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Isaiah 58:1-12 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, adapted

58 Shout out; do not hold back!  Lift up your voice like a trumpet!Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.² Yet 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.

³ “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers. ⁴ 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. ⁵ 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?

⁶ 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?⁷ 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? ⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and they will say, “Here I am.” If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

¹⁰ 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.

¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. ¹² 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.

Matthew 5:13-20 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, adapted

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Creator in heaven.

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Marianne Williamson,   

excerpt from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Some prefer to dwell in the darkness. Not the holy darkness of mystery that John of the Cross or John Philip Newell speak about – the fertile soil where God does deep work – but the darkness in which things are hidden. The darkness that says: Let’s not talk about that. Let’s not name that. Let’s not stir things up. 

Isaiah has absolutely no patience for those wishing to dwell in the darkness. “Shout out, do not hold back!” the prophet says. “Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” 

This Isaiah scripture is devastatingly clear. God says, I am not impressed by your fasting if it doesn’t loosen the bonds of injustice. I am not moved by your prayers if you are still exploiting workers, ignoring the poor, and stepping over the vulnerable on your way to the sanctuary. God’s concern, according to the prophet, is not religious performance – it is human flourishing.

That is a hard message to hear. Our instinct is to believe Isaiah is talking to some other religious groups, but certainly not to us. We are well-meaning, justice-minded people. Isaiah reminds us that meaning well is not the same as doing the right thing. 

Nationally, the UCC is focusing on racial justice this morning. Hearing these Isaiah and Matthew scriptures in this context sharpens the questions I am compelled to ask. 

I wonder… 

• What does it mean to live faithfully in a nation still shaped by white supremacy?

• What does it mean to sing hymns of liberation while benefiting—knowingly or unknowingly—from systems that constrain others? 

• What does it mean to gather as God’s people if we are not actively participating in the work of repairing systemic wrongs?

For many of us, part of the challenge is that we did not grow up seeing these harmful systems at work. We did not see them, because we were benefiting from them. 

Growing up in small-town Wisconsin was much like growing up in small-town Maine. All of my neighbors looked like me. Many were of German ancestry. Some Norwegian. Most everyone I knew was Catholic—or at the very least Christian—so I did not even realize there were other ways to express religious faith.

When I was in grade school, a family moved to our small town from a big city.

They looked different than the rest of us. My new friend’s mother was Chinese. Her father was Black—not very black, mind you, his skin a warm brown tone. Everyone spoke English, though her mother had a slight accent. Both parents were college graduates, which was unusual in our small farming community.

My friend became the token minority in our schools. Did she receive special favors? Oh, certainly not. Was she discriminated against every day? Yes, sadly, she was. And sometimes, even by me, although  never intentionally. However, she felt the sting of cruelty through comments, assumptions, and silences. 

I was blissfully unaware of the daily racial taunts she endured. Sometimes I was not in hearing range. But mostly, I was not really hearing them at all, because they were so deeply embedded in our language and culture that they passed as normal. That is how engrained racial bias can be.

Another example: Our closest neighbors were an elderly couple who had a black lab. They delighted in teaching me the dog’s name so I could call it from across the yard. How old was I then? Four, five, six? I had no idea that the name they used for their dog was also a demeaning racial slur hurled at Black and Brown people. I truly did not know. How could I? I had never heard the word before. To me it was just the name of their dog. Often when racism is learned, it is not even recognized as racism.

And then there were our Indigenous neighbors—though we did not yet call them that. In my school district, I graduated grades 4–6 as a Cougar, grades 7–8 as an Indian, and grades 9–12 as an Eagle.

I do not know how cougars or eagles feel about being mascots. But I now understand much more about cultural appropriation than we did in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. At some point in the 1990s, the school district stopped misappropriating Indigenous identity, and the junior high mascot also became the Eagle.

As Maya Angelou so wisely said, “Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, you do better.” 

We need to be willing to educate ourselves and to be educated by others. We need to be willing to learn from those in our society that have traditionally been and still are being exploited and abused. Who? Black and Brown skinned people, people Indigenous to this land, people who immigrated here across oceans and across fabricated borders.  

Richard Rohr, one of my favorite theologians, teaches that Jesus does not come to tell us how to become enlightened. Jesus comes to tell us who we already are. Light bearers. We are the light of the world. 

Marianne Williamson writes, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure… As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.””

When we place the words of these modern day prophets next to Isaiah and Jesus, they can become our rallying call to courage. Because systems of injustice depend on people playing small. They depend on silence. They depend on good people keeping their lights hidden. 

Isaiah reminds us that God’s light shines through us when we are sharing bread with the hungry, housing the homeless, and not hiding from our own kin. Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, takes these same concepts and expands them.

Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth.” He says, “You are the light of the world.” Not that you might be someday. You are. We are. 

Racial injustice thrives when we lose our saltiness, when we hide our lights under a bushel basket. 

So how do we learn?

We must be honest about our history. All of it. We cannot hide the truth from ourselves or from one another. The truth is that we are bound together, that we are all kin. The truth is that we must shine the light into our dark places so that we can overcome our painful and ugly past. To do that we must also acknowledge our painful and ugly present circumstances.

We must seek out people who are different from us. We must seek out our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) neighbors. Not to teach them about ourselves or about the dominant culture, but to learn from them. To listen to their experiences of the very same, but very different world, that we are co-inhabiting.

Justice. Kindness. Humility. Those were not just last week’s lessons. They apply every week. Every day. To every encounter.

John Philip Newell describes the light of God already planted within every person as the “divine imprint.” The sacredness that exists prior to sin, prior to failure, prior to division. This imprint exists in every human being. Which means racial injustice is not just a social problem, it is a theological problem. It is a denial of God’s image in another.

Here is an uncomfortable truth: Systems of oppression rely on some people shining while others are told to snuff out their lights. Racial injustice tells certain individuals to be quiet, compliant, grateful, and invisible. It tells the privileged that their comfort matters more than the safety of others.  

When Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others,” he is inviting us to bring courage, visibility, and truth-telling where there is fear, obfuscation, gas-lighting and outright lies.

For many of us, letting our lights shine first means rejecting past teachings, whether overt or subtle, that are biased and untrue.

When did you first realize that something you were taught by parents, family, or teachers was not actually true? For many people, it happens when they leave home. When new lived experiences contradict inherited belief. If we never have those first-hand experiences, we may never realize that trusted guides failed us – and we may unintentionally continue to perpetuate harm.

There are tools now that can help with that learning. Even simple things, like the cultural bias tests developed at Harvard – and available online – can be eye-opening. They remind us that we all hold biases. The question is not whether we have biases. The questions are: Do we acknowledge them? Who do they serve? Who do they harm?

And yet, the goal is not shame. Nadia Bolz-Weber, author, Lutheran minister and public theologian, reminds us that shame never transforms anyone. Love transforms. Truth transforms. Grace transforms.

Isaiah’s words for today are not just a critique of his community, they are also meant to provide hope. God says, If you remove the yoke from among you, if you satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall break forth like the dawn.

What do we need in this moment? How will our lights shine in the current darkness of racism, oppression, and injustice?

• We need individuals and churches that refuse to hide from hard conversations. 

• We need people of privilege to risk discomfort for the sake of repairing past and present harms.

• We need to tell the truth about history without erasing or white-washing the ugly parts. 

• We need to trust that God is still at work through us and others and that all we need to do is our one small part. Alone we accomplish nothing. Together – all things are possible. 

  
  

We are salt. We are light. We have been given these gifts not to hoard but to share.  When we stop hiding our light – when we align our worship with justice, our faith with courage, our love with action – the darkness does not win. 

I will close with words of Marianne Williamson. “ We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

May it be so… 

Rev. TJ Mack – February 8, 2026