Advent 3
December 13, 2020
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. They will be called oaks of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your
flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; but you
shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God; you
shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall
glory. Because their shame was double, and dishonor was proclaimed as
their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall
be theirs. For I the Lord love
justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will
make an everlasting covenant with them. 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.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult
in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered
me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a
garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth
brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring
up, so the Lord God will
cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
As of yesterday, our church is exactly nine months into the covid-19 pandemic. It was on March 12 that I wrote to the elders of our congregation and said, “The problem is bigger than a lot of us thought it would be.” Within three days, we pivoted quickly, discouraging people from showing up in person and broadcasting worship services and Bible studies online. Very soon after that, we closed the building and taught ourselves to have committee meetings on something called Zoom.
I want to thank you, all of you, for your patience and perseverance. Even though we have eased back into something that almost looked normal, now we must persevere for a good while longer. Following today’s worship service, our elders will meet. We will approve a budget for the coming year. And the Session will act on my recommendation that we return to online-only worship services from noon today until (at least) the end of January. It is the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my thirty years among you. We covet your prayers and your support.
The fact is the pandemic will not settle down until Americans settle down. That’s the scientific fact. Keep the masks on, maintain safe distances, stay away from crowds – it’s all common sense. Medical experts implored us to stay home for Thanksgiving and many people didn’t. Now we are in a stretch when more people are dying from the virus each day than died on 9-11 or in Pearl Harbor.
Certainly, there is good news of the first approved vaccination, with others to be approved soon. Yet there will not be enough doses for everybody in our country until sometime late next year. Tomorrow, three million Americans will begin to receive vaccinations. That means only 325 million more Americans to go; and let’s remember, Americans are merely 4 percent of the world’s population.
The point is, all of us have the good news of what is coming – but we are not there yet. That sounds like the very definition of the season of Advent: we know what is coming, but it’s not here yet.
Every year but this one, folks have pushed to speed through the Advent season and get to Christmas. Part of that is human beings don’t like to wait for anything. Part of that is, in an otherwise typical year, we would hear Christmas carols in Macy’s, McDonalds, and at the gas pump at Sheetz, and frustrated we are not singing them yet in church. As one old salt commented memorably on the way out the church door, “Advent, shm-advent – I want to hear HoHoHo and Silent Night.”
This year, I’m not hearing any commentary like that. We know the best way to spread the virus is for all of us to sing, which is why only one of us is singing. And we are learning in patience what Advent means: we know what is coming, but it’s not here yet.
We are blessed to have resources in the Bible to get us through the long wait. The writings collected under the name of the prophet Isaiah can be among the most helpful. It is a book in three parts.
1) The beginning of the prophet’s book sounds a warning to
the people of God: if you don’t wise up, if you don’t start caring for the needy
and the most vulnerable, woe will come to you.
We hear it in the Isaiah’s very first chapter: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (1:17-18)
This was the prophet’s call to the people. It was largely ignored by a nation that was impressed with itself. So when the Babylonian army invaded their land, smashed down their temple, and took their brightest and best away into captivity, some of the most spiritually sensitive perceived this was the judgment of God.
2) Last week, we heard a fresh beginning in the second part of
Isaiah. In the 40th chapter, the prophet declares the time of
punishment is over. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, tell her she has served her
term and her penalty is paid. In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God (40:1-3).
This is the declaration of hope, the promise that we are going home. The scholars suggest these are the words that ignited hope and prepared a return for the people of God. Pretty soon, they were on their way.
3) Yet there is a third section in Isaiah’s book, and today’s scripture text comes in the thick of it. The prophet and his people have returned home – but they have discovered the return is not as smooth as they hoped.
Now, we understand this on a very human level. We have our hopes – but then there is the reality. The gift you ordered in the catalog looks so much smaller when it arrives. You ordered a special meal from the great restaurant, but it wasn’t so tasty when you swung by to pick it up. You expected this virus to disappear by a certain date, but it still rages on. You had your hopes – but reality is tough to accept.
Isaiah offers at least two responses to this common experience of us all. The first, as we heard two weeks ago, is to shake the fist at heaven and make a Holy Complaint. We heard him teach us how to do that on the first Sunday of Advent: “Lord, if only you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1) That is a very important way to pray. It voices our frustration and directs it to the God who can do something about it.
Biblically speaking, this is called a lament. You tell God what troubles you. You get it off your chest. You unload the burden – and you focus on how God might choose to respond.
Isaiah’s second response comes in the text for today, from chapter 61. To state it simply, there is work to do. God hears our cries and appoints a spirit-filled Messiah to minister to the people. We are not left bereft. We are not abandoned. God sends a Savior. As someone notes, the Messiah offers a sequence of exchanges:
- The ashes of humiliation are exchanged for a crown of beauty
- The tears of grief are exchanged for the oil of gladness
- The weight of despair is exchanged for the shoulder yoke of praise[1]
This is the work of God. And it is no wonder that, of all the paragraphs of scripture, this is the very one that Jesus chooses as his personal mission statement. Remember that? He asks for this scroll on the day he preached in his hometown synagogue. Putting his finger on the text, he declared,
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
The key is in that phrase, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That is, to announce the year of God’s grace. Both the prophet and the Christ are point to the Jubilee Year, the promised time every fifty years when all debts would be cancelled, when all stolen lands would be returned to the original owners, when all outsiders would be welcomed in, when all those economically enslaved would be set free. The Jubilee was a blessed hope, given in detail in the 25th chapter of Leviticus.
Yet there is
no evidence that the Jubilee was ever actually practiced. Imagine that! God
tells the people to do something kind, something gracious, something holy – and
they never get around to doing it. Not the first time that happened, nor the
last.
And this, my
friends, is the key to our Advent calling. We want so desperately for “things
to go back to normal,” but for a lot of us it’s increasingly clear that what we
considered “normal” was not working well for everybody. Neither was it working
for Isaiah’s people, either. God told them to love one another – but they didn’t
do it. God told them to lift the burdens of the oppressed – but they refused.
God commanded them to bind up the brokenhearted – but they were too busy
licking their own wounds and shoving their way to the front of the bread line.
The Messiah calls
us to reset God’s justice, to re-establish God’s fairness, to re-balance a
world tipped off its axis. And the way the Messiah is going to get these things
done is by building a faithful community to lead the way. For the most part, God
doesn’t work by magic but human mind and muscle. God works through those who
are listening to him. We cannot pray, “O Lord, rip open the heavens, come down,
and fix things,” if we are not willing to roll up our sleeves and do God’s
work.
So when the
prophet says, “They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the
former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities,” the prophet calls on
us to address the things that haven’t been working.
Here’s one of
those things in our time: racism. It is a scourge. It is wickedness. And it has
been entangled in our national story for four hundred years. Ever since African
people were stolen from their homes and forced to work as unpaid laborers on Caucasian-owned
farms, the toxic virus of racism has infected our nation. The Messiah will not
let this stand. “Returning to the way things used to be” sounds like the 1950’s
when people of color were forced to ride in the back of the bus; in the Kingdom
of God, that will not stand. So let’s start repairing it.
Here is another devastation in our time: discrimination based on gender. It is as old as denying voice and vote to 52 percent of the population. It is as current as yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, where a male opinion writer demeaned the incoming First Lady for having four college degrees including a doctorate in education.[2] Let’s get over the ruins caused by putting women down. That is not merely deplorable; the Messiah will not allow it to continue in God’s kingdom. All people shall be honored equally.
Here is one more devastation: poverty. Poverty is not always obvious in a town like ours. However, twelve percent of our nation lives in poverty; many of the working poor have two or three job to barely stay afloat. No surprise: a higher proportion of them are women or people of color. Add to it, over five million people lost their health insurance last spring when they lost their jobs. 87 million people in our nation have no health insurance or are under-insured. And all of this when the stock market is climbing to record heights. Something is really broken. And the Messiah calls on us to repair it.
And one more devastation: illness. Specifically, the covid-19 pandemic. It got real for me again when I heard my friend Karen, a retired minister and classmate, died this week, gasping of breath in an ICU in Stroudsburg. We are going to have a lot to rebuild. All those attitudes that we presumed were “normal” will have to be replaced by clear science, compassionate care of neighbor, and common sense.
I take heart in reading the wisdom of Dr. Francis Collins. Dr. Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health and a faithful Presbyterian. In a recent interview, he offered these holy words:
God gave us both a sense of God's
love and care and compassion, but he also gave us the brain and the opportunity
to understand God's creation, which is nature, which includes things like
viruses. And I think God expected us to use those gifts to understand how to
protect ourselves and others from disease. If we have the opportunity to heal
through medicine, I think God expects us to do that and not count on some
supernatural intervention to come and save us when he's already given us the
chance to be saved by other means.[3]
Then he added:
The church, in this time of confusion, ought to be a beacon, a light on the hill, an entity that believes in truth.
It’s Advent, the third Sunday in Advent. The truth is we know what is coming, but it’s not here yet. What is coming is the Kingdom of God, a constellation of re-built relationships, all in the glory and simplicity of Jesus the Christ. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him and him alone, and he breathes his Spirit into us. Instead of breathing a virus, his breath is filled with justice, peace, and restoration. His holy work is to heal.
It is Christ who calls us to prepare for God’s rule over all by engaging
in the repair work of a Messiah. We cannot expect God to do what you and I are
called to do. No, we wait for God by working for God.
For Christ comes to us, in order to work through us, to benefit all of us, to the glory of God.
[1] Eugene H. Peterson, As
Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed By the Words
of God (New York: WaterBrook, 2017) 126-127.
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-there-a-doctor-in-the-white-house-not-if-you-need-an-m-d-11607727380
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