prayed, came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them, the holy one went down into deep prayer and cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?”

And out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something about them. I made you.”

What if you and I stop looking to the heavens for God to do something about refugee resettlement, racial and religious discrimination, gun violence, inadequate health care, and poorly resourced schools? What if you and I were to recognize that God is looking for us to be “repairers of the breach”? What if people were to hear the name, “Cove Presbyterian Church” and immediately responded, “I know Cove. They are that small but mighty, welcoming community who are Repairers of the Breach”?

Saint Augustine once wrote: “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” That is what welcoming “Repairers of the Breach” do; they get angry at the way things are and they have courage to see that things do not remain that way. They find partners in passion and they are not easily distracted.

Some worry that we might overstep our faith should we step out of church and engage in public matters. Isaiah does not share this worry. He fears just the opposite. He fears that people of faith who need to speak out will hide away in their little religious enclaves and stay silent.

Chapter 58 is a rallying cry for people of faith to model and to work for an ethically demanding world. It is simply not sufficient to be people of faith who come to worship, sing hymns, pass the peace, and enjoy a cup of coffee or a good lunch after the benediction. Worship designed to make us feel good is not worship worth God’s time or ours, says Isaiah.   

Isaiah laments, “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast [worship] day, and oppress all your workers” (58:3). The worship Isaiah envisions is one that leads the community of faith to model and to demand humane economic and political practices in society.  

In words that sound much like what we will later hear from Jesus, Isaiah preaches, “Is not this the fast that I choose; to loose the bonds of injustice. . . . 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.” YOUR OWN KIN, says Isaiah. Homeless folks – YOUR OWN KIN.  Food stamp users – YOUR OWN KIN. Illegal aliens cleaning our houses and staffing our fast food restaurants and picking our grapes – YOUR OWN KIN.  Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews – YOUR OWN KIN.

          Don’t you hate it when the Bible goes messing around with our neat divisions of church and state, religion and politics, faith and economics?! Isaiah sees worship not as a time to snooze, but a time to get singed by the fire of God’s passion for justice. True worship, says Isaiah, stops the holy cover-up where we pretend we can worship God on the one hand and ignore or abuse our neighbor on the other. 

Pay attention to Isaiah and listen to Jesus and they both might just ruin a good Sunday lunch, but while they are at it, they might just feed your soul with the food of what really matters so that you and I can go and do the same.

Names matter. Just ask Isaiah. I am honored to be named one among you who, in so many ways, “choose welcome,” you who are “Repairers of the breach.”

AMEN