February 2, 2025
How to Repair the World
Isaiah 58:1-12
This morning, I want to think with you about how to repair the world.
You don’t have to look far today to see broken places. Take our own community in the wake of Hurricane Helene: downed trees clutter our hillsides; families live in temporary shelters because their homes were destroyed; local businesses and neighbors are waiting on disaster relief to start the long road back.
All around us, we see pathways, literal and metaphorical, that need reconstruction. Foundations that need rebuilding. Wounds in our physical and communal life that need healing. And people who need hope.
Beyond our immediate community, broken places in our world and nation also cry out for repair. The streets and homes of Gaza, Syria, Haiti, and Ukraine – devastated by violence and oppression. Neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California, ruined by fires.
And in Washington, it seems that the whole fabric government is being chaotically unraveled.
How do we repair the world? What can we do?
Here in the latter chapters of the book of Isaiah, the prophet speaks to exiles who are preparing to return to a country that is in need of deep repair. They have a long road to recovery, and through the prophet God calls the nation to be the kind of generous and faithful people who bring healing to broken places: repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.
God’s comprehensive vision for a restored world brought hope to exiles then, and it can bring hope to exiles today.
Chapter 58 begins with a critique of performative religion: the kind of faith that goes through the right motions but doesn’t help make the world more fair or more compassionate.
Listen to how the prophet puts it: “You serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.”
In other words, your workers suffer and sweat for minimum wage while you make a show of your piety.
Again: “you fast only to quarrel and fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” In other words, their pious practice doesn’t change their hearts.
They perform rituals, hoping God will hear them, but they ignore the work of mercy. This is not the kind of fast that God chooses or the kind of faith in which God delights.
Instead, God delights in justice and mercy. What does this look like?
Removing burdens from other people’s shoulders. Offering food to the hungry. Meeting the needs of those who suffer. Being generous to those less fortunate or less privileged.
Do this, the prophet says, and your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing spring up quickly.
This is the pathway to wholeness for a country and a nation in need of repair. Not empty religious ritual, but genuine faith joined to acts of mercy and justice.
Listen to God’s promise through the prophet: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach.”
This is a vision of a restored world. Not just physical structures, but a community that is nurtured and nurtures a flourishing life. A place where children play and people laugh, where love is celebrated, where tears are wiped away, and joy multiplies.
Now, as Christians, we believe that this prophetic vision from Isaiah has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
When Jesus began his ministry, he used Isaiah’s words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor.”
In Jesus Christ, Isaiah’s vision for a restored creation is fulfilled through the Messiah. The Apostle Paul points to this when he says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is new creation; behold, the old things have passed away, and all things have become new.”
In Jesus, God is already doing the restoration work that Isaiah talks about. We who hear the call to faith and respond get to participate.
Think of it like showing up to a Habitat for Humanity building site. You didn’t start the project – someone else poured the foundation or put up the walls. You probably won’t be there to finish it either; someone else will sweep up and hand over the key. But you get to participate, to do the work on your day.
Just so, God isn’t asking us to start repairing the world – God has already started. God is not asking us to finish repairing the world; in the mystery of eternity, the new creation is already accomplished! God is calling us to participate, to show up here and now, in our time, as part of God’s restoration project.
Now, let me share a story of participation that involves you, though you may not know it. Through our congregation’s involvement in the Presbytery of Western North Carolina, you and I have had a chance to play an important role in God’s repair work in our city.
The origins of the story begin in West Asheville, in 1913, when this congregation helped to form a new congregation there. In 1916, the presbytery acquired property for the new congregation at 690 Haywood Road. In 1921 their new permanent building was completed.
But, this was not the first congregation on that corner. For decades, while West Asheville was forests and farms, another church occupied the site opposite 690 Haywood Road, across what is now Virginia Avenue. It was called Wilson’s Chapel AME Church.
Wilson’s Chapel was a black congregation, founded in the mid-1880’s, and established on a one-acre tract of land given by J.L. Henry, a wealthy white landowner in West Asheville. The Wilson’s Chapel congregation thrived there until they sold their property to a developer in 1924, and moved their building to another area of West Asheville and relocated their cemetery.
If you’re familiar with churches, you know this is strange behavior. When I learned of it, I was compelled to find out why would a congregation move down the street, take their building with them, and dig up their dead? The answer, found in the archives of the public library and the register of deeds, is a specific example of what we would call structural racism.
In the early 1920’s Asheville was growing rapidly, and what we know as West Asheville was a quickly growing new community of subdivided lots, new streets, and new homes. Because the city was booming, Asheville city leaders contracted with a man named John Nolen from Massachusetts to design a city plan that would conform with the best theories of city planning. City planning was a new field then, and Nolen was a leader in his field with a national reputation.
Nolen submitted his plan in 1922, and the city leadership adopted it wholeheartedly. Using a mix of formal and informal power, Asheville carried out their new strategy more meticulously than any other regional city in the South. Many of Asheville’s current features, such as Pack Square, can be traced back to Nolen’s work. Two of his recommendations are especially relevant to this story.
First, that city neighborhoods should be segregated by race. Nolen believed that people would be more comfortable and growth would happen more naturally if cities were racially segregated, with separate neighborhoods for whites and blacks.
Second, Nolen believed cemeteries should be on the outskirts of town, in park-like settings, and not scattered throughout neighborhoods. At that time, small cemeteries were commonly found on family property or beside churches. Nolen believed people would be more comfortable, and growth would happen more rapidly, if graves were located out of sight.
All of this spelled bad news for Wilson’s Chapel AME Church. They had a cemetery on their property. And their location was quickly becoming a white neighborhood of booming West Asheville. And there was a growing white church across the street – our Presbyterian church, started by this congregation.
If we will cast our imagination back to the mindset of 1924 in Asheville, it is inconceivable that a black congregation with a cemetery could co-exist in the heart of a popular white neighborhood and across from a white Presbyterian church. And it makes perfect sense that the Wilson’s Chapel congregation would sell and move after city leaders applied their informal, but no less powerful, pressure.
Today, Wilson’s Chapel no longer exists; it closed in the late 1990’s. Unfortunately, but understandably, the congregation of Wilson’s Chapel were not able to move all of the bodies from their cemetery. Most likely some graves were unmarked or records were lost, it appears the congregation was out of money, and the developer was eager to develop the lot. He even took them to court to press his case for a speedy transfer.
The lot on which their church and cemetery stood was soon subdivided and changed hands many times. Today, facing Haywood Road, one can see the remains of a car wash on the front portion. The back portion of the lot contained a home for decades, and was then acquired by the West Asheville Presbyterian congregation in the 1980’s.
West Asheville Presbyterian used it as a parking lot for many years, and it is a parking lot to this day. Human remains have been found adjacent to the parking lot, very near the church property line, and most likely there are human remains on the church’s property. To say that again: this property contains a parking lot that was once a cemetery of black people who had been freed from slavery, and some of their remains lie there today.
In 2021, the West Asheville Presbyterian Church closed, recognizing that their congregation had become too small to be sustainable. For three and a half years, I’ve been serving as co-chair of the West Asheville Presbyterian Church Administrative Commission, trying to discern what God is calling us to do with this property.
Last Saturday, I had the privilege to move that our presbytery transfer this property at no cost to the Reparation Stakeholders Authority of Asheville, also known as RSAA. RSAA is nonprofit led by the black community in Asheville and Buncombe County which seeks to serve all our neighbors. As part of the presentation, we heard from the Executive Director of RSAA, Torre White, about the work they do to serve anyone in need and their hope for that place to be a community hub of abundant life. We also heard from Cheryl Miller, who spent her whole life at West Asheville Presbyterian, and whose family helped to found the church. She spoke with pride about how, through our faithful stewardship of transferring this property, it would continue to bless the community in new and healing ways.
Now, we expected a vigorous debate and we expected some to disagree. But the Spirit, and the power of this story, moved us all. After very little debate, the motion passed unanimously with a resounding yes, followed by applause and tears and prayer. You and I, through our presbytery, took a concrete action to repair a breach opened by our forebearers in this place.
You see, God is repairing the world. We the church, who are Christ’s body in the world, have the privilege to participate through the way we use our time, our energy and talent, and our resources.
Today concludes our 2025 stewardship season, “Pathways to Generosity.” The question we’ve been asking is “God, where do you want me in my generosity?” Generosity isn’t just about helping others – it’s also a powerful pathway to grow in our faith. Generosity is how we respond to God’s blessings, how we show tangible trust in God’s promises, how we join God in repairing a broken world.
As our stewardship chairperson Donna Ensley would say, generosity isn’t a “have to” – it’s a “get to.” We get to strengthen the structures that provide shelter for flourishing life; we get to pour new foundations for new dreams to emerge; we get to tend old paths that connect us to each other; and we get to blaze new trails for new relationships across old boundaries.
You see, our gifts to this congregation aren’t just about keeping the lights on – they’re about joining God’s mission. Through our giving, we get to become part of Isaiah’s prophetic vision and God’s redeeming work in Christ.
In a moment, we’ll place our estimate of giving cards in the offering baskets. If you’re visiting today, this isn’t for you. This is for those of us who call this congregation home, and who have been called to share our gifts here. I hope you brought your estimate of giving cards. If you didn’t there are some in the pew. If you would like your commitment to be even more confidential, there are envelopes in the pew as well.
Like the prophet’s vision of rebuilt ruins and raised foundations, these cards represent our commitment to be repairers of the breach through this congregation in 2025, restorers of streets to live in.
May we be partners with God, witnesses to Christ, and repairers of the world. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina