Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent 2011
Isaiah 61:1-4; 8-11
1 Thess 5:16-24
Luke 1:46-55
The
Year of the Lord’s Favour
“All
those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all those who humble themselves
will be exalted” Luke 18.14
Well I’m not one for taking liberties with
the Lectionary as I think that it gives us a broad and varied diet through the
year and prevents me spending most of the year focusing on my favourite texts
and themes – but today I’ve chosen to change the gospel reading which was to
have been a further reading about John the Baptist and substitute the Canticle
set which is the Magnificat – for today the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete
Sunday, a Latin word which means Rejoice!! And
Rejoicing is a Theme that comes through very powerfully in these familiar words
of Mary – Of course the theme isn’t entirely lost in the other readings – the
prophet Isaiah exults ‘I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my whole being shall
exult in my God!’ And again St Paul 1 Thess 5:16 – a reasonably easy memory
verse – Rejoice Always!! – But rejoicing is the
continual note of these verses – My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit
rejoices in God my Saviour
But what, we may ask is this rejoicing all
about? Well of course the coming of the Saviour is in full view here – but what
does this mean you may well ask? Why Rejoice over the coming of Jesus? And here
it is Very helpful to look at Mary’s song – and it is worth noting at the
outset that it is the last in a long and distinguished line of Songs of triumphant
women – from Mirjam, who rejoices that ‘Horse and Rider have been thrown into
the sea’ at the catastrophe which befalls the Egyptians – to Deborah who
rejoices with Barak over the defeat of the Canaanites – to Hannah, the mother
of Samuel - who rejoices that God
has vindicated her against her husbands other wife Peninah by giving her a
child. And if we are half awake we will notice that they are all declaring
God’s salvation in terms familiar to the prophet Isaiah – declaring ‘The
Year of the Lord’s favour, the day of vengeance of our God’. All of these women rejoicing
in the overthrow of God’s enemies, and if that doesn’t scramble your gender
study presuppositions, I don’t know what will J
And the theme comes to its culmination in
these familiar words of Mary in the Magnificat. Our perception of these words
may perhaps be clouded by the glories of sung settings at Evensong, or rather
we might view them through Rose tinted spectacles – Revolution!! doesn’t seem a
suitable theme for such gentilities – or indeed our vision may be distorted by
a perception of Mary as ‘Meek and mild’. Given all of this undue cosy
familarity - we may well miss the plain fact that she is Rejoicing over the
Great Reversals – ‘He has cast
down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek. He hath
filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away’ –
This is the announcement of ‘the Year of the Lord’s favour – the day of
vengeance of our God’ Salvation and Judgement going
hand in hand. Good news for the humble and poor, bad news for the mighty and
rich. And lest we think Mary is over egging it – listen to these words of Jesus
himself from a few chapters later in the gospel Then he looked up at his
disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of
God. – then he goes on ‘But woe to
you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. He says ‘Blessed
are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled ‘Woe to you who are
full now, for you will be hungry. Jesus, the one
who sits down in the synagogue in Nazareth and opens the scroll of the prophet
Isaiah at these very words – The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon be – to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
Now we may well be asking – ‘How come
the Year of the LORD’s favour, is also the day of vengeance of our God’. Well to answer that we have to understand what is the Year of the
LORD”s favour?? I wonder if anyone knows what other name The Year of the LORD’s
favour goes by – the year when Good News will be proclaimed to the oppressed
and the captives will go free?
It is The Year of Jubilee – Jesus announces
The ancient Law of the Year of Jubilee. Jubillee is based on a very simple set
of ideas. When Israel was given the Land it was told most clearly, the land is
the LORD’s – it is not yours – you are being given it to live in but it is not
yours. Echoing Psalm 24 – the Earth belongs to the LORD! Every family was given
its own patch of fertile ground – every family sat under their own fig tree to
use a prophetic image which had its roots in this ancient Law.
Now
what happens in human communities over a period of time is this, some do well
and grow richer, others do not and grow poorer – because at the outset everyone
has ENOUGH, then to put it another way some got more than ENOUGH – they then
accumulated the land of others (or the means of production to put it in another
vein), but not only the land of others. Because these folk who hadn’t done so
well had to sell their land to survive, they did even worse and so in the end
they sold themselves, they offered to work for their keep (or they became wage
slaves). And that my friends was contrary to God’s purposes and intentions for
his people where every family would sit under its own fig tree.
SO,
recognizing that, the Israelites were given the Law of Jubilee – that in the
Fiftieth Year ( a Sabbath of Sabbaths ) – all land was to be redistributed to
those to whom it had originally given and anyone in slavery, or put another
way, forced to work for others in order to keep themselves alive, had to be
released (Actually this release was to be enacted in the seventh year). Except
of course as far as we know, it had never been enacted . . .
after
all there you are, you’ve done well for yourself over the years and built a
neat and tidy pile and you have become and influential voice in the
neighbourhood. Then the Tradition says – ‘it all has to go back to its original
place –you’ve accumulated land (or wealth) , it has to go back – you’ve
accumulated workers – they have to be set free to enjoy the land you are
returning to them . . .’ You might well say – “To Hell with the tradition!!’ is
it Any surprise that this Clear Command of God was Ignored . . . and this then
goes on and on and on and on and on, from generation to generation – so is it
any surprise at all that at the end of it all when the coming of the LORD’s
anointed is announced, the humble poor Rejoice!! At last!! We may well say that Jesus doesn’t use
the phrase ‘The day of Vengeance of our God’ – but to announce the year of the
LORD’s favour is going to be bad news for those who do not want to respond. The
rich will be sent empty away – the hungry will be filled with Good things.
This
Jubilee theme runs all through Luke’s gospel and perhaps most starkly in the
story of the rich man and Lazarus – where Jesus tells us Abraham tells the Rich
man – child, remember that during your lifetime, you received your good things
– woe to you who are rich now, for you have received your consolation.
Encatment of Jubilee
Now of course times have changed greatly in
some respects since that time and one thing I am not about to do is to suggest
how we go about transforming the World Economic Order to inaugurate Jubilee –
because I do not think that that is what we as the people of God are called to.
We don’t need to be told that the worlds economic order is fundamentally and
literally Diabolically unjust, or at least I hope we don’t – we live in an age
of on the one hand unparalleled luxury for many and on the other desperate
poverty for many many more. In the time of the people of God in the Land of
Israel people sold themselves into slavery to their neighbours – we live in an
age when more people than ever before in the history of the world are in
slavery and we have No Idea of who these people are.
Unike
in the time of Israel, this is hidden from us – we are blinded to Reality. In
the time of the Old Testament, you bought the land and eventually the labour of
your neighbour (“who is my neighbour?” is a Jubilee Question) – in other words
it was as plain as the nose on your face that if I had more, my neighbour had
less. We live in a complex world economic order where that Fact of Life is very
very cleverly hidden. Most of us are not in the slightest aware that we
accumulate at the expense of others,, but in the same way that those who did
well didn’t want Jubilee, so now many many people would rather not face the
facts. And it is not just the poor who are oppressed - the earth itself suffers the same. The LAND itself has
been taken into Slavery – It has no Rest, not even a Sabbath, let alone a Jubilee.
The land is submitted to whips as harsh as those of the Egyptian slave drivers.
Every
year since 1970 the population of the world has used up more natural resources
annually than can be renewed – this year we went through our allotment of
resources by September 27th. If you’ve ever been tired because you
haven’t had enough rest but you have to go on working harder and harder and
harder, going more and more into sleep and energy deficit, you will have some
feeling for this.
But
we have devised cruel and sophisticated myths to hide all this from our eyes. In
the same way we have sustained the myth of riches for all by the use of
Economic credit – we have sustained the myth of never ending resources by suggesting
we might have environmental credit. Carbon Emissions trading is such a highly
sophisticated example of thie. And because of these myths it is all too easy to
think we can try and act in what we might call the public sphere, without
looking closer to home - to try
and fix the system without realizing that we are too blind to do that, indeed
that is precisely what God’s enemies desire, for that does not threaten how
things are one jot – with all due respect to Occupy protestors and the rest. In
this time of Advent, preparing for the Coming of the LORD we need to come
closer to home, to ask, what does The Year of the Lords favour mean for us
For
indeed the Lord will come and will not be
silent – God will not wait for ever.
For it is for us, the people of God, this
year of Jubilee – we are called to embody it so that the judgment of the world might
be revealed – the World has already been judged at the Cross, the Judgment of
Christ on our world economic order is a present reality – we are called to
embody the year of the Lord’s favour and so reveal that judgement, that people
may respond – and Response is what it is
all about. When Salvation was revealed in Jesus Christ – there were those who
responded like Zacchaeus.
When Jesus comes to Zachaues – Luke tells
us - Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my
possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; Zacheus
emobied the Salvation that Jesus brought and if I have defrauded anyone of
anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ 9Then Jesus said to
him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of
Abraham.’ We’ll keep the significance of the Son of
Abraham for another time – but note that Zachaeus’ response was to enact
Jubilee – half my possessions I will give to
the poor.
He knew he had been blessed by the
Presence of Christ and responded by becoming Blessing - He knew he had been
blessed by the Presence of Christ and responded by becoming Blessing . As the Law of Jubilee was needed for those who would not respond to the
blessing of God – so under Grace we embody it – those who Know they are Blessed
become blessing, that in the words of old – there may be no poor amongst you –
That was supposed to be the Economic rebuke of the People of God to those
amongst whom they lived and Luke continues in the book of Acts to show this
being worked out in the early church – indeed the dramatic events of Acts 5 are
as much down to a denial of Jubilee as they are to deceit.
A few weeks ago we were phenomenally
blessed by the fair, no? I said at the time, that this blessing was not for us.
At Vestry the other night I described how God’s blessing of his world worked,
that those who are blessed become themselves like Zachaeus, blessing. The Sin
of the world is to accumulate not only the blessing God gives us but that of
others as well and the world stands under judgement for that. We the people of
God recognize that all we have – all we have comes from Him and is for the
Blessing of the nations. I described that idea of blessing for two reasons.
Firstly because we had been blessed yet more – by a large bequest and because
of Vestry’s response to the needs of Brockville community church. Please read
your notice sheet in this regard and respond. The Wonderful thing in my mind is
this, that we decided as a Vestry to give a double tithe from the fair income –
we had already agreed to 1/10th for Christchurch, but it was
proposed that we give a second to Brockville, our near neighbours a wonderful
work happening on our doorstep. It was only After this had been decided that we
heard form out Treasurer of the bequest.
Folks, this is a start –a good start, but
only a start – our brothers and sisters near and far have many needs, we have
been tremendously blessed both corporately as a church and also as individual
members of it. Christ announces and embodies the Year of the Lord’s favour – it
is our Vocation to Live into that, blessed as we are, and so to reveal to the
world it’s true Lord – one who lifts up the humble and fills the hungry with
Good things
Amen
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