by the Rev. Frances A. Hills,
rector
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and John
1:6-8, 19-28
Advent 3 already! It’s the week for JOY and GLADNESS, the
week when we have our visitors from Ingersoll, Ontario, the week for the pink
candle, and the week for Isaiah and John.
The passage from Isaiah is beautiful and familiar, because
it’s what the Gospel of Luke quotes Jesus as reading from the scroll in the
temple. This Isaiah passage is from what we call “Third Isaiah”. Third Isaiah
was written to address the sad situation and people in the aftermath of the
Babylonian Exile. They’d returned to their ruined, yet beloved Zion. The
speaker assures the people that God’s Spirit has given him the power to speak a
word of hope and salvation to them in their desolate straits:
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God: to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”
In this, Third Isaiah invites God’s returning people to be
clothed in salvation and to think about salvation--not so much in terms of “who
will be saved and go to heaven” but as a quality
of life in the here and now! It’s a quality of life that reflects God’s
desire for the human community. In Isaiah 61, salvation means good news,
healing, liberty, release, and comfort. It means a “jubilee year”…A year when
debts are wiped away, slaves are freed, fields allowed to lie fallow, and land
returned to its owners.
In Isaiah, salvation is imagined both as a restored city and
as an abundant garden.
It says the other nations will see what God has done for
Israel, and they will know,
“That they are people whom the Lord has blessed”. This
affirms that God’s mission of deliverance is not just some other-worldly
pie-in-the-sky thing. God’s salvation mission is real, tangible and
“this-worldly”! In fact, others can actually see it!
As Christians I think we may often think of God’s salvation as
being about the life of the world to come, and ultimately it is. However, we
must not forget that God’s salvation is also God’s mission. It’s about
transforming the world— here and now!
We’re invited to participate in this transformative,
missional way of life—even in the midst of a fallen world. I’m suggesting
salvation is the reality of our world, as it SHOULD be. The Reign of God NOW! The
world God imagines, longs for...For us!
If that is so, then how do we participate in God’s mission? How
do we help bring in the Reign of God in our
day? Isaiah points us, and by quoting Isaiah, Jesus points us, to our
mission…to turning our attention to those he names as recipients of the good
news: The oppressed. The brokenhearted. The captives. The prisoners. The
mournful. The faint of spirit…These are the lowest and weakest, the ones for
whom God and Jesus have special concern.
Notice, this kind of faith and sense of mission has little or
nothing to do with many forms of cultural Christianity that would make the
Church an end in itself. Perhaps “John the testifier” as we see him in John’s
gospel today, was making a similar statement when he took his testimony and
baptism out from the city, out from the temple, away from the established
religion, and into Bethany. As if to say, “It’s out here in the wilderness where
you will ‘come back to life’.”
This is a far cry from making the Church an end in itself that
exists solely for a building (if we had one!), or our programs, or the
fellowship of like-minded folk
we so enjoy. It’s not that
any of these are wrong in and of themselves…They just can’t be the reason for the Church’s existence.
Instead, we need to exist for the sake of the poor,
oppressed, brokenhearted, imprisoned, and mournful…in our community. In other
words, we need more and more to join God’s mission, Jesus’ mission. And if we
do, then I think the nations of the world, or at least our neighbors, will notice that we live
differently: That we are indeed “A people whom the Lord has blessed”. So we
would actually fulfill Second
Isaiah’s prophecy (Is 49:6) and be, “A light to the nations, that God’s
salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” If we could closely align with God’s mission and
live as a missional Church, seeking to help bring in the Reign of God, then we
would live as people of good news, liberation, justice, and comfort in such a
way as people would take note and be drawn to the ways of God. In today’s world
Christians often get negatively stereotyped, in spite of how much money we may
give to charity or how many missionaries we might send abroad. Many think of
Christians as a group of people who are divided and hypocritical, who judge,
fight, and exclude. If we really lived into God’s mission, we would stand as a
sign of God’s blessing to all around us in this
community. We would break those stereotypes. We might really be that church the wonderful
Hispanic woman at Taft Farm described us as being, “The Church Where All the
Angels Fly Around”.
There’s a part of us that is
that Church. We are “People whom the Lord has blessed”, and others
sometimes see it! And I celebrate it!
I hope as we live into these last two weeks of Advent, we
will remember not just that Jesus
came, but also why Jesus came. His
mission, our mission, is to bring in the Reign of God, to testify to the Light,
to usher in a jubilee celebration in the here and now, as we await the day of
his coming. Amen.
This sermon borrowed heavily from
the “Theological Perspective” article on Isaiah of Scott Bader-Saye in Feasting on the Word, Advent 3 B.
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