Stroll through Scripture for December 15, 2024

Based on Isaiah 61:1-11

The third week of Advent is the week of Joy.  On this Sunday we light the pink candle, marking the halfway point through Advent.  Our waiting is almost complete, but not quite.  

This passage of scripture, while an important Hebrew passage, is also found in the New Testament.  In Luke 4, Jesus is early in his ministry and goes to the synagogue in Nazareth, where he grew up.  He takes the scroll of Isaiah and opens it to Isaiah 61, reads from what would end up being the first several verses, sits down, and gives the shortest sermon ever by saying essentially that what the crowd just heard has been fulfilled in Jesus.  He then goes on to tell them that God cares for the foreigners.  Needless to say, they get angry – really angry.  And they try to throw Jesus off a cliff but to no avail.  He ended up walking through them unscathed.  

Isaiah 61 was written after the exile from Babylon.  It’s the third section of Isaiah and filled with Good News for the people.  

In this passage, we hear the heart of what Jesus’ message and life will be about – setting people free, offering good news to people who never hear good news, favor from God.  It’s really easy to read this passage and put ourselves in the place of the Israelites – to make ourselves the “good” guys in the story, so to speak.  We might hear this passage and think God is on “our” side.  

We should be really careful with that though, so we don’t end up being like the crowd Jesus read this passage to in Luke’s account.  

Isaiah 61 offers a radical vision of justice that upends the status quo of society.  What is good news to the oppressed?  What would liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners look like?  What would providing for those who mourn actually be?  How about strangers standing in our midst?  

There is the declaration that the Lord loves justice, hates robbery and wrongdoing.  The context is not referring to individual crimes, but rather organized systemic robbery and wrongdoing against the very people from earlier in the passage.  

If Jesus read this passage in most places in America today, I wonder what kind of reception he would get. He’s quite literally quoting scripture that would up end so much of our status quo of how our society operates.  

Yet, this is exactly what we are claiming when we say that we are waiting in hope and joy for the coming of Jesus into the world.  When Jesus comes, the world doesn’t get flipped upside down.  Rather, Jesus right-sides the world back to the way God intended it to be.  Jesus is in the business of Shalom – making creation whole again, putting people in right relationship with one another, with God, and with the rest of creation.  

Questions for reflection:

• Read the passage of Isaiah 61 and ask yourself how God’s vision conflicts with the way society operates.  
• Does God’s vision, as presented in Isaiah 61 scare you?  Why?  Does it give you hope?  Why?