A Sermon Preached at University Baptist Church, Columbus, Ohio
11 December 2011
I. Introduction
- In the book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible, there is a powerful message about time – if you grew up in the 1960s or ‘70s you probably heard the folk song by Pete Seeger, and made popular by The Byrds, called “Turn, Turn, Turn (To Everything There Is a Season)” – the lyrics of the song come directly from the biblical text, where the message is that there is a time for everything under the sun – a time to plant and a time to reap, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, and so on
- Advent is certainly about time – last week we spoke about the time for comfort, in which God sees the duress of God’s people and the prophet says that God is bringing comfort to them
- This week, the word of God through the prophet is about some of the central ideas of the Vision of God in the world, and I hope that in this Advent season, we can hear the call to mission
II. The Anointing of the Lord
- Once again, as we did last week, let us put aside for a moment the connections this text has for the ministry of Jesus – if we can, let us look text as Jesus might have seen it
- This portion of the book of Isaiah, chapters 56-66, is what biblical scholars refer to as Third Isaiah, or Trito-Isaiah – it was written after the people had returned to Jerusalem – the words of Second Isaiah concerning were still ringing in their ears, as it were – their captors, the Babylonians had suffered defeat at the hands of the Persians under Cyrus, and Cyrus had returned all the captives to their places of origins – you see, what the Babylonians had done to the people of Judah, they had done also to the people of other nations – Cyrus decreed that all the captives should return to their nations and rebuild their temples and pray to their gods for them to bless Cyrus – he even provided seed money and traveling supplies for all the people who wanted to return – and not all the people of Judah returned to Jerusalem – some had grown up and lived their whole lives around Babylon – they had begun writing down the Hebrew Bible – they began developing the schools that would lead to the creation of the Talmud – they created the idea of the synagogue – they had learned in their nearly fifty years in Exile that God was with them wherever they went, so they decided that they did not need the temple in the same way that others believed they did – they could study Torah in Babylon as well as anywhere, so when Cyrus said they could go home, they said, “We are home” and they stayed
- Others, however, would never feel right singing the songs of Zion in a foreign land, so they wanted to go back to Jerusalem, even if they had been born in Babylon – so they returned – but the people who returned did so with a lot of new understandings of who they were as the people of God
- And do not forget the people who had been left behind after the Babylonians had taken away the leaders – they had lived among the ruins of their city for nearly fifty years – they had to live, so they farmed the land, even if they did not own it – they, too, had learned to live without the temple – and they learned to live without a king – when it all comes together, the return was not as wonderful a time as it might have been – there was conflict, there was corruption, there was disagreement about the temple, and there was even strife over what it meant to be God’s people
- In the midst of the difficulty, the word of God comes to a prophet in the school of Isaiah – and the prophet preaches justice, restoration, reconciliation, righteousness – the prophet preaches good news to the oppressed, comfort to the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and the year of the Lord’s favor – the last is a reference to the Jubilee Year in which all slaves are freed, land that has been sold is returned to the original owner, debts are forgiven, the land lies fallow – the prophet preaches comfort for mourners and tells them to rebuild their city – all of it points to a mission – the people of God are to do all these things, and in doing them they will become known among all the world, and the world will see that they are a people whom God has blessed
- And the people will praise God, too, because God has saved them – this is not salvation in the way so many people think of it today, is something eschatological, something that awaits the world’s end – for the prophet, salvation is for this world – salvation is living the life of justice and righteousness – salvation is less a reward than it is a calling to be God’s people, people of justice and righteousness
III. A Time of Justice and Righteousness
- Now we can see what Jesus saw in the text when he preached from it in Nazareth – we can see why it sets a paradigm for Jesus’ ministry – for Jesus, salvation is also about mission – it is also about justice and righteousness
- Too many Christians forget that – too many Christians see no need for justice in our world – they say we should just let the world go on its merry way – they say we cannot make a difference in the way the world works – they say, along with the nineteenth-century evangelist Dwight L. Moody that the world is going to get worse, and that God has given them a lifeboat, telling them to save all they can, because there is nothing that Christians can do to bring justice
- I say that Jesus came into the world, and continues to come into the world daily, for justice – Jesus came into the world to show the world a new, more excellent vision – the salvation he brings is for here and now and not for a later time – all the people to whom the prophet spoke were people whose needs were in this world – we need to remember that
- Our mission is to be a part of making justice manifest in the world – our mission is to stand up when a politician says that we should begin paying children to clean toilets and say in reply that perhaps he should go first – we need to speak up when our governing bodies decide that corporate profits are more important than the people who lose their jobs to make the profits larger – we need to express our outrage when banks beg for bailout money from the government, not so they can stop foreclosing on houses or so that people can continue to live in safety, but because their CEOs and boards of directors need six- and seven-figure bonuses – when we see injustice, when we see unrighteousness, the words of the prophet should be in our ears and in our mouths, saying that we have good news for the oppressed
- Advent is a time of waiting and preparation, but it is also a time of justice and righteousness – God is at work in the world through many people, not the least of whom are the ones who claim to follow Jesus Messiah, the ones who claim the name Christian – salvation is not only coming, it is here, now, and it is just and righteous – it is for the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captive, the prisoner, the mourner, the ones who have faint hearts and spirits – these are the ones who the world will know as oaks of righteousness
IV. Conclusion
- In the biblical story of Esther, a series of events led to Esther becoming the queen of the Persians – at a time of crisis for her people, Esther received a message from Mordecai, who says to her that perhaps she has attained royal status “for such a time as this” – that phrase captures the importance of the message of justice and righteousness during Advent
- In every age since the coming of Jesus into the world, his coming has been for such a time as this – the justice and righteousness that sound as a clarion call from the ancient prophet are at the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry
- This is a time of God’s comfort for all God’s people – and this is no less a time of justice and righteousness, because this is the Vision of God
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Tags: Isaiah 61.1-11
