Where We Belong: Salvation is Coming!

 

Isaiah 61:1-11

As our days grow shorter and our night grow longer, and the darkness around us grows, literally, as we approach the Winter solstice on Jan 21^st and figuratively, as the numbers of COVID cases grows daily, the death rate climbs, our governor has rolled back which step in which phase we are in, and we have as a congregation made the tough decision to move our services back online in two weeks’ time. A person we know can’t get needed a surgery, because the hospital says they do not have beds for non-COVID patients. Another friend of mine had a surgery moved up to this week, so that she does not face this same problem when the surgery was originally scheduled for early next year. There are more fires in California. There continue to be refugee children lost in our system too young to tell us who their parents are. Injustices in our world continue to mount, and yet another black man was shot dead entering his own house bringing sandwiches home to his family.

Then on top of the national and international crises, each of us go home to our own struggles, the crises we are facing within our own families, and within ourselves. The darkness is deep, the darkness is thick and it seems to only envelop and surround us covering us with a thick blanket, like an ongoing winter snowstorm. I know this is not the darkest period of time which has ever been, it is not even the darkest it has been this century, but that knowledge does not change that this is the part of the journey on which we all find ourselves right now, is dark.

As we look at the world around us, we look around knowing this is not the world to which we belong. We are immersed in darkness and we are children of the light. This is the deep of winter and we are spring and summer people, just as assuredly as we are Resurrection and Pentecost people. This is a cold cruel world and we belong to a world of love and warmth. We do not belong here. We do not live here. For now we make our home here, but it is not a permanent home it is temporary and even as we settle in this place, in this time, for now, we are people of longing, who are continually looking to the horizon for the dawning light that will show us where our home truly is.  

But for now, in this time, we find ourselves in the darkness. It is as we face this darkness that we come to the word of the prophet, this morning, as he continues to speak into the darkness the people of God living in exile were experiencing. It is into this darkness, God, through the words of the prophet, plants a dream of a world made right, a world where the oppressed are set free, where fears are assuaged, people are fed and clothed, and have a home, each person is treated with dignity and respect no matter who they are, what they believe, or their ethnic origin, where we are all healed from that ails us, where peace reigns in our lives, in our homes, in our nations and within ourselves and all those captured and enslaved in systems of injustice are released.

We stand in our dark place in this world, surrounded by the darkness of the unjust systems at work in our culture, and in our country, we are enveloped in the darkness created by COVID, hospitals full of people on ventilators, by friends, relatives, co-workers sick, or dying. The darkness is so thick, so deep, that we hold our breath, as if we are underwater. It in is this darkness in this world in which we are exiled one from another, exiled from the touch of others, from hugs, from handshakes from the cheerful smiles of strangers we pass on the street or our grocery store clerk. And in this place we listen and hear this message of freedom, of release, of liberty, justice and comfort. And long for it to be true in our world, in our homes, in our neighborhoods and in our lives, today.

“Oh, Lord God, Yes!”

“Bring your goodness to us this morning!”

“Bind up our broken hearts! Liberate us! Set us free!”

“Proclaim to us a new year! We are finished with 2020; give us the year of the Lord’s favor!”

“Comfort us!”

“Raise us up out of our devastations! Build up the ruins of our lives, of the world which has been demolished since March.”

“Lord, let us see your glory!”

“Come Lord, Jesus come!”

And even as we cry out, do we truly know for what it is we are crying out? What would it mean for the Year of God’s favor to be upon us? What would it truly mean for us, for our world for Christ’s reign to be made manifest all around us? What we are ultimately calling for is God’s justice; for God to come and set all things right, for all that is wrong to be corrected, and all who perpetuate that wrong to face the consequences of their misdeeds. Do we really want all the wrongs to be set right? What about the wrongs from which we benefit? What about the wrongs in which we participate? What would God’s justice flooding this world, our cities, our neighborhoods and each of our lives truly look like?

We all like the idea of justice in our world. But when someone stands up and attempts to do something about it, the reaction is a little less than the celebratory jubilation one would expect. We all want to be treated fairly, we all want there to be no suffering in the world. We want children to live “childlike” lives. We want people to be fed, clothed and housed. We do not want anyone living in slavery. We want everyone to have the “American dream.” We want no one to contract COVID much less suffer or die because of it. As long as them being able to do so does not affect me, as long as I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do to make that happen and it does not cause me to have to change my way of living.

Most of us like the idea of justice. We like the idea of a world where everyone is treated fairly, where we all get what “we have worked for,” where our work is valued and the payment we receive for it is just and fair, will put food on our tables, roofs above our heads and get us the medical care we need when we are ailing, where everyone’s needs are met, where nobody is mistreated, or marginalized, enslaved, or killed.

We all desire justice, but have you ever looked at the lives of people who have worked for justice in our world. Can you quickly in your head put together a list of people you have heard about who worked for bring justice, equality, peace to this world?  You got a list?  How well did their lives go?  Their biographies go like this right. “So-N-So fought for justice and when that justice was made complete, lived a peaceful life and died at a ripe old age surrounded children, and grandchildren and people who loved and cared about them.” No.

  Dr. King had a dream of justice and equality and they killed him. Gandhi fought for independence for the Indian people and they killed him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, yeah they killed him too. I am sure there are people on your list, and my guess is for the vast majority of them, because of their work and their efforts to bring the kind justice to the world, which God is seeking in this passage, things did not turn out too well for them either.

  Jesus stood up in the synagogue one morning and simply read this passage; a passage in which God declares justice will be and he was nearly thrown off a cliff (not to mention that whole crucifixion thing that happened three years later). Mary quoted it in her song about her unborn son, and her virtue was questioned. Still not the response one would expect. We all want justice; we just don’t treat those who are seeking it, very well.

The problem is, even though most of us are pretty good people, we live in a world where the systems of injustice are the poisoned waters in which we swim. Even when they do not wholly benefit us, we have acclimated to them, the poison does not bother us, perhaps we are immune to it and are completely unaffected by it. We have learned to survive. We may, without our knowledge be benefiting from the way things are. We are aware of the poison, but we are not willing to actually do anything to remove the poison. We may feel powerless, unable to do anything about it. We may even realize that if the poison was removed we would be worse off. The adaptations we have made, unintentionally, would made would be superfluous. We would lose the benefits we are experiencing. We really do not know how to live in un-poisoned waters. We would have to completely change how we live. It would be hard for us to adapt. And so when we are faced with the reality of what that justice looks like, we are paralyzed, we don’t want to take the measures needed; we are unwilling to make the needed changes. Right now, some people are unwilling to wear a mask, because it is too uncomfortable, or simply because they don’t want to. Others are unwilling to stop spending time with people outside of their households, or to forgo traditional holiday travel, to keep this virus from rapidly spreading. We are willing to make some concessions, as long as those concessions do not inconvenience us in ways we do not like. We will make changes in our lives as long as those changes will have the results we want, and will not include any of the consequences we are unwilling to face.

At the same time there are people all around us, they are suffering because of this poisonous water in which we all live, their lives are ruled by the poison, and it dictates even the smallest aspects of their lives. We want to do something about it. We don’t want them to be dying, we don’t want them to be suffering from the injustices we see them experiencing. But we feel unable to move, unable to act, unable to make their lives better. We don’t know what to do.

God speaks to us, though the words of the prophet here in this passage. God sees their struggle, God sees our struggle and God says there will be justice, there will be wholeness, slavery will cease, the hungry will be fed, there will be healing, (dare I say there will be a vaccine which will release us), and all will be set right.

Whenever we see wrongs being set right, wherever we see the hungry being fed, whenever an un-homed person finds a home, whenever, wherever things that were once broken are made whole, whenever someone finds healing and whose health is restored, that is God at work bringing this passage to its completion. Whenever we see justice being done, people being made whole, broken systems being overthrown, that is our God bringing about salvation, not just for you and me, but for the world.

We can rejoice. We can proclaim this passages in the public spaces, we can sing, with Mary, we can cry out with Isaiah, God is at work to “bringing good news to the oppressed, to bind the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;. . . [and] to comfort all who mourn.” 

We can rejoice with God and all those who belong to God and say, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God 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. For 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.”

When we acknowledge God’s salvific work in this world we can know that that salvation wherever it is, whoever is experiencing its’ benefits, we can know it is on not simply on their behalf, the one who is receiving the immediate benefits, but it is also our behalf. God’s work is always for me, for you, for us. God is at work bringing redemption, salvation to all the nations, before all the nations, but also for you and for me. So whenever we see justice, peace, hope, goodness, rightness, wholeness we can rejoice because THAT is God at working making our redemption, our salvation a reality in this world; for us and for all peoples.

Wholeness is coming, justice is coming. This is what we remember in Advent. Advent is a reminder that we once waited for salvation to come and now that that salvation has come, we are watching and waiting for salvation to be made complete. We are watching and waiting for redemption to come to fullness. We can see it at work. We can see the darkness around us parting, more and more. There is light, where ever there is light we can see it, breaking the darkness, transforming the darkness from a place of bleakness and to a place of hope.

And so we remember that we are waiting and we remember, this poison in which we live is not where we belong. The world where we belong, the place to which we belong is a place of wholeness and healing, of comfort and fullness, of salvation and justice. It is the place where Jesus is Lord and God is incarnate. One in which the glory of the Lord rings forth and is known from generation to generation And it is for this home for which we are waiting.  Redemption is coming, just as surely as we can see the dawn arriving as that darkness of the night fades, we can see God at work all around us bringing wholeness and justice to our lost and broken world. Let us rejoice with God, let us rejoice with those who are made whole and let us do whatever we can do to join God in God’s redemptive work all around. Let work out our salvation, God’s redemption for us, for our world. Let Advent be!