5th Sunday after the Epiphany 2026

Sermon: 5th Sunday after the Epiphany 2026

Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12, Matthew 5:13-20

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The prophet Isaiah does not let us off the hook. He chastises: “Do you not notice?” Awareness is an important spiritual practice, when we stop paying attention is when things deteriorate: an unattended house, an ignored sickness, a system that makes us look the other way; these are all images of decay when we stop caring. Such is the cry of the prophet Isaiah. He reprimands the privileged class of his people: “Have you stopped caring?” Even worse, have you co-opted your religious faith to serve only your own interests at the expense of the poor, the worker, the widow, and the orphan? The prophetic book of Isaiah speaks to a nation that suffered exile from their homeland because of many imperial ventures by powerful countries like Assyria and Babylon. Generations of Israelites lived under the boot of these empires, and were forced to accommodate their ways over their own. A lot of the stories we hear from the Hebrew Bible is about a people seeking to preserve their God-given identity in the face of empire, to remain faithful to God amid oppression. Now this portion of Isaiah, is responding to a segment of the people that were able to return from exile. However, their habits, their practices, their governance, seemed to replicate the habits of the empires that oppressed them rather than God’s ways. And so the prophet is forced to speak out against the injustice and the hypocrisy. God raises the prophet’s voice so that the people might become aware, so that they might notice their folly. God did not choose His people for them to be like the others, He chose them so that they may be different, to be light to the nations, a priestly people who are a living sign of God’s justice and love.

But what is the situation that the prophet faces, what forces the prophet to speak?

“Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they want God on their side.” How incisive is Isaiah, he goes beyond the surface of public religion. There is a controversy with this group of publicly religious, powerful class of people that use faith as an instrument to gain more power. There is a veneer of earnestness in their religion, but God sees the true intention. How tragic is that “they seek me, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness”. They pretend faith, it is a faith that is shouted at the rooftops, but that leaves no evidence to what God actually demands. They want God on their side, says the prophet, not because they love God, but because professing God gives them what they truly seek: their own selfish worldly ambitions, they took with them the wrong lessons from exile. Today, scholars might diagnose this behavior as having a colonized mindset, reproducing the vices and interests of those that oppressed you. God becomes just another strategy in their plans for achieving their goals. History is a good teacher when it comes to powerful forces claiming God for their side, and yet ignoring Him completely. Such contradiction does not go unnoticed. “You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” The prophet condemns a weaponized spirituality, a spirituality that justifies injustice and selfishness. It is as if someone takes the beatitudes of Jesus, and says “Blessed are the Peacemakers”, and then show violence as peace. It is like in the novel 1984 from George Orwell, when the powerful employ

the weapon of doublethink: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. God, on the other hand, seeks true integrity through love, justice and mercy.

Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps 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?… If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil” Thus says the Lord. God has a quarrel with the fast that is spiritual for self-gain rather than a fast that sacrifices for the sake of others. When we think about it, a fast is a spiritual discipline that entails giving something up, a sacrifice one makes for a spiritual goal. These powerful people that God has a problem with fast, they make sacrifices, they enact piety, but their objective is not to get closer to God, it is not to inspire more love in the heart. It is to increase their power, to do violence against enemies. On other hand, the fast that God deems acceptable, is the one that sacrifices so that others may have more. So that others can reach equality, so that justice can reign in the land, so that the foundation of the society is built not on individual gain, but collective flourishing. God does not call us to performative faith, we are not called for a faith that is simply to enact a public image of ourselves. We are called to an integral faith that is consistent with the claims God makes of our lives. For us who follow Jesus, when we exist in contradictions like these, we will be convicted. We have grace, not so that we may continue to exist in that contradiction, but to break free

from worldly doublethink and actually live into integrity according to the Gospel. “Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

In light of this fast that God chooses, there we find the necessary flavor that Jesus is talking about, to be salt of the earth. In that fast that lifts the hands of our neighbors, we begin to lay the groundwork of that city God envisions in Isaiah, and that Jesus lays the cornerstone. The city on the hill, the city that sheds God’s light upon the world, is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the kingdom that grows within all of us by following the way of Jesus, the way that looses the bonds of oppression and liberates us to live according to the designs of God’s goodness for all people. How do we preserve the flavor, how do we upkeep the foundations of this city growing through every human heart? It is through the love of God, beloved. To season our day with the thoughts that lead us to this love. It is a love that recognizes that everyone is called to a life of inherent God-given dignity, and that we should not hide this love. Let us not hide the mercy given. That, Jesus says, is the real downturn. When we cease to love, when we cease to feel empathy, when our hands are kept in our pocket, and not towards our neighbors. There is a challenge in this gospel. It is a liberating word, because it liberates us from our self-enclosure. From the loneliness of individualism, of only seeking what benefits me. Let yourself be challenged by God’s love in the same way that we are abundantly loved. Our world needs this love, Beloved. Hatred, greed, selfishness only makes the world more bland. It is a reproduction of selves that do not

meet, that do not diversify, that refuse to grow and acquire that depth of flavor that love and dialogue brings. The vision of God is one where we meet each other, where we cross the lines that divide us to be transformed by those we meet. So preserve your flavor, Beloved! Expand your awareness and be attentive to the voice of those around you. Let no one miss out on the love you can bring to the table. Let us not pretend, but be the real thing! A Jesus follower through and through. That when people cross your path, they might be led to think about Jesus. That in having this Jesus life at the center, they can taste something good and different, that they might eventually be led to the awareness of that liberating love of God that Isaiah prophesied about. So let us then pray: