Sermon for St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
Third Sunday in Advent, Dec. 14, 2008
Intro and thank you
The young man had not been at temple for several months. This was the temple he grew up in and attended faithfully ever since he was a small boy. But today he had returned… amidst rumors and gossip about what had taken place since we had last seen him. There were stories about his being baptized by his cousin John in the Jordan River. Something strange had happened that day… John had refused to baptize him at first, but when he eventually did so, some saw a bright light or a dove descending on him. Some wondered if this had anything to do with John’s prophecies about the coming Messiah, but they could not ask Jesus, for shortly after his baptism he disappeared into the wilderness. He was gone for over 40 days and no one is sure what happened to him, but when he came back he was changed. He had always attended synagogue, but now he was teaching regularly and everyone was praising him.
And today, he finally came home. Today, on the Sabbath, Jesus was here and we would all see for ourselves just what changes had taken place.
At that moment, he was handed a scroll to read. He stood, unrolled it, and seemed to search for a particular passage. What would this son of Joseph, this carpenter’s son, one of our own…. What would this young man read to us this day? Jesus stood and began to read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the Lord’s favor.”
From the book of Isaiah. Interesting. Wasn’t John the Baptist also quoting from Isaiah recently? Wasn’t that the book that was full of promises about the coming Messiah? It had been many generations since there had been a prophet in Israel. People had stopped waiting, stopped hoping for the coming Messiah. But John’s words had renewed the hope of some. John was coming to prepare the way for the Lord and now, now Jesus stands up and reads this passage. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me..” Could he be another prophet? Or was it possible? And then Jesus sat down and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
What exactly did Jesus mean by that?
In order to understand what was really happening at this moment, we have to understand a bit more about what this passage in Isaiah meant to the Jewish people at the time.
The book of Isaiah begins with the Jewish kingdom of Judah in a time of great prosperity and wealth under King Hezekiah. Unfortunately, in the midst of their great wealth, their hearts had turned from the Lord. Though they continue to worship God in the temple, Isaiah 29 says that they “drew near to God with their mouths and honored God with their lips, but their hearts were far from God and their worship of God was a human commandment learned by rote.” They were condemned for their worship of idols (2.8), for their arrogance (2.12), for their greed (5.8) and for their injustice. They were judged for their inhumane treatment of the poor (3.14-15) and the working classes and for not attending to orphans and widows (1.17).
Isaiah’s spoke a word of warning to the people of Judah to repent and return to the Lord. Repentance meant a turning away from idols, humbling themselves before God and others, and bringing economic justice to their land. If they would not repent, if they would not humble themselves, they would be made humble, brought down by foreign armies, and led into captivity. This would be God’s judgment upon them. This would be God’s way of getting through to them, of reminding them who was in charge, of reminding them of God’s love.
It seems strange to understand the bringing about of such suffering as an act of love. And yet, when we read the words of Isaiah, we see that God does not desire to bring about such judgment. God desires repentance. God desired repentance, because God was trying to fashion a people… a people who would reflect the glory of God’s kingdom, a people who would be blessed, but also a people who would be a blessing to others … and God will do whatever it takes to make that happen… because of God’s love for us.
Throughout the book of Isaiah, we see the love of God in hints of child named Immanuel, a Wonderful Counselor, a Prince of Peace, a shoot that will come out from the branch of Jesse full of wisdom and understanding, a suffering servant, a light to the nations. God made a promise to the people of Judah, a Covenant with them and with all the Israelites that they would be the people of God, that they would be blessed and they would be a blessing. And God would fulfill that promise, both through the people of Israel and sometimes in spite of them. God would send someone, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, to come alongside the people and shape them into nation that reflected the glory of God.
In Isaiah 61, we have a picture of what God’s people look like. They are a people in which there is no oppression, where the brokenhearted are bound up, where those falsely imprisoned are set free, where the mourning are comforted. They are a people who are blessed richly by God and are a blessing to those around them.
This passage, however, is not written to a people in prosperity. Judah had already heard Isaiah’s words of warning and they did not listened. They had been taken over by foreign armies. They were sent into exile. Despite their hard-heartedness, God still called out to them. God still loved them. God still desired to fashion them into a nation that would bring glory to God, that would bless and be blessed. In the midst of their suffering, God offered a promise of restoration and renewal. God offered to recreate them into the nation that they were originally meant to be. In this new nation there would be no more oppression, no more broken hearts, no more prisoners, no more mourning. Those who have suffered in exile will be restored. They will be called “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord to display his glory.” Isaiah writes, “Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.”
Some have called the promises in this passage “the great reversal,” a complete reordering of society where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. While to some extent, this is true, I prefer to simply call this a picture of the kingdom of God. This is the people God has called Judah to be. This is the people God has called us to be. Just as Isaiah called to Judah so long ago, God is still calling to us today. God wants our hearts to be humble. God wants our worship to be more than a human commandment learned by rote, but rather a response to the rich blessings that God has bestowed upon us. God wants us to treat one another with justice, to care for the widows and orphans, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to comfort those who mourn. Central is the recognition that all we have is from God and that all that we have is to used as a blessing to those around us. The people of Judah forgot that the Lord had provided for them. They forgot to share that blessing with the world around them. Yet God continued to pursue them, continued to fashion them into a people that would reflect the kingdom of God.
These words from Isaiah were the words that Jesus spoke when he stood up in the temple hundreds of years later. Those who heard him were impressed. The text says that they were amazed. They were ready to welcome this young profit into their midst and perhaps to believe that he was the coming Messiah. They wanted to believe that Jesus would bring the kingdom of God to the Jewish people. Unfortunately, like Judah, many of them focused on the blessings God would bring them and not the call to be a blessing. They were hoping God would bring them prosperity and power. But Jesus continued his teaching… and his words made the crowd so angry that they attempted to throw him off a mountainside. What made them so angry?
It was not the words he read from Isaiah. Instead, it was his contention that the words were not meant for Israel alone. Jesus tells of the prophet Elijah going to feed the Gentile widow of Zarephath and of the prophet Elisha going to heal Naaman the Syrian illustrating how God had always reached out beyond the Jewish people. One of Judah’s greatest sins, the sin that Isaiah spoke out so strongly about, was the hoarding of God’s blessings. God had blessed Judah tremendously and they had forgotten… forgotten that what they had come from God and instead they turned to idols, forgotten that all their great blessing was a gift and instead they arrogantly claimed it as their own, forgotten that what they had been given was meant to be shared with others, a blessing to the nations. Instead, they mistreated those in need, the poor, the widows, the orphans. God came to create a just and generous nation, a nation that would bring that justice to those around them, and who through their generosity would shine a light to the world.
With the words of Isaiah, spoken by Jesus the Messiah, God was once again calling the people of Israel to repentance, calling them once again to live into the people God desired them to be. And this time, God was sending a great helper. God was sending a son into the world, God’s self, to walk among us, to eat and drink with us, to model for us and teach us what the people of God were to be. Jesus was coming to usher in the kingdom and to guarantee that the great work begun would be brought to completion.
Perhaps it seems as if we gotten a little ahead of ourselves in the Church year. We are in the midst of Advent, a time to focus on the coming of Jesus as a little baby in a manger in Bethlehem. It will be another 30 years before Jesus stands up in the synagogue and reads this passage from Isaiah. Another 30 years until he begins his ministry. And yet Mary knew even before Christ was born who this Messiah was that she would give birth to. While Mary is pregnant with Jesus, she goes to see her relative, Elizabeth. When she enters the room Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaims a blessing on Mary and the child. Mary responds with a song of praise to God, a God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” The one who promises “his mercy from generation to generation.”
Mary knew that the little baby to come would bring both judgment and blessing, not just for our sakes, but for the entire world all to the glory of God.
During this Advent season, God is once again calling us to be fashioned into God’s people. To be a community that lives kingdom values. God calls us to recognize that all we have is from God. It has been given to us as a blessing… and so that we may be a blessing to the world around us. In this particular holiday season, it may be difficult at times to recognize the blessings we have been given in this world. Many are struggling financially, worried about putting food on the table, paying their mortgages, the cost of health care, whether or not they will be able to retire. When it seems most difficult to see that God has blessed us, when it seems most difficult to offer that blessing to those around us, that is when the message of this Christmas season is the most important. God did not leave us to accomplish this task along. God sent Christ into the world, the one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests. Christ himself will bind up the brokenhearted, feed the hungry, and set the captives free… through the work of his people. When we fail, God will call us once again to repentance. God will recreate us. God will love us and pursue us. As Advent reminds us, each year Christ comes again into our midst to fashion us into kingdom.
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