Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 (NRSV)
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that synagogue at Nazareth where Jesus stood up to recite one fateful Sabbath day. They brought out the great scroll of Isaiah. Every pixel of dust afloat on the beams of sunlight in that house of prayer strained against the inertia of an idealized past, an untenable present and an uncertain future. There in the midst of neighbors, family and friends, he rolled that scroll almost to the very end until he found our passage. By the time he had finished reading and sat down, as the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke faithfully recounts, he had proclaimed the onset of a recurrent restoration – seven cycles of sabbaticals crowned by Jubilee.
In this season the vision of the ancient Isaianic school is once again pulsating with promise. There is an anointing that announces the transformation of every tired truism. All forms of bondage and breakage have run their full course and taken their final toll. Like the exiles who returned to Zion to rebuild and raise up and repair, we must be dreamers, our spirits alive with messianic imagination, reveling in the poetic reversals of the redeemed: comfort for mourning, gladness for grief, exuberance for faintness, festive headgear for ashes (based on a Hebrew word play). In the garden of the One who loves justice, what springs forth is righteousness and praise, ethics and worship, a salad of salvation that heals the devastations of many generations.
Had Jesus been satisfied with this manifesto of an unfolding freedom, or the shallow praise of the vindicated, he could have had a long life and successful career. He chose instead not only to ennoble our deepest yearnings, but also root out our basest fears. Dare we embrace this proclamation and enter into the emergent mystery of an undoctrinated destiny?
Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 (NRSV)
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; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to 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.
4They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 8For 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. 9Their 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.
10I 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. 11For 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.