Isaiah 58:1–12, Psalm 112
If you celebrate Ash Wednesday in your church tradition, Isaiah 58:1-12 is likely a familiar text. It is a call to fasting, and it hits on many points that are relevant to traditional Lenten practices. But this isn’t just a text for Lent. It’s a text for ordinary times too because injustices permeate the world all year round. Even though Isaiah doesn’t use the word, this text is really a call to repentance.
In this passage, the Prophet calls out religious people who perform their pious duties without changing their hearts and lives. The audience was full of people who followed the tradition of fasting from food, humbling themselves in prayer, and covering themselves in ashes (58:5). But those actions did not change their business practices: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist” (58:3-4). Isaiah accuses them of manipulating wages, exploiting workers, and abusing employees. They are creating poverty in their community, not helping to alleviate it.
So what is the solution? Through Isaiah, God commands listeners to “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke” (58:6). This text literally speaks about ending economic injustice, slave labor, and all forms of oppression. It is a call for abolition of prisons, jails, and all systems where people are bonded and yoked. It is a call for freedom from the oppression of corporations making profits off of sub-minimum-wage or wageless prison labor. It is a call for people who run those systems and benefit those systems to dismantle them. Later, Isaiah promises that God will bless, help, and answer the prayers of those who “remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil” (58:9). Isaiah, like most of the prophets, wants to disabuse us of the notion that we can live in right relationship with God without working toward just relationships with our neighbors. It’s not that we have to be sinless, but we cannot be complacent about the sins that we profit from. We cannot live as hypocrites.
Psalm 112 approaches similar themes a bit more subtly. The Psalmist tells us that “the righteous are merciful and full of compassion” (112:4). That’s precisely the problem that Isaiah points to in his prophecy. Abusive employers, jailers, and prison wardens are in the wrong because they lack mercy and compassion. They fail to see the enslaved and the incarcerated as children of God — made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27) — just like them.
As Americans, we have a collective responsibility for the things our government does “for the people.” And America is notorious for trying to incarcerate our social problems away. We are doing the same thing as Isaiah’s audience. We are denying “criminals” of their basic human dignity. In the US, crimes are most correlated with poverty, institutional racism/oppression, and social trauma. And our laws often define “crime” in a way that often punishes people because they need mental, physical, psychological, and economic help. We lack mercy and compassion. We would rather lock people up and throw away the key than do the hard work of reconciliation and restitution. We would rather exact revenge than seek God’s definition of justice. And there is a whole caste of people who are the victims of this systemic, societal sin. One of the most important things a preacher can do is continue to remind people that we all deserve mercy and compassion. That is the moral and spiritual key to transforming the criminal-legal system into something that helps people more than it hurts.
The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda is the rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Savannah, GA, and the Missioner for Racial Justice of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.