Let's Celebrate With Joy
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed
me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness
for the prisoners, to proclaim
the year of the LORD'S favor Isaiah
61:1-2
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hear the fist sermon Jesus
preached?
We heard part of it when Isaiah 61 was read this morning. In Luke's gospel,
shortly after His baptism, Jesus goes to the synagogue in his hometown of
Nazareth, reads from Isaiah 61 and then is seated. Luke says everyone was
waiting to see what he might say concerning the text. Their eyes are all
fixed on him, waiting. He does not disappoint them and His commentary on
it was to say, "This scripture is being fulfill today." He could have added,
"before your eyes, even as we speak." Apparently He didn't need to
as the people understood the implication and began muttering to themselves
to the effect of "who does he think he is?"
Not only did Jesus' words not go over well, but the congregation tried to
throw him off a cliff immediately after the sermon.
I prefer our custom of having coffee and cake.
What Jesus is saying is "this is why I have come...to bind the brokenhearted,
proclaim freedom and release for those in slavery."
You would think a message like that would be wildly popular. Who wouldn't
want to hear a message of freedom?
It all depends on which side of the bars you are standing, I suppose.
Jesus said to a man who was paralyzed, "walk, your sins are forgiven."
Simple enough and the man walked. Great!...or so you would think.
Not everyone was ecstatic. In fact quite a few were upset because that meant
he had authority to forgive and His credentials were still under review
by the higher-ups of this world.
On another occasion right in the synagogue on a Sabbath, He healed a man
and that was really frowned upon.
Sure, it was good for the man, but it was a Sabbath and Jesus was not respecting
the law by healing.
And if that wasn't enough, he made friends with common sinners. He even
would go and eat with them in their homes!
So you see, this business of giving people their sight, their freedom, even
their lives was not as simple as that.
But it was His purpose and so He set about doing it regardless of what the
people in the theological colleges thought about his theology, or what the
denominational committees thought about his credentials.
The reason God sent Jesus into the world was to totally redeem the world
from all forms of its brokeness.
This is why we are called.
The task has not changed and its scope is enormous.
The whole broken sorrowful world--its people, history and its environment
are all to be redeemed.
We are called to grieve for it, to pray for it, and to rejoice with it in
the news that its redeemer has come.
Christmas and Advent are times of celebration and joy that God has sent the
redeemer among us.
. It should be that way when you think about the meaning of Advent--God coming
into the world to show us the real nature of who God really is.
And then coming to set us free from our prisons of guilt and loneliness
and purposeless lives.
And then calling us to be his agents of installing a new creation.
That should be an occasion for major celebration.
No one has to go through life feeling worthless or abandoned or with no
purpose.
God has opened a doorway to anyone who wants to make contact.
You don't need an astronomical radio dish or a telescope or a space lab
to find intelligent life beyond our world.
A Bible helps, but you don't really even need that to start with.
Just take some time and clear away your distractions and begin talking to
the author of the words that Isaiah wrote and that Jesus quoted. If you
mean it from the core of your being, the door will be opened.
Another preacher, Ray Bakke from Chicago, writes this great story:
I knew an old
Glasgow professor
named MacDonald who, along with a Scottish chaplain, had bailed out of an
airplane behind German lines. They were put in a prison camp. A high wire
fence separated the Americans from the British, and the Germans made it
next to impossible for the two sides to communicate. MacDonald was put in
the American barracks and the chaplain was housed with the Brits.
Every day the
two men would meet at the fence and exchange a greeting. Unknown to the
guards, the Americans had a little homemade radio and were able to get news
from the outside, something more precious than food in a prison camp. Every
day, MacDonald would take a headline or two to the fence and share it with
the chaplain in the ancient Gaelic language, indecipherable to the Germans.
One day, news
came over the little radio that the German High Command had surrendered
and the war was over. MacDonald took the news to his friend, then stood
and watched him disappear into the British barracks. A moment later, a roar
of celebration came from the barracks.
Life in that
camp was transformed. Men walked around singing and shouting, waving at
the guards, even laughing at the dogs. When the German guards finally heard
the news three nights later, they fled into the dark, leaving the gates
unlocked. The next morning, Brits and Americans walked out as free men.
Yet they had truly been set free three days earlier by the news that the
war was over.1
Jesus could not be silenced though He paid an enormous price.
Advent remembers that God promised to send Messiah. He kept His word. We
are free to be what God calls us to be.
Let's celebrate with joy.
Preached December 11, 2005
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
1.Ray Bakke, Chicago Illinois. Leadership, Vol. 19, no2
Online Resources Consulted
http://www.preachingtoday.com/
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