Our king comes
to restore the broken and the hopeless so that they might become strong
messengers of righteousness who then go, in the power of the Spirit, to work in
his name.
Catch up on the story:
We’ve once again
moved toward the end of the book of Isaiah.
Hope is building as words of comfort and restoration come from God,
rather than words of judgment. The land
and people of God are still suffering from the effects of exile, but the end is
in sight. According to one scholar, the
section of literature, chapters 56-66, in which our passage is situated, takes
place somewhere between the rebuilding of the Temple and its revival in 520 to
516 B.C.E., when Haggai and Zechariah were active, and the restoration of the
Torah community under the guidance of Ezra and Nehemiah around 444 B.C.E.[1]
While hope seems
to be growing, things are a long way from being normal. Both those who were left in the land and
those who were carried off into exile have definitive ideas about what it now
means to be the people of God in God’s promised land. This week’s passage will deal with some of
the issues of how God will act in this recovering landscape.
The Text:
The
beginning portion of this week’s text may seem familiar to us. It is familiar because Jesus quotes this
section of Isaiah at the beginning of his public ministry in Luke 4. While Jesus certainly makes use of this
message to say something very important about the nature of his earthly
ministry, the passage should not be read primarily in a predictive manner. Jesus certainly "fulfills" this
passage in that he accomplishes the things that the text specifies, but the
author of Isaiah does not necessarily have the Messiah in mind. Still, this passage, read as we approach
Jesus’ Advent at Christmas, depicts God's movement through us for the world in
a powerful way.
Scholars
agree that within this text the voice of the speaker changes several
times. As with other passages in Isaiah,
we are not always sure who is saying what.
In this passage, however, we can be fairly certain that verses 1-6 are
spoken by an authorized person or group of persons, perhaps a group of Levitical
priests or prophetic reformers.[2] The ones speaking are persons who have been
commissioned and empowered to do God's transformative work in Israel. Verses
8-9, then, are the words of God. The
final verses of the section, verses 10-11, are that of the human speaker
again. As we move through the passage,
we'll examine in greater depth who is speaking and why it matters for us as we
move toward Christmas.
Back
in Jerusalem, as the period of exile is coming to an end, things are not as
they should be. In reality, things are
not as many had hoped they would be upon returning home. The city is still a mess. Hope is on the rise, however, as God begins
to work for the restoration of Israel.
As we have said, the voice in verses 1-4 is the voice of a collective of
persons who have been authorized and empowered by God. Their first declaration is that the
"spirit of the Lord God is upon me...the Lord has anointed me."
Two
things need to be noted here. First, any
movement by the human actors in this passage toward restoration and wholeness
is made possible because the Spirit of God is present. Here the language of "the Spirit of
God" is the same as that of Genesis 1.
The same Spirit who settled the chaos and formed it into the good earth
is now the Spirit that rests upon the speaker in the midst of exile. Indeed, it is the same Spirit who threw back
the waters of the Red Sea so that Israel could escape the deathly power of
Pharaoh's army (Exodus 14:21). The
death-like chaos that Jerusalem has experienced is confronted with the
life-shaping Spirit of God. Notice,
however, that God's Spirit has rested on these ones who now speak. God will use them to help bring about restoration
for Jerusalem and her people.
The
second thing that we notice is that "the Lord has anointed me." Not only has God's Spirit rested on these
individuals, but also God has anointed them as a gesture of public
authorization.[3] To anoint someone in Israel was to pour oil over someone’s head, marking them
as special and authoritative servants of God.
As we look back over the Old Testament we find many examples of
individuals being anointed for service to God.
The most famous being found in 1 Samuel 16:13 as Samuel anoints David as
king. The anointing of a person for the
service of God always meant that God was going to use that individual to do
something new in Israel. It always meant
that salvation was coming from God for Israel through that person. The voice of verses 1-4 has been given power
and authority to act on God's behalf to bring newness to a dead and broken
Jerusalem and her people.
The
first part of verse 1 gives the authorization for the voice. The second part of verse 1 describes what it
is that the voice is being empowered to do.
We are met with a series of infinitive verbs, "to bring good news,
to bind up...to proclaim liberty."
The very first thing the voice will do is bring "good
news." As we have discovered in
previous weeks, this good news is nothing other than the gospel of the New
Testament. The gospel or good news is
always the proclamation that God is going to work on behalf of those who are in
need to transform the situation from one of hopelessness and desperation to one
filled with hope and new life.
The
voice will bring good news to the oppressed, it will bind up the brokenhearted,
proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners. This is the movement of God's transformation
of Israel's situation. The very grammar of the passage indicates this
movement. Those for whom God is working
will experience the transforming Spirit of God's power.
Verse
2 rounds out the first half of the human voices' segment with the announcement
of the beginning of the year of the Lord's favor. In the context of the pervious series of
transformative verbs, it is likely that the voice is referring to the year of
Jubilee. Jubilee was a practice
instituted for Israel in Leviticus 25.
It was to take place every 49 years.
All properties that had been lost in economic dealings would be restored
to their original ancestral owner.
Jubilee was essentially a giant economic reset button for Israel that
leveled the playing field, ensuring that perpetual cycles of debt and bondage
did not go on indefinitely. If there
were anything that God’s people needed in this moment of history it was
Jubilee. The good news of Jubilee would
mean that God's people could start again with a new and fresh slate.[4]
As
the passage continues, we encounter a series of "insteads." God's movement through the concrete actions
of the Spirit-empowered and -anointed voice will replace hurt and suffering
with hope and salvation. One scholar
puts it like this, "The terse series of 'insteads' is a radical
transformation of communal attitude and condition, made possible by the
proclamation and enactment of jubilee: 'garland...ashes; gladness...mourning;
praise...faith spirit.' The three are
parallel moves from negating grief and powerless indebtedness to the
restoration of dignity and viability."[5]
The
final section of verses 1-4 moves from describing what will happen to
describing what those who experience God's jubilee will become. "They will be called oaks of
righteousness..., They shall build up..., they shall rise up, they shall
repair..." The result of God's
restorative acts within Jerusalem is that they will be able to engage in the
continued restoration of Jerusalem. As
such, their stature as solid, sturdy and dependable oak tress will bring glory
to God. Jerusalem's restoration is never
just for the sake of Jerusalem, but for the sake of the continued restoration
of God's people and the world, which will bring about glory to God.
Verses
5-7 once again speak to the changing fortunes of God's people. A reversal will happen; no longer will Israel
be the ones who serve in menial labor because they are a conquered and exiled
people. Instead, the shame and poverty
that Israel experienced will be replaced with economic prosperity. It's important to note that this section of
the passage is normally left out of the Lectionary reading for this
Sunday. Israel understands itself to be
God's special people who are to bless the whole world. At this point and time they understand that
their special status as God's people entails economic prosperity. For us today, we cannot make those same
assertions. As the church, we are God's
called out people, but this does not mean that we who have been rescued and
restored to wholeness from brokenness are entitled to the same kind of economic
boom that verses 5-7 depict.
As
we move toward the conclusion of the passage, verse 8, we encounter a shift in
voice. No longer is God's authorized and
empowered speaker talking, but God himself now speaks. God begins by declaring that he loves justice
and hates robbery and wrongdoing. It is
through the acts of restoration that we have just heard proclaimed that God
will make an everlasting covenant with Israel.
The entire world will now know Israel as the people who have been
blessed by God.
The
final section, verse 10 and 11, shifts back to the authorized and empowered
human speaker. The speaker ends the
section with a hymn of rejoicing because God has so thoroughly transformed the
fate of the speaker.
So What?
What
does this mean for us as we approach Christmas and Christ's coming? There is, perhaps, two ways we can read this
passage about God's good news. The first
is standing in the place of those who have been exiled and are short on
hope. For some, we stand broken, beaten
down and oppressed, maybe because of our own poor choices and behaviors or
because of the poor choices and behaviors of others. We are captive to our addictions. Our hearts are broken because of violence
others have done to us. We are lost in
the deep sadness of the loss of a loved one.
Reading this passage, we can stand as exiles. Because of our own doing
or the doing of others, we are a long, long way off from God. When we stand and read this passage in this
way we are immediately confronted with the good news that the authorized and
empowered speaker proclaims. It acts as
an invitation for us to seek the homecoming and restoration that only God's
anointed can bring.
The
second place we can stand is as God's Spirit-filled and anointed
messenger. Ultimately, Jesus is God's
Spirit-filled anointed messenger. But if
we relegate to him all the work, we miss a large part of what God wants to do
through us. The speaker in the passage
is a person who has been commissioned by God.
Those of us who have already found the homecoming and return from exile
that Jesus brings are now empowered and anointed, by virtue of our baptism and
sanctification, to be God's anointed and empowered workers in the world. In other words, it is our time, here and now,
to stand up and proclaim, with our words and with our actions, that the Spirit
is upon us, because the Lord has anointed and sent us to bring good news to the
oppressed. It is our turn, as ones who
were once oppressed and captive, who once wore the ashes of mourning, to
proclaim the liberty that we have found.
We will be called oaks of righteousness so that others might become oaks
of righteousness, too. We will, in the
power of the Spirit, build up the ruins of people’s lives because the ruins of
our lives have been rebuilt.
Critical Discussion Questions:
1.
How
does this text reveal to us the nature and character of God/What is God doing
in this text?
a.
The
exile we find ourselves in because of our own bad choices and captivity to sin
is not the end of the story. God is
working, even through other people, to liberate us from our captivity so that
we might return home and find restoration.
Those who have already experienced God's homecoming from exile God now
calls, empower and anoints to be agents of his good news in our world.
2.
What
does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
a.
Salvation
looks like homecoming from exile. It is
also the exchange of oppression, broken heartedness, captivity and mourning for
healing, liberty and joy.
b.
Holiness
is allowing ourselves, as ones who have been freed from the exile our sin has
caused, to be filled with the Spirit and anointed so that we might participate
with God in the liberation of other people, both spiritually and
physically.
3.
How
does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
a.
This
passage encapsulates our mission as the church.
Jesus proclaims it as his mission, and so it becomes ours.
Specific Discussion Questions:
Read the text
aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly.
Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
1.
Who
is speaking in the opening verses of this passage? Who sends this person and what has he or she
been sent to do?
2.
What
is the “year of the Lord’s favor?”
3.
Why
does Israel need to hear the message of verses 1-3?
4.
Verses
1-3 tell of what this anointed messenger is to do. For whom is this messenger supposed to do
those things? What will become of the
ones who have had their broken hearts bound up?
5.
In
verse 8 God declares that he loves justice and hates robbery and
wrongdoing. How is God’s love of justice
related to our work and mission as a church?
6.
The
passage ends with a hymn of praise to God.
Why is the speaker happy? What
does it mean to be covered with the “robe of righteousness?”
7.
Why
does Jesus quote verses 1 and 2 in Luke 4:16-19? What does it look like for the
body of Jesus, the church, to live out verses 1-2?
[1]
Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah,
Fourth Impression edition (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 213.
[2] Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching and Reading the Old Testament
Lessons With an Eye to the New: Cycle B, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing Co.,
2001), 18.
[3] Brueggemann,
213
[4] Brueggemann,
214
[5] Ibid.,
215
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