Posts Tagged ‘Isaiah’

Preparing the way

December 7, 2024

Advent 2 – 2024

Luke 3:1-6

Marian Free

In the name of God who constantly surprises and whose presence and purpose catch us off guard. Amen.

 

It is said that Albrecht Durer’s sculpture of his brother’s praying hands was a tribute to the sacrifices that Enders, also an aspiring artist, made on behalf of Albrecht. The family who were goldsmiths did not have enough money for both brothers to become artists, so Endres remained at home while Albrecht went to Art School. The story goes that when Albrecht returned and saw the gnarled hands of his brother, he asked him to pose as if in prayer. The result was a carving that has been much copied in 3D and as a drawing/painting.

There are many stories of people who foster the talent of another – sometimes at the cost of their own work. It is possible that Australian author Charmaine Cliff may have been a more prolific author had she not married George Johnston and supported his writing career sometimes at the expense of her own. Parents often put the needs of their children before their own ambitions. In bygone eras women were expected to prioritize their spouses’ career no matter how talented, educated or intelligent they were. Others, recognizing their husband’s gifts sometimes took a step back and of course, there have always been men who encouraged and supported women whose contribution to knowledge, medicine, art they saw as more important than their own careers.

Sometimes such sacrifices build resentments and disappointment but often they are derived from a genuine belief in the other’s giftedness and a real desire to see them succeed and to contribute to their craft, the advancement of knowledge and so on.

An alternative – chosen by most couples in todays world – is that both members of a partnership make compromises so that each may flourish, even if it means that, at least for a time, neither flies as high as they might.

John the Baptist is something of an anachronism. He appears, seemingly out of nowhere, an obscure ‘prophet’ living in the wilderness – possibly known only to a few. Only Luke provides any backstory – his miraculous conception and his naming – but even then we know nothing of his childhood or early adulthood. What we are told is that the word of God came to him in the wilderness and propelled him to travel throughtout Judea proclaiming a baptism of repentance.

It is not even clear that he proclaimed the coming of Christ – only that he announced the coming of God’s wrath.

Just as there was no adequate Old Testament image for Jesus the Christ, so there was no exact model for John the forerunner. The gospel writers, knowing that John emerged from the wilderness, used the only OT text that seemed to fit – a voice in the wilderness. Isaiah’s voice proclaimed disruption and chaos. John, however, preached repentance for forgiveness. He didn’t preach the coming of Jesus, but the coming of God’s wrath. As there was no image that was an easy fit for John, the evangelists seem to have found a text that referred to a voice in the wilderness – even if that voice declared God’s violent, disruptive, world-shaking coming into the world to set things right, rather than the quiet coming of a gentle, forgiving, inclusive, peasant from Galilee.

John had a number of roles in the gospels, none of which are presaged in the Old Testament. He prepared the hearts of the people so that they would acknowledge and repent their failure to live in relationship with God. John was used a a scene setter. He prepared the stage for Jesus, making it clear to the readers of the gospels that Jesus didn’t emerge in a vacuum. God had sent someone before him, preparing the way, turning hearts of God (and maybe making them aware of their shortcomings). John’s role was to make it clear that Jesus was not unexpected. He was announced (at least at his baptism) and that therefore the people had no excuse for not recognising him.

A third role fulfilled by John was that of putting his own interests last, allowing Jesus to flourish, enabling Jesus to fulfill his destiny. John appears to have been secure in his own role. Despite having developed a substantial following of his own, he was not seduced by the headiness of success into forming his own movement or into going into competition with Jesus. He knew himself to be the forerunner- not the Christ. His task as he saw it was to ensure that the hearts of the people were turned to God, open to God’s presence in the world, to build within them a sense of hopeful expectation and to enable them to recognise the Christ even though the Christ would look and act like one of them. He would point away from himself in the direction of Jesus no matter the cost to himself.

Advent and Christmas are overlaid with so much tradition and myth that sometimes we miss what the scriptures are really saying. Sometimes we create a story around John that is not necessary justified by the text.

This Advent, may we see beyond the myth of the wild man in the desert, to the humble, self-effacing prophet who knew his role and who was content to live out his role, without striving to be anything more. May we learn from John the importance of knowing ourselves and may we try to be true to ourselves – not competing with or trying to emulate others.

 

 

 

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Held by God for eternity

December 5, 2020

Advent 2 – 2020

Mark 1:1-8

Marian Free

In the name of God “who is casting down the barriers” and coming in love to claim us. Amen.

There is an event from my childhood that comes back to haunt me from time to time. It is only a small thing, but it taught me a big lesson. Like many families, ours had a nightly ritual of ‘goodnight’ kisses. If we had taken ourselves to bed and our parents had not come in to say ‘goodnight’, my sister and I would call out in a sing song voice; “Mummy and Daddy, come and kiss us!” It was a comforting routine and one that assured us that parents would come, that we were important to them. One night, I think it was when I was about eleven, mum came in as usual. Whether it was because we had guests I don’t know, but I do remember that my eleven-year-old self insisted that I was too big for goodnight kisses. I can’t quite recall my mother’s face, but I think there was an element of surprise and maybe disappointment. To her credit, in this as in other matters, she didn’t press me, and the kisses ceased from that point. 

I often wonder if mum was sad that I had ended that routine but of course, the person who suffered most was myself. Through my own actions I had cut myself off, not only from the nightly routine, but from expressions of parental affection. I had created a barrier that was hard to break through. I had put an end to one way in which my mother could show her love for me. 

There are all kinds of reasons why we lock people out. Mine was apparently a belief that nightly kisses were for babies. There are some people have been so badly hurt that they build up barriers between themselves and others. If they don’t let anyone in, they think they can’t be hurt. Others put up barriers because they don’t think they are good enough or clever enough to warrant attention or affection. Still others refuse help because they want to assert their independence or because they fear that their independence will be compromised if they display any weakness. 

I’m sure that we all know or have known people who push us aside, who refuse to be helped or who will not let anyone show affection to them. The problem is, that such people, like my younger self hurt themselves more than they hurt others and they become even more isolated and alone, less able to acknowledge – to themselves and to others – that they might need help or that they would in fact benefit from care and affection.

I suspect that the same can be said of some people’s relationship with God. That is, there are those who think that they won’t ever be good enough for God so they push God away, refusing to believe that God could love someone like them. Some have been so hurt by the church (or its officials) or taught that God is punitive and cruel that they are quite unable to open themselves to love of any kind, let alone the love of God. Still others simply don’t want God to cramp their style. They refuse to let God in because they are afraid that if they do, they will have to give up behaviours that are incompatible with a relationship with God. And there are those who feel they need to keep God at a safe distance because they do not want to admit that they need the love and support that God can give. To them a relationship with God would be a sign of weakness, an indication that they could manage on their own. 

Pushing God away damages us more than it damages God. God, like my mother, will not force anyone to accept affection and support against their will, and those who know God and who deliberately lock God out of their lives will inevitably miss out on the warmth, encouragement and confidence that comes from knowing oneself loved by God. 

In today’s gospel John the Baptist quotes Isaiah: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” Isaiah continues: “make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain” (Is 40:3). Isaiah is assuring the people that their time of desolation has come to an end and is urging them to ensure that they remove any barriers that would prevent God’s return. John the Baptist makes the same plea: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. One difference between the two is that John’s call for repentance (literally turning around) suggests that the barriers he is thinking of are the barriers of our own making and rather than the physical barriers envisaged by Isaiah. 

Advent is a time of preparation, a time to ensure that we are ready for God’s return – whenever and however that will be. We can make ourselves ready by polishing up the outside, by doing good works and practicing ‘holiness’. We can fret about whether we are good enough or whether we have done enough. Or we can look at ourselves and our lives. Are there parts of our lives from which we have locked God out? Have we built up protective barriers – so that we won’t be disappointed In God or so that we won’t be exposed as inadequate? Is there anything at all that prevents us from resting in God’s love?

Are we fearfully preparing to be judged, or confidently waiting for God to take us in God’s arms for all eternity?  

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Promise and threat

December 9, 2017

Advent 2 – 2017

Mark 1:1-8

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. Amen.

Isaiah calls out to those in exile:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

and all people shall see it together,

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

God has charged Isaiah with a message of assurance for the Israelites. The time of their banishment has ended. Soon they will be able to return to their homes. What is more, a road will be prepared for them so that they do not encounter too many obstacles on their way. Isaiah declared that despite all that their forebears have done, despite their present anxieties and fears, God has not forgotten them. During their exile the Israelites have recognised their dependence on God and God, who observed their remorse had sent the prophet with words of comfort and hope.

Centuries later, the author of Mark’s gospel used these same words more as a threat than a promise. John the Baptist did not offer words of assurance but rather insisted that the people: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Instead of offering comfort to a suffering people, John demanded that the people admit and repent of their sins, that they turn their lives around in order to make the path clear for the coming of God.

Isaiah reassured the people that God had forgiven their transgressions and would come to them and will comfort them. In contrast John the Baptist warned the people to seek forgiveness for their transgressions because God was coming among them.

In Mark the words of Isaiah are applied to a different time and place. Whereas the Israelites in exile needed to hear words of comfort and reassurance, the people of the first century needed to be confronted and challenged. The exile had given the Israelites plenty of time to think about the past and to long for their relationship with God to be restored, whereas the situation of the 1st century had allowed them to once again become complacent. It was true that the Romans had occupied the land, but the Temple still stood and the people were free to worship and offer sacrifices without too much interference. Such freedoms however had come at a cost. The priests and leaders of the Israelites had accommodated themselves to the Roman occupation. They had made themselves comfortable with the present situation and they had made compromises that meant that they had lost the trust of the people and led others to believe that the Temple and its worship had become corrupted. They had lost sight of their need to trust in and depend on God to take care of all their needs. They felt that they were comfortable enough. They did not need a prophet to speak words of comfort. They needed to be challenged and confronted. They needed to be forced to consider what was really important – their own comfort or their relationship with God.

Isaiah offered comfort. John demanded repentance. Our scriptures are full of these kinds of contradictions: comfort and judgement, reassurance and challenge, compassion and rage. The different voices of our scriptures reflect the different situations into which they speak. There are times when the prophets need to censure the people of Israel, to remind them of their true calling and to bring them back to God. At other times, often when the people of Israel have been humbled and humiliated – the prophets need to speak words of reassurance and comfort, to reassure the people that God has seen their suffering and has not abandoned them.

The different voices of scripture speak to our own situations. There are times in our lives when we need to know God’s loving presence: when a loved one is dying, when we have lost our job or when our child comes up against an obstacle. At such times it is easy to recognise our dependence on God and to seek the comfort of God’s presence. There are times in our lives when everything seems to be going along smoothly, when we are at peace with the world around us. At such times it is easy to take God for granted, to lose sight of our dependence on God and to go our own way.

The contradictions that we find in scripture help us to seek the right balance between anxiety and complacency. Threats of judgement remind us that we cannot take our relationship with God for granted. Like any other relationship, our relationship with God can be damaged by neglect, by carelessness and disregard and when it is damaged we will experience the pain and heartache of being separated from God as if we really were in exile. Words of comfort provide us with hope in our moments of darkness and despair. They remind us that no matter how far we have strayed, God is constant and will never abandon us.

The tensions and contradictions in our scriptures serve to heighten our awareness of our relationship with God and encourage us to take stock of our lives. Words of judgement and calls to repentance remind us that there are consequences to pay for going our own way. Words of comfort provide strength and encouragement in those times when we are tempted to feel lost and alone.

This Advent, may the contradictions and tensions of our scriptures keep us on our toes, help us to focus on what is really important and prevent us from falling into the sort of complacency that allows us to neglect God and to forget how much God has done for us. May words of comfort not blind us to the need to be on the alert so that we are ready when Christ should come again.

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To act or not to act

January 23, 2016

Epiphany 3 -2-16

Luke 4:14-21

Marian Free

In the name of God who challenges us to build a world without poverty, injustice or oppression. Amen.

The Clergy Summer School usually has two guest speakers. This year our guests were a Professor of Physics from the University of Queensland – Ross McKenzie and an American who is passionate about the pastoral uses of social media, Joshua Case. I’ll share more about social media another time, but this morning I wanted to tell you something about the Parish from which Joshua comes – The Church of the Holy Innocents in Atlanta, Georgia.  From what I can gather, the parish is not too different from our own. It is Anglican and is situated in a middle-to-high income suburb. There are at least two differences between ourselves and Holy Innocents. One is that on a Sunday five hundred people regularly attend services.  Another is the social justice focus of that Parish.

As I understand it, Joshua was employed to assist the congregation discover how they could live into their name – Holy Innocents. This exploration led to a realisation that if their church were to honour the children slaughtered by Herod, they would need to identify and to side with the vulnerable in their own time and place. A number of initiatives have emerged from this starting point. For example, every year the church seeks and obtains the names of all children in the state who have been violently killed over the course of the year. The names of the children are recorded and once a year the church holds a twenty-four hour vigil during which the names of all the children are read aloud.

Children are not the only vulnerable members of society.  In Atlanta, as elsewhere, homeless people have created a tent city on vacant land. The local fire department has made it their mission to support the homeless with food and other necessities. Last week (when the temperatures were still between -1 and 10 degrees C) the local authorities moved in and bulldozed a section of the camp.  That same week, the Federal authorities shipped a number of Latinos – some who had arrived through the appropriate channels and some who had not – to a detention centre in another state. Most of the children detained attended the school associated with the Parish.

The Parish’s relationship with the members of the Fire Department and with the children attending the school means that these actions directly affect them and their mission. They must work out how to respond, knowing that taking a stand may well make them unpopular with others in the city, the state and even the nation.

In today’s gospel, Luke depicts Jesus reading from the book of Isaiah. The language is uncompromising: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” From Exodus to Malachi, the Old Testament records God’s preference for the poor and the marginalised and details God’s anger: “against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear the LORD of hosts” (Mal 3:5). “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice” (Deut 27:19).

Even though the Bible is very clear about God’s expectations, many of us find social activists to be uncomfortable people and we tend to want to distance ourselves from those who challenge the status quo. There are a number of possible reasons for our disquiet – the words and actions of social activists can and often do bring them into conflict with the government and the law and we don’t want to be seen as law-breakers. Activists are uncomfortable people because their willingness to act and take risks can lead to our feeling that we are lacking in courage or determination or, worse, that we have no compassion or understanding for the situations in which some people find themselves.

Those who challenge the status quo are often made to pay for daring to name things as they see them, for standing for and with the oppressed. Michael Lapsley a New Zealander and a Franciscan received a letter bomb that robbed him of both hands and an eye because he dared to speak out against apartheid. Oscar Romero, an El Salvadorian bishop was shot at the altar for taking a stand behalf of the poor. Peter Greste an Australian journalist and his colleagues were arrested and jailed in appalling conditions for reporting the truth as they observed it in Egypt.

We should not be surprised at the crowds’ reaction to Jesus. Jesus’ claim that the words of scripture had been fulfilled in himself was not the source of their anger. Rather it was his interpretation of the words of Isaiah (at least this is N.T. Wright’s suggestion).  With the passage of time, these words and other OT texts had lost some of their sting. As a people who had been in exile or under foreign domination for the better part of 500 years the Jews had come to believe that the words of Isaiah spoke to their situation – they saw themselves as the poor, the oppressed and the imprisoned.  They believed that when God’s anointed came, he would to set them free. They had lost sight of their responsibility for the vulnerable among them.

In his words and in his actions, Jesus demonstrated his compassion for the outsider – the poor and the dispossessed. By claiming that the words of Isaiah were fulfilled in himself, Jesus was calling the people to return to their biblical roots, to revive a concern for the widow and the fatherless, the hired worker, the alien and the poor.  This made him an uncomfortable figure, someone whom they didn’t want to have around. In the first century, Jesus is interpreting words that were written some five hundred years previously. In the twenty first century, it is our task to make sense of the words for our own time and place.

What do we make of Jesus’ words? Do they make us anxious, uncomfortable or uncertain?  Are we tempted to push the uncomfortable Jesus away from us (over a convenient cliff)? Or do these words challenge us to consider how we should respond. Do they encourage us to ask: Whose are the voices that are not heard in our day? Who are the people who are longing to be set free?  Where are the marginalised and the oppressed?

What is our role as Christians in the world today? Are we meant to keep our hands clean and our heads down or does God demand that we take an interest in and demonstrate a concern for what is going on around us? Do we leave issues like domestic violence, homelessness and refugees to the secular world, or do we take a stand and, with Jesus, initiate God’s kingdom here on earth?

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God’s insistent call

January 25, 2014

Epiphany 3

Paul’s Conversion – Galatians 1:11-24

Marian Free

In the name of God whose insistent call draws us out of ourselves and into God’s service. Amen.

Throughout history there have been numerous accounts of people coming to faith, or coming to what they believe is a deeper and truer understanding of their faith. Many such accounts are dramatic and powerful of the sort that turn a person’s life around and lead them to serve God in ways that are risky and demanding, or that have a profound effect on the world around them and on the church in particular.

One such person was Augustine of Hippo whose spiritual quest had so far failed to satisfy him when his heart was touched by God. His own account goes like this: “As I was weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting and repeating over and over again. “Pick it up and read, pick it up and read.” I began to think intently whether there might be some sort of children’s game in which such a chant is used. But I could not remember having heard of one. I checked the flood of tears and stood up. I interpreted it solely as a divine command to open the book and read the first chapter I might find. So I hurried back to the place where I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit. “Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts.” (Rom 13:13-14) I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of the sentence, it was as if a light relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All shadows of doubt were dispelled” (Chadwick, St Augustine’s Confessions, 152).

Much later in Germany, Martin Luther, a monk of the Augustinian Order had been going through “hell” obsessed with his own sinfulness and the impossibility of remembering all his sins in order to confess them. He tried all kinds of self-abasement to atone for his perceived sinfulness – sleeping in the snow, lying almost naked in the belfry tower at night – nothing seemed to work.

Part of his struggle was: “ to understand Paul’s expression, ‘the justice of God’ because I took it to mean that God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk I had no confidence that my merit would assuage God. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Night and day I pondered this until I grasped that the justice of God is that the righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into Paradise. The whole of scripture took on a new meaning and whereas before the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in great love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven ….” (Bainton, R. Here I Stand – The Classic Biography of Martin Luther. Sutherland, NSW: Albatross Books, 1978, 65.)

An encounter with God not only gives relief from anxiety or opens a gate to heaven, it gives new insights, a different perspective of God and the world. An encounter with God can draw people out of their comfort zone and compel them to respond to a call on their lives that they would not have thought possible and of which they would not have believed themselves capable. The Bible is full of such figures. Abraham and Sarah who responded to a God whom they did not know and set off to a place they had never heard of. Moses who protested that he could not speak, liberated God’s people from slavery and led them to the promised land. Isaiah and Jeremiah who likewise did not believe that they were capable of the task God was asking them to fulfill challenged Kings to change their ways. Jonah who ran away, before he did what God required. Mary and Joseph who said “yes” and enabled Jesus to enter the world. Then there was the rag-tag bunch of unlikely people who left all they had to follow Jesus. People from all walks of life drawn out of their comfort zone to serve a God or a Christ whom they did or did not know who might take them who know where.

Among this great crowd of people we find Paul – that passionate, self-assured servant of God whose life radically changed direction after a “revelation of Jesus Christ”. Unlike Augustine and Luther Paul was not troubled by a search for faith or a fear that he could not please God. By all accounts Paul was a proud and confident Jew, absolutely convinced of his righteousness, his place in the world and before God. He was so sure of himself and his beliefs that he set out to persecute the misguided Jews who believed that Jesus was the Christ. He says of himself: “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil 3:4-6). Nothing, so far as Paul could tell, was lacking in his life or faith – his credentials were impeccable, his behaviour exemplary and his actions a clear demonstration of his commitment to the faith of his fathers.

Then all this changed: “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ” (Phil 3:7). Those things of which he was so proud now count for nothing, the beliefs that led him to persecute Jesus-followers have been overturned. Now he proclaims the faith that “he once tried to destroy.” What happened? The truth is that we do not really know. Paul provides no more details than those in today’s reading from Galatians. He says only that he received a “revelation of Jesus Christ”, that “God called him through his grace and was pleased  to reveal his Son to him, so that he might proclaim him among the Gentiles,.”

We may not know what form the revelation took but we can see that the results are astounding – the one who persecuted believers is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. More than that, he is so convinced that there is no other way to understand God’s action in Christ that he will brook no other interpretation or accept any other view. “As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (Gal 1:9). Paul preaches as though his life depends on it, and in fact, he does believe that his eternal salvation is intimately bound to that of the communities who have come to faith through him.

Paul’s encounter with God sharpens and refines the faith that he has held from birth. His new, God-revealed perspective allows him to see that God always intended that Gentiles can be included in the Abrahamic faith, that believers be led by the Spirit (not determined by the law) and that God’s grace is not something to be earned, but something that is freely given. Empowered by his experience of God, driven by the conviction that he was called to share what he hd received and enabled by his passion and his great intellect, Paul became a potent force for change in the world. Some twenty years before the Gospels were written, Paul was making sense of Jesus’ life death and resurrection and finding ways in which emerging communities, made of of people who had come from different faiths and different social groupings could worship together.

Paul’s impact on the church is demonstrated by his place in the New Testament – one-fourth of which consists of letters written by or attributed to Paul. Half of the Book of Acts deals with the life and ministry of Paul which means that he accounts for one-third of the New Testament. Paul’s letters are the earliest written documents of the church and provide us with valuable information about the struggles to build community and to come to some consensus as to what faith in Jesus meant for Jew and Gentile alike.

God has ways of getting ours attention, often when we least expect it.  Whether it is a thunder-clap or a whisper, a blinding light or a moment of insight, a call to change the world or a call to change ourselves, a demand to protest against injustice or an insistence to maintain our integrity, empowerment to do something heroic for others or strength to face a personal battle. God’s insistent call will not be denied. We can run, but we cannot hide. God will find us and take us where we do not want or did to expect to go. But whatever it is, whatever God asks of us, we can be sure that God will equip us, support and sustain us and that God will never abandon us until our task is done.

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