The time has come for shouting and not holding back.
Shout out; do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet! – Isaiah 58:1
The prophetic moment has arrived.
The Word of God is laser focused on our day in history and upon us who profess to be the people of God.
God is calling out a new radicalism (radix = root), rooted in His heartbeat for justice, mercy, and compassion. Those who would follow the prophetic, pastoral, praise/liturgical, and priestly/gospel word to the church today will be considered a peculiar people.
The Word bears down upon the hearts of the religious, the practitioners of holy days and sacred fasts. It points to the hearts of men and women who are pious, devout, and diligent about sacerdotal duties. It pierces and it indicts.
It raises the question of what sort of fasting and religious exercise pleases God and what sort does not.
God is contemptuous of our religious activity if, while we practice it, we are contemptuous of the poor, the powerless, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, and the broken people of this world. If we practice or benefit from the practice of marginalizing groups of people or individuals, He is not impressed with our most heartfelt cries of devotion or sacrificial acts of self-denial.
God wants to see action and it looks a lot like justice, mercy, and compassion.
The fast He chooses and that which honors Him and pleases Him, is the kind that liberates people. It is the kind of fast that mobilizes His people to make a difference in the world.
He wants us to leave our houses of worship with a renewed commitment to stand with “the least of these,” and to love our neighbors as ourselves. He wants us to walk away from our transcended moments and enter into the pain and suffering of the world. He wants us to walk out of our assemblies to stand by those who stand alone or as targets for insult, persecution, bigotry, or any other form of injustice.
This will convince God that we have truly fasted and truly worshiped.
Here is the PROPHETIC word.
We need repairers of breaches and restorers of streets today.
Isaiah 58:1-12, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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?
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.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
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.
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.
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.
Repair What?
New International Version
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.
New Living Translation
Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls and a restorer of homes.
English Standard Version
And 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 dwell in.
I thought this expressed much about a personal application of these words. I was written by Kisha Gallagher.
Before I get into the meat of this post, I have to tell you something that happened as I was writing this article. I had just finished writing five pages and I hit the “print” button to proofread what I had written. I then hit “save” and POW, the entire document changed into a strange mixture of Asian symbols, English letters, and Arabic numerals. Someone more computer savvy than myself might be able to explain this odd phenomenon with computer science. I, however, have no idea how or why this happened. I searched and tried to recover the document to no avail. All my “saves” were contaminated with the gibberish I mentioned above.
But I did have the intact document in that single print I made. I would have to retype the whole thing to post it on the blog. My husband and children were witnesses to this fiasco and all were sorry for me, LOL. But I believe it happened for a reason. You see, in the original article I had written a lot about how we “react” to life’s interruptions and seeming setbacks. That cannot be a coincidence! I’ve pondered on this and have set out to do more than retype the original. Being a repairer of the breach requires more than a rebuild. It requires strengthening the area where the breach occurred. – https://graceintorah.net/2014/12/26/the-repairer-of-the-breach/
But there is a larger applications.
It is a call to rebuild entire cities and nations, communities and neighborhoods included.
There is, at the core of all calls to peace, the human need and the divine desire for peace between human beings and their God.
But the call to peace, restoration, and justice is also a social call. It is a call to act righteously in the world and to influence the affairs of humankind toward what Martin Luther King called, “The Beloved Community.”
Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., observed:
Central to the thinking of Martin Luther King was the concept of the “Beloved Community.” Liberalism and personalism provided its theological and philosophical foundations, and nonviolence the means to attain it. True, King’s initial optimism about the possibility of actualizing that community in history was in time qualified by Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism. But the concept as such can be traced through all his speeches and writings, from the earliest to the last. In one of his first published articles he stated that the purpose of the Montgomery bus boycott “is reconciliation, . . . redemption, the creation of the beloved community.” In 1957, writing in the newsletter of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he described the purpose and goal of that organization as follows: “The ultimate aim of SCLC is to foster and create the ‘beloved community’ in America where brotherhood is a reality. . . . SCLC works for integration. Our ultimate goal is genuine intergroup and interpersonal living — integration.” And in his last book he declared: “Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation . . .”
King’s was a vision of a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood would be an actuality in all of social life. In his mind, such a community would be the ideal corporate expression of the Christian faith. – https://www.religion-online.org/article/martin-luther-kings-vision-of-the-beloved-community/
In any real world scenario, we will have aspirational goals and realistic goals. Somewhere in the great in-between is the realm of attainability. But it will never be reached if we settle for a view of the realistic now. The aspiration must be our guide.
For that reason, I offer the following as a guide and aspiration:
10 Features of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beloved Community
By C. Anthony Hunt (Tony Hunt), January 14, 2025 – Leading Ideas
C. Anthony Hunt outlines ten defining characteristics of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community, a society shaped by agape—God’s unconditional love—and expressed through justice-centered action. For King, faith and ethics were inseparable: what we believe about God must be reflected in how we live together. The Beloved Community represents the fullest expression of this creed-deed unity.
The ten features include:
- Rooted in Agape Love – God’s unconditional love is the ultimate aim of creation, working within human hearts to preserve and create community.
- Power Within Love – Power must serve love and justice; love must be empowered to enact justice.
- Honor for the Image of God – Every person bears divine worth and deserves dignity, hospitality, and validation.
- Peace with Justice – True peace is not the absence of tension but the presence of justice; oppression must be actively opposed.
- Soul Force (Satyagraha) – Nonviolent resistance grounded in spiritual strength transforms hearts and societies.
- Faith and Action United – Theology (belief) and ethics (behavior) must align; our talk and walk must correspond.
- Network of Mutuality – All life is interrelated; harm to one harms all. Humanity is a single family.
- Interdependence – Persons discover their fullest humanity within community; we become ourselves together.
- Collaborative Responsibility – Justice requires shared effort across differences; neutrality in injustice is complicity.
- Trust Across Differences – The Beloved Community actively builds trust and overcomes fear through authentic engagement.
Hunt emphasizes that King’s Beloved Community is not merely an ideal but a lived, ethical mandate grounded in biblical love and enacted through courageous, collective action.
Credits
Adapted from:
Redeeming the Dream: Essays and Other Writings on Martin Luther King Jr. and Social Justice
By C. Anthony Hunt
Wyndham Hall Press, 2023
Originally published as:
“10 Features of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beloved Community”
By C. Anthony Hunt
Leading Ideas, January 14, 2025
Used by permission.
The book is available on Amazon.
Read More
https://www.nonviolencechicago.org/ourvalues
The King Center’s Definition of Nonviolence
Strength to Love – sermons by Dr. King
“Start marching with God, because we’ve got orders now!” – MLK
Want to Go Deeper?
Isaiah 58 does not allow us to remain at the surface.
It confronts religious performance.
It redefines fasting.
It calls us to become repairers of the breach — not only in private devotion, but in public life.
On Substack, I’ve expanded this reflection with:
- Historical and literary background on Isaiah 58
- A theological exploration of “the fast God chooses”
- Group discussion questions for churches and small groups
- Practical pathways for personal and community engagement
- A deeper look at rebuilding foundations across generations
If you are ready to move from inspiration to formation — from hearing the trumpet to answering it — continue the conversation here:
👉 Read the full teaching and join the discussion:
https://tomsims.substack.com/p/repair-the-breach
Let’s not simply admire the ruins.
Let’s rebuild what has been broken.
Pastor Tom's Community 
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