Isaiah's Challenge: Confronting Hypocrisy and Injustice
July 15, 2024 - Monday, Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Isaiah 1:10-17
To grasp the magnitude of the insults Isaiah hurled at his people, imagine someone delivering a speech to the guardians of morality in our world, the leaders of a nation set on a hill to spread the light of righteousness across the globe, who lecture the citizens of the world on decent living, beginning with: "You brood of vipers and offspring of Sodom and Gomorrah." Behind Isaiah's harsh language is God's anger against hypocritical living—when one pretends to worship God but lives as if God did not exist.
One characteristic of a Jewish prophet, elaborated by Abraham Heschel in his book, The Prophets, is being an "iconoclast." "An iconoclast is someone who challenges cherished beliefs and questions established institutions." This is what Isaiah was doing. The sacrificial system was at the heart of Israel's worship of the Lord, and pilgrimages to the temple were obligatory. Thus, to say that the Lord does not care about their sacrifices and celebrations was scandalous, to say the least.
It is worth meditating on the following comment by Heschel, which is so applicable to any religion that prioritizes worship over justice: "The prophets knew that religion could distort what the Lord demanded and that priests had often participated in acts of injustice." We can think of all the injustices committed by the governments of so-called Christian nations against the native populations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The alliance of "cross and sword," the intertwining of religious institutions and military forces, proved disastrous in the mission of the Church.
Isaiah declares that blood is on the hands of his people, or as the Jewish Publication Society puts it: "Your hands are stained with crime" (Isaiah 1:15). One wonders how the leadership of Israel received such indictment but a belief that Isaiah was murdered during the reign of king Manasseh by being sawn in two (696-642 BC) speaks for itself. Nothing has changed since then. To expose the crimes of our governments is extremely risky. From this perspective, one can admire the work of the International Criminal Court of Justice.
Isaiah has opened a debate of ritual versus justice. The majority of scholars insist that the Lord rejects sacrifices only when those sacrifices are not accompanied by moral living codified in the Ten Commandments. However, some see in Isaiah 1:12-13 a total rejection of sacrifices and a demand for a life concerned with the suffering of others. We are not going to enter this debate, but we can think of Jesus' prophetic act of shutting the temple in Jerusalem because it had turned into a haven for "robbers" (see Mark 11:15-19). 40 years later, the temple with its priesthood and its sacrificial system ceased to exist.
However, the prophet does not simply condemn his people; he also offers a way out of their sinfulness. Isaiah teaches us what true repentance is: "Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow" (Isaiah 1:17). Dare we to do it? Most of us know that making justice our aim is extremely dangerous and the history of humanity from prophets to Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, bp. Oscar Romero and the Jesuit community in El Salvador prove it. It is easier to build monuments and establish feast days in memory of all the martyrs of social injustice than to make justice our aim. But God cannot be fooled by our superficial religiosity. His demand is clear: "Cease to do evil; learn to do good" (Isaiah 1:16-17).