Year A: Epiphany 05 | Isaiah 58:1-14; Matthew 5:13-20
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
February 8, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” – Matthew 5:17[1]
What does it mean to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets?
It’s a question I’m not sure I’ve ever quite asked myself deeply enough. I would guess most of us probably hear the word “fulfil” and instantly think of prophecy. A prophet says something, and at some point in the future, that things happens, whether by circumstance or through intentional choice. “Thus the prophecy is fulfilled.” At least that’s how I’ve always just let it sit.
But what happens to fulfilment once we recognize that prophesy isn’t about foretelling a secret future but rather reveals patterns of human behavior? I’ve talked about “fulfilments” (plural) of prophesy, like how multiple generations throughout Western history have watched as the book of Revelation plays out in front of them. I even recognize there may be one particular fulfilment the prophet was looking at or expecting when they spoke. But even so, how would it be possible to “fulfil” something as broad and eclectic as the entirety of the Hebrew Bible—a collection of writings that covers multiple literary genres, cultural shifts, and century upon century of history for people spread across a huge geographic region? You might be able to “fulfil” certain aspects, but the whole thing? No—that makes no sense.
I’ve been putting more effort into studying Hebrew lately, which is, to me, a very foreign language. Ancient Hebrew is both perfectly simple and bizarrely complex at the same time, with a limited core vocabulary but an insanely complicated verb system. All said, there’s a lot of room for interpretation, making meaning hard to capture.
As I was working through this week’s text—which is also one of our regular readings for Ash Wednesday—I came across a phrase that, no matter how I tried to look at it, didn’t really line up with existing translations. In verse 11 of Isaiah 58, we read about how the Lord will “make your bones strong.” But amidst the range of possibilities from what I was looking at, the only one that really made sense was “and he will make your bones withdraw.”[2]
Thinking in a new language is always a challenge, but eventually I connected the line with the text’s overall concept of fasting—of intentionally choosing not to eat. In Hebrew culture, fasting and mourning are connected concepts. When a person would “fast before the Lord,” they were humbling themselves, trying to express solidarity with those hungry and miserable. In today’s passage, the Lord, through Isaiah, is essentially complaining that these people keep “showing solidarity”— putting on a show of supporting the poor—rather than using their existing resources to feed, clothe, and house those same hungry and miserable people, which is what God has actually been looking for. Their fasts are more about virtue-signaling than making a practical difference—kind of like that trend a while ago when celebrities would go sleep on park benches so they could “experience poverty” before hurrying off to brunch and their warm, expensive condos in the morning.
Anyway, connecting “withdrawing bones” with fasting and hunger, I realized that the prophet is talking about God covering the bones exposed through starvation. The prophet isn’t talking about “making their bones strong” so much as “putting meat on their bones.” If the people would share their food, they would watch as God brought health and strength to the entire population. If the people were to “flesh out” the Law by doing what they could to support one another rather than just talking about pleasing God, God would, in response, “flesh out” hungry bodies!
And that’s where our Isaiah text connected to our Matthew reading.
Jesus has never been claiming to “fulfil” the Hebrew Bible in the sense wherein we confuse prophecy with fortune telling. He was filling up—fleshing out—the Law and Prophets.[3] He was embodying exactly what the Mosaic Law and later prophets had intended to express—putting meat on the bones of their words and bringing what had been a dry skeleton to life and function. Jesus wasn’t actively violating ancient expectations just to get people’s attention; he was demonstrating the purpose of all those ancient customs and instructions. Following certain rules had never made anyone more acceptable to God; the point was—and is—to help and support the community around you. Instead of choosing whether to love God or your neighbor, we reveal our love for God by loving our neighbors!
Epiphany is almost over—only a week and a half remain until Ash Wednesday. As we prepare for Lent, we too need to remember the intention behind the traditions. We need to prepare ourselves to embrace the realities of what fasting and all those other customs surrounding self-restraint are meant to teach us. So yes, enjoy Shove Tuesday and practice fasting, if you can. But more importantly, feed the poor! Give from your resources to support the people around you, regardless of whether or not you think they’re worthy! Restrain your desires not simply for spiritual growth or self-cultivation but in order to physically meet someone else’s needs. Walk in love: go out into the world, and do good; find someone in need, and be kind!
In a day when many proudly proclaim themselves to be Christian, how many of us are willing to truly live as Christians? How many of us are willing to manifest the same Divine anointing that rested on Jesus? What the world needs isn’t people who talk a good game about Jesus and love but who, like Jesus, actually “fulfill” the Law and Prophets—people who flesh them out, who give them practical substance by serving and uplifting others. We as the Church have wasted centuries hunting for loopholes we can exploit and distracting ourselves with questions about theoretical exceptions—wallowing in the patterns the Bible has been trying to help us move past. What we need is to actively live the Christian life, right here and right now! Yes, we look to Jesus, but he isn’t there just for us to gaze at and admire. Follow him; go out and embody—flesh out, fulfil—the patterns and behaviors you see in him!
Christianity is not about collecting or assenting to correct information about God; neither does a Christian simply search out the bare minimum of what someone needs to do to “go to heaven when you die.” Longstanding and pervasive as those ideas might be, they’re both lies—delusions that distract us from our true purpose and leave us in the same trap as the scribes and Pharisees, entranced with the vision of a “righteousness” that has no reality or substance to it!
Christians—actual Christians—don’t simply sit back and watch the world around them burn, tossing occasional snide comments and I-told-you-so’s while they patiently wait for a magic escape shuttle. Nor are we here to show people the “right” rules to follow and which we can safely ignore. Christians physically manifest God’s anointing. We don’t just listen to but actively follow Jesus. We reach out to others, not because of some secret reward but because we, as God’s children, can’t help but reflect God’s nature in our genuine desire to help, serve, and support them. We, as a body, exist to flesh out the reality of how God has been begging people to treat one another. We do more than huddle around dry and pointless knowledge; we put meat on the bones of ancient truths: we, like Jesus, incarnate the realities God has so long waited for humanity to embrace.
“Do not think that [we] have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; [we] have come not to abolish but to fulfill!”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] “וְעַצְמֹתֶ֖יךָ יַחֲלִ֑יץ” | reading right to left: “bones(feminine)|of-you(singular masculine) he-will-cause-to-withdraw”
[3] And looking through the rest of the New Testament, “flesh out” makes at least as much sense as “fulfil” in a majority of appearances of the word.