Keeping the Fast: Isaiah 58:1-12

Here is yesterday's sermon (for you Andrea). It may not be my greatest exegetical work and it in no ways says everything I wanted to say about the topic (see Saturday's posting), but it's my story. And I trust that it works.

Keeping the Fast
Is this not the fast 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? ... if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. - Isaiah 58:1-12 (selected verses)

It was not the fast any of us would have chosen. Yes, we had agreed to do this “urban immersion”, but I don’t think any of us knew exactly what that meant. I was the “leader”, meaning I had some idea that this was different from the previous work trips we had taken. But even so, I didn’t know what we were in for.

Past trips I had taken with folks from a church in suburban Indianapolis had included refurbishing a house in Appalachian Tennessee and building a school in Mexico. Both had been tremendous experiences, acting out of a sense of Christian benevolence to meet some of the immediate needs of people within these communities. Still, these communities were far from our homes and so different from our home communities that it was often hard to make the connection between the impoverished and oppressive situations we encountered and poverty and oppression closer to home. In addition, while it was important to tend to some of the most basic needs of some people, we really did very little to change their situations. But on those trips, we had done good work, and we returned home feeling good about what we had done.

I imagine that most of the group expected our urban trip to be a similar experience, just in the context of a city as opposed to rural Appalachia or Mexico. We’d go in, build something, do something, then we’d head back to our homes. But such a trip was not in store for us.

No, it was not a fast that we would have chosen. We arrived at Urban Spirit, the site of our urban immersion in Louisville, KY just after noon. Lunchtime. And we were getting hungry. But after unloading our vans, we sat down for an hour plus of orientation. Stomachs were rumbling as Deborah, Urban Spirit’s director and pastor, told us that this week we would be experiencing a bit of the life of the urban poor. She explained some about the week, how we would have various activities, simulations and games, to help us understand what life is like for most people in our country, outside of our white, middle-class, suburban enclaves. She told us a bit about the neighborhood around us, but I guess she sensed that we were getting hungry because she suggested we have lunch.

Actually, what Deb said was, “How about lunch?” We all agreed this was a great idea. She announced that for our meal, she had arranged for us to get boxed lunches. “Have any of you ever had a boxed lunch?” she asked. Well, most of us had. “What was in your boxed lunch?” Oh, a sandwich, chips, an apple, a cookie… “Oh, well, that’s not what you’re getting today.” Hmmm… How about fried chicken, potato salad, and a drink? “Nope, you’re not getting that either.”

Then she split us into groups of seven and gave us a back story for the week. “This is your family. You recently lost your job, and so far, you haven’t been able to find a new one. When you’re landlord found out you lost your job, he kicked you out. You are now living in your car. And you are broke. Today, you are going to the local food pantry to get a box of food for your family.” This was going to be our boxed lunch – a box of food from a food pantry. Actually, this was going to be our boxed lunch, our boxed dinner, our boxed breakfast – for the week!!

This was not the fast any of us would have chosen!!

We got our boxes: cereal, canned veggies, canned fruit, a box of rice, canned pastas, one can of tuna fish, some jelly snacks, raisins, canned beans… This was our food for a week! It wasn't a chosen fast. But there we were, sitting on the floor of that old Louisville church, eating our boxed lunches, and never quite satisfying the hunger in our bellies.

We remained hungry all week. Our stomachs continued their rumblings as we went about doing various tasks to help us identify with the very real experiences of poverty. And being hungry was part of that, no doubt. We had to ration the very little food we had, trying to figure out the best ways to maximize the calories, striving for the healthiest possible balance of protein and carbs. I could imagine a mother with growing children, trying to innovate ways to make the food more appetizing and nutritious for the family, and trying to figure out how to make that meager box last throughout the month (yes, what we had to feed us for a week would be the normal allotment for a family for a month from most food pantries).

One project we worked on involved making budgets for a single parent family – a monetary budget, but also a budget of time. We could buy a car, but the cost of the car plus insurance (not to mention car seats) would mean children going without school supplies or even decent clothes, but not to have a car would mean three hours a day of commuting, thus time away from the kids, little opportunity to be involved in their educations, and the added monetary expenses of additional child care. We had to make sacrifices. One group ended up opting for no health insurance, another had the seven-year-old baby-sitting the younger children, and one found “their mother” forced to pass up a possible promotion because she couldn’t work the new hours. These were tough choices I don’t think any of us fully appreciated people having to make in our country.

Another project was a scavenger hunt. Sounds fun, right? Well, of course, there was a twist. Each family was assigned an address in differing parts of the city. Using mass transit, we had to get to the address (we were from suburban Indianapolis, where mass transit simply does not exist, so this was a whole new world for most of us), and then we had to locate an agency, an organization, or a ministry to help us with various services – from finding somebody to donate school uniforms or to provide subsidized child care to finding job training or a hot meal. Once we found an agency that provided the support, they signed us off. (The group with the signatures won). Let me tell you about my family’s experience: it took us well over an hour just to get to our neighborhood, and then we walked, and we walked, and we walked. We were given misinformation, wrong numbers, wrong directions, wrong addresses. So we walked and walked and walked some more, trying to find somebody to help us. We made it to one agency just as they were closing, at 4pm. They wouldn’t assist us. Shari, from my group, posed the question, “What if you had to work every day until 5pm? You wouldn’t be able to get here at all. Or else, you’d take off work and risk losing your job.” In the end, our family ended up with only four items signed off for from our list of 18. And three of those were all from the same church.

Our understanding of just how hard it is to overcome the cycle of poverty in our society was expanding, and our rumbling stomachs were only the very beginning. We realized how the systems in place in our society don’t work for many people. And this made hearts ache along with our stomachs.

It was a challenging week for us. But our learning was immediate; the moment we first started eating from our boxed lunches, one youth, Matt, said that he would never again give the “crappy” food from his pantry during food drives, thus he resolved to change the way in which he extended charity (and I know for a fact from his mother that whenever there has been a food drive since, he has made her take him to the grocery store, and he picks out “good food”).

The learning was immediate, and it was also profound. One activity had groups creating a car from Lego pieces distributed to them; the cars were to be raced against each other. One group was able to create multiple models of cars and to test the cars for the greatest speed before our allotted time ran out. Of course, that team won the race, hands down. Angi, a woman from the winning group, from the only group to have wheels distributed to them, proclaimed, “I just assumed we all had the same parts!” And the connection was made. And we began to comprehend the concept of privilege. Privilege of our education, privilege of our skin color, privilege of our class. Throughout the week, we not only began to develop an awareness of those who live their lives hungry, with little food to fill their bellies, but we also began to discern how our own patterns of consumptions contributed to the hunger of others.

Yes, it was a challenging week for us. We didn’t get to build a house or a school and take our picture in front of it. But we did get to build activists, and when we returned to our homes, these 21 people were on fire, eager to learn of the hunger and poverty within our own communities and, more importantly, to work to alleviate them – both from the charitable and systemic perspectives. Coming back to our suburban homes, we were once again able to eat our fill, but I don’t know that the hunger ever left our bellies, that is a hunger for justice.

No, a week of eating from a box was not the fast any of us would have chosen. But it is a fast, which according to Isaiah, is one that God chooses, “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke.” It may not have been the fast we had chosen, but I pray, it is a fast we will all keep.