Isaiah 61:1-2, 10-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, John 1:6-8 [9-18];19-28
Advent 3, 14 December 2014, Queen Camel, Sutton Montis, Corton Denham, Weston Bampfylde
One thing is certain from scripture - that the gospel writers were far more interested in what John and Jesus said and did as adults than the details of their birth and early years. And it’s important to remember this in the middle of Advent. I’m reminded of one of my favourite poems, by Steve Turner, which goes like this:
Christmas is really
for the children.
Especially for children
who like animals, stables,
stars and babies wrapped
in swaddling clothes.
Then there are wise men,
kings in fine robes,
humble shepherds and a
hint of rich perfume.
Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by
a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
It involves politics, God
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop
of spring.
Or they'd do better to
wait for a re-run of
Christmas without asking
too many questions about
what Jesus did when he grew up
or whether there's any connection. [1]
Of course, if we want to take a grown-up view of Christianity then we do need to keep asking questions about what Jesus - and John - did when they grew up, and whether there's any connection between what was said about them as children and how the world responded to them as adults.
And today, we’re particularly interested in what John said about Jesus, and what Jesus then went on to say about himself, at the start of his ministry.
John, we are told, ‘came as a witness to testify to the light, … The true light, which enlightens everyone, [which] was coming into the world…’ John contrasts his own humble ministry with the greatness of Jesus’ ministry to come: in which Jesus would give believers ‘the power to become children of God’. But he also points out that Jesus would suffer rejection, even among those closest to him: ‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.’
And this takes us a long way away from the manger and the swaddling clothes - to the village of Nazareth where, at the start of Jesus’ ministry he stood among his family and neighbours and read out some words from the prophet Isaiah - among them the words we have just heard in church - in the form of a mission statement which sometimes gets called the Nazareth Manifesto:
‘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 year of the Lord’s favour.’ [2]
Now what turned the home-town crowd against Jesus at this point was his suggestion that he, a mere carpenter’s son, was talking himself up as some sort of messiah. They were angry at what appeared to be his arrogance, and they got even angrier when he went on to suggest that God loved people from outside their tribe just as much - if not more - than them; that the good news for the poor wasn’t just for their poor, but for all poor, everywhere.
But what might draw our attention today is not so much what Jesus said - radical though it remains in our day and age - but what he decided to leave out.
Jesus' quote from Isaiah is actually a combination of two passages, in Isaiah 61 and 58. [3] What’s notable about Jesus' selection is that he leaves out the bits about vengeance. From our first reading today - you can see it on the pew sheet - Isaiah 61:2 proclaims, ‘the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.’ But Jesus stops immediately short of including God's vengeance in his mission statement. [4]
The writer Fred Niedner does a wonderful job of bringing out this point:
What is your program, Jesus? We sit in your congregation today. Tell us! Jesus stands to read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor ... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." He ends in the middle of a verse without reading, "and the day of vengeance of our God." Nor does Jesus read more of Isaiah's oracle concerning comfort for mourners and cloaking the faint of spirit with praise, perhaps because further on Isaiah would repeat the claim that Israel shall have for itself the wealth of the nations, while all those others end up with nothing but God's vengeance heaped upon them.
Such was - and is - the conventional messianic dream of oppressed people. When we take over, we will be on top. The creeps who have oppressed us will be on the first track out. Jesus wants no part of that. How, then, would he bring good news to the poor or freedom to the oppressed? He would do it, Luke shows, through persistent befriending of the poor, the outcasts, the little people of his day, including those who seemed his enemies. He listened to them and ate with them. Some he healed of maladies that diminished their lives. He simply kept on like that until he fell victim to the rich and the powerful.
Even then he responded not with vengeance, threats or self-interest. Rather, he went calmly toward death, stopping along the way to heal a slave's ear, to comfort the women who wept for him, to ask forgiveness for his murderers and to encourage his fellow condemned. There we see Jesus' messianic mission, the epiphany of God's glory in action. [5]
Now we begin to see why John foresaw that Jesus was going to be different. Because no messiah in history - before or since - had, or has ever, renounced vengeance. Only Jesus. No God in history has ever operated without vengeance. Except Jesus.
John knew himself to be wrapped up in a word of vengeance - witness his conflict with Herod which resulted in John’s cruel execution in the king’s palace. John preached about a Last Judgment where the Judge would come carrying tools of destruction, wielding lethal fire. John’s Judgement provoked a fear of death in his listeners. This fear motivated their good works, their decent behaviour. But even though wrapped up in this world of vengeance John somehow sensed that he was just struggling in the dark, and that he had seen the light coming in the form of Jesus. [6]
Now, Steve Turner was right when he said that Easter is ‘not good for people of a nervous disposition’, with its ’whips, blood, nails, a spear and allegations of body snatching,’ with it ‘involving politics, God and the sins of the world.’ But he overlooks the reality that the Christmas story contains many of these elements too - politics: we can’t ignore the the reason why the couple had to make the journey to Bethlehem - the Roman emperor taxing the people of the land; blood: we shouldn't sideline the genocide of Herod, which made refugees of Mary, Joseph and their newborn child; the sins of the world: the innkeeper’s lack of hospitality towards a heavily-pregnant woman should be more than just an amusing aside in our nativity plays.
The world which Jesus was born into was a world of vengeance; and so is ours today. The entertainment on our TVs and iPads and Playstations makes an idol of kings and special agents who put things right by destroying their enemies - over and over again. The news we receive from the real world is very much the same: whether the tit-for-tat exchanges in the House of Commons or the devastation of the Palestinians by the Israeli state, or the impoverishment of so many of the world’s children whilst the richest ones recline in unthinkable wealth.
The Christmas story and the Easter story are actually deeply connected to each other - and to the story of our world today.
They tell of a man who came to the poor, to liberate the oppressed; they tell of a God who renounced the powers of death and destruction, and came as a child, came as a servant; they tell of a Judge who came as one prepared to give everything away in the cause of love and life, who wielded not fire but the gentle heat of God’s Holy Spirit.
Right now, we are in-between Easter and Christmas, in Advent. The writer Eric Smith recently said,
Advent always begins with the understanding that the world is broken, that people are hurting, and that we do not yet live in the Kingdom of God.
That’s why we begin with the Hebrew prophets, who cry out against injustice and who call out for the inbreaking of God into the world. That’s why we sing ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’, which points to the captive nature of humanity - exiled and mourning, fractured and fragmented in our relationships with one another. That’s why we pause, for four weeks out of the year, and confess that we do not have or know the answers - that we are just as afraid and confused as Jeremiah and Isaiah and Amos were, and that we are still waiting for the kind of salvation they waited for.
Advent always begins in the experiences of the oppressed. We profess and confess a faith predicated on the birth of … the incarnation of God in … a peasant boy to a young mother in dubious and dangerous circumstances. This birth that we await this season - it was overshadowed by the looming presence of Empire, the fiat of imperial violence, and the utter fragility of human existence. This child who comes in Advent was as insignificant as the suffering servant in Isaiah: “Like a root out of dry ground.” Advent is not a triumph. It is a nervous and fraught vigil. It is a protest against the status quo, a plea for God’s intervention in this mess we’ve made. [7]
It is indeed all those things; and it is also this: Advent is a time in which, with John, we somehow sense that we are struggling in the dark, and that we have seen the light coming in the form of Jesus.
Notes
[1] Steve Turner, Nice and Nasty
[2] Luke 4.18-19
[3] Isaiah 61:1-2a: "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 favour.” Isaiah 58:6: "[Is not this the fast that I choose:] to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”
[4] Paul Neuchterlein, Notes, in Girardian Lectionary, Year C, Epiphany 3c
[5] Fred Niedner, Living by the Word: Taking the Good News home, The Christian Century, Jan. 3, 2001, quoted in Girardian Lectionary, Year C, Epiphany 3c
[6] Judgement passages rewritten from my 2012 sermon, The judgement of Jesus and the judgement of John.
[7] Eric Smith, Advent Begins in the Experience of the Oppressed, Pantheos Blogs: Faith Forward, December 7, 2014
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