Is This The Kind of Fast God Wants?
Discover the true meaning of fasting through an exploration of Isaiah 58 and the story of Gabriel.
People were afraid to park their motorcycles when they visited Gabriel’s neighborhood. So he started a security guard business. As soon as a motorcycle was parked he’d run over, wrap his scrawny arms around it and hang on. The only way to get him to turn loose was to pay him. Maybe he’d get paid by the person who owned the motorcycle; maybe by a person who wanted to own the motorcycle. It didn’t matter to Gabriel.
Now, in America we call this extortion and it’ll earn you 5 to 10. But in the Dominican Republic this is called genius and it’ll earn you about 25 cents a day. That was enough to help Gabriel’s mother put food on the table.
He hated that job. He wanted to be in school with the other kids, not holding onto hot motorcycles for hours. While he waited, those who knew he didn’t have a father and knew what his mother did for a living, called him names I can’t repeat. They told him he was nothing, worthless, stupid. They thought because he didn’t have ears he didn’t have a brain either.
There’s a nickel mine at the edge of Gabriel’s neighborhood and a refinery next to that. The smoke stacks rise above thousands of houses the size of minivans, made of scrap lumber and rusting metal. A pillar of smoke billows from the refinery. The streams criss-crossing the neighborhood run red with chemicals. In America, it’s been against the rules to mine nickel in this way since 1981. But American mining companies play by different rules in the developing world.
By those rules we win and Gabriel loses.
Gabriel wasn’t the first child in his town to be born with a weak heartbeat and shriveled lungs. A dozen or so are born each year just like Gabriel. He’s unable to move most of the muscles in his face. And Gabriel was born without ears.
We’ve entered the season of Lent. For many of us it's also a season of fasting. Fasting is a practice passed down to us from our Jewish siblings, whose most important fast day of the year is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. It’s a day for confessing and turning away from sins committed against God. It's a day for afflicting oneself and pleading for God’s forgiveness. One year, as the Israelites starved themselves and begged forgiveness, they complained that God wasn’t listening. “Why do we even fast?” they asked, “You don’t see us.” “Why harm ourselves?” they asked, “You don’t listen to us.”
And God answered, “Even on your day of fasting you're still exploiting your workers.” When we hurt the already vulnerable, God sees them. When the oppressed cry out for help, God hears them. Their lament drowns out our Sunday songs and confessions. God draws near the broken-hearted living under plumes of poison and says to those worshiping under steeples, “Isn’t this the kind of fast I want: to break the chains of injustice, lighten the burden on those who work for you, to set the oppressed free, and stop every form of oppression?”
The fast God sees and hears and desires is a fast from harming our poorest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters.
Those Isaiah chastised on Yom Kippur separated their treatment of the poor from their treatment of God. But whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we’re doing to God.
What have we done to God? We like our cell phones, batteries, and pots and pans cheap. But low prices for us come at a high price to others: Gabriel was born without ears. His father died of lung disease while working in the mine. Without a husband and without enough education to even write her name, Gabriel’s mother couldn’t afford food or to send him to school. So, when he was five she sent him to work. He hugged motorcycles while men held—while men used his mother.
Rather than reducing our consumption, we have increased it. Rather than purchasing refurbished and out-of-date products, we demand the newest and latest. Rather than researching and supporting ethical businesses, we spend quickly and often reward oppression. Many of us with influence in business, politics, and journalism haven’t leveraged our power on behalf of the oppressed. Even in our season of fasting, we're feasting at the expense of our workers, our brothers and sisters, our God.
Is this the kind of fast God wants?
