Preaching: Brian Keepers

Text: Isaiah 61:1-11, 1 Thesselonians 5:16-24

 

In the TV holiday classic A Charlie Brown Christmas, Sally Brown writes a letter to Santa Clause: “ I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents I want.  Please note the size and color of each item, and send as many as possible.  If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself.  Just send money.  How about tens and twenties?”

Every December, millions tune in to watch Charlie Brown struggle to find the true meaning of Christmas.  Amidst the flurry of holiday shows and movies, A Charlie Brown Christmas remains a favorite partly because it tackles a problem we all know to be true.  Too often, Christmas seems to be all about gifts, decorations, and parties.  Santa Clause, with his bottomless sack of toys, becomes the supreme icon for a month-long shopping fest. 

 

This year Black Friday crept into Thanksgiving Thursday as stores opened their doors and started their holiday bargains at 10:00 p.m. As Lucy tells Charlie Brown, “Look, Charlie, let’s face it.  We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.  It’s run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”

So how do we resist making Christmas “a big commercial racket?”  How do we get beyond the superficial focus on over-spending and busyness and stress to the heart of what Christmas is really about?  

Advent is the season God gives us to help us do just that—to get prepared for the Lord’s coming in the deep places of the heart, beyond the gifts and the glitter.  The Lord is near.  So, in the words of that beloved Christmas carol, “let every heart prepare him room.”  The way we do this is through a posture of repentance.  

Repentance is ultimately about deep change, a kind of change that affects not just our vertical relationship with God but our horizontal relationships with others.  “Repentance is an inward matter which has at its seat in the heart and the soul, “wrote John Calvin,” but afterwards yields fruit in a change of life.”  What kind of fruit?  Fruits of the Holy Spirit, and chief among them, fruits of a life of justice.  Put most simply, one of the most important ways that we get prepared for the Lord’s coming is to join God in his work of justice.  Advent is about seeking justice and caring for those in need.

This is the strong message we hear from the prophet Isaiah in today’s scripture.  “For I the Lord love justice, and I hate robbery and wrong doing,” the Lord boldly announces.

As Dan Claus said last week, the historical context of the book of Isaiah is that God’s people were in exile in Babylon.  They were in exile because of their disobedience and idolatry, which in turn led to practicing injustice, especially to the poor and the vulnerable.  Because of their sin, they were like sick trees whose leaves withered and faded (Is. 1:30).  They deserved judgment.

But God, in his grace and mercy, will rescue them.  God will bring them home.  And God will take them in their sin-sick state, withered leaves and all, and transform them into oaks of righteousness—strong, healthy, vibrant trees blossoming with leaves and fruit (Is. 61:3).

How will God do this?  By sending the Messiah, the one upon whom God’s spirit would rest so that he might bring good news to the oppressed, healing to the broken-hearted, freedom to prisoners, and the glad tidings of the Lord’s favor as well as justice to all.

Hundreds of years later, God’s people were still in exile.  Only this time the oppressor was not Babylon but Rome.  But even deeper: the real exile was the bondage of sin.  And so in Luke 4, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry after the Spirit came upon him in his baptism, he stands up in the synagogue and preaches his first sermon.  And what text does he preach?  Isaiah 61:  “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 favor.”  Then Luke tells us: “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.  Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (4:18-22).
 

Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the Suffering Servant who embodies God’s justice.  The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, has anointed him, so that he might set us all free from the bondage of sin, bind up our hearts, and make us righteous—that is, put us in right relationship with God.  When we put our trust in Jesus, and receive this incredible gift of grace, we join our voices with the one who offers praise in Isaiah 61:10-11:
 

“I 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.  
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
 so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.”

But here’s the thing: to be put in right relationship with God—a gift of grace we receive in Christ by faith—also means that we are called to seek right relationships with others and work for what is right in society—especially for those who suffer from injustice.  The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jesus to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: make us right with God; and Jesus has breathed his Spirit upon us to now join him in his work of setting things right in the world.  

This relationship between being right with God and being right with others is made clear by the close relationship between two Hebrew words—words that both show up in Isaiah 61: the word tzadeqah which often gets translated as “righteousness” and the word mishpat which often gets translated as “justice.”  These two words are inseparable.  The word “righteous” is primarily about being in right relationship with God, but this is not simply in the way we tend to think of righteousness—in terms of private morality like sexual purity or diligence in prayer and Bible study.  It carries with it the notion of also being committed to putting right all other relationships.  It flows into the word for “justice” which is about day-to-day living in such a way that a person conducts all relationships in family and society with fairness, generosity, and equity.  And it is especially concerned with caring for the poor and the vulnerable, standing with those who are on the margins.

The prophets, like Isaiah, are constantly combining these two words “righteousness” and “justice”, calling people to a life that loves God and their neighbor, especially those in need.  For example, listen to Ezekiel:
Suppose there is a righteous man [tzaddiq] who does what is just [mishpat] and right [tzadeqah].  He does not…oppress anyone, but returns what he took in pledge for a loan.  He does not commit robbery but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked.  He does not lend at usury or take excessive interest.” (Ez. 18:5, 7-8).

Or how about this passage from Job:
“I put on righteousness (tzadeqah) as my clothing; justice [mishpat] was my robe and turban” (Job 29:4)

God’s call to his people, as those who have received his grace and been made righteous before God, is now to wear justice in such a way that it becomes the fabric of our everyday lives.  These are the images that we’re given in Isaiah 61:  “For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”  This was a call to God’s people then, and to us now, in the Spirit of Christ, to “put on” justice and practice radical generosity in every aspect of our lives.

There’s a cartoon that shows a skeptic shouting up to the heavens, “God, if you’re up there, tells us what we should do!”  Back comes a voice: “Feed the hungry, house the homeless, establish justice.”  The skeptic looked alarmed.  “Just testing,” he says.  “Me, too,” replies the voice.

Acts of justice are the fruit—the test—of a heart that is truly right with God.  It is the test of whether the Spirit has come upon us.  And as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, we must not quench the Spirit by ignoring the prophets’ call to act justly.  Rather, we must hold fast to what is good and resist what is evil.  This is Paul’s way of saying “Put on the robe of righteousness!”

There are a whole slew of challenges when it comes to talking about what it looks like to act justly.  One of them is that the word “justice”, especially “social justice” has been co-opted by our political system so that it often gets tied with the social agenda of one political party or the other.   Is seeking justice about defending the unborn child, who has no voice, as one side advocates?  Or is it about seeking justice for the poor who need adequate health care and fighting to for the civil rights of all people, as the other side insists?  The answer: it’s about all the above (and then some)!  Long before Republicans and Democrats were having these debates, justice was God’s idea first—and God cares about defending and protecting the dignity of all human beings (who bear his image)—from womb to grave and everything in between!

Another challenge is that, unfortunately, too often Christians are presented with having to choose between evangelism (more conservative churches) or justice (more liberal churches).  But as we’ve seen this morning, these two words were never intended to be separated!  You can’t truly have one without the other!  Isaiah 61 tells us that it is when God’s people put on the robe of righteousness—wear justice—that they get the world’s attention!  This is to be one of the primary way that they bear witness to the one true God amidst a world of idols.  By their acts of justice, they are displaying God’s glory to the nations!

And so it is with the NT church, and the church today.  Doesn’t Acts tells us how numbers were added daily—and no doubt a huge draw to the early church was the way they cared for the needs of others so that no one was in need?  It was the Roman Emperor Julian who despised Christianity but candidly admitted in a letter to another Roman official that “these impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor, but for ours as well!”   Justice gets the world’s attention!  In this way, justice is beautiful.

And so this is what God calls us to be about, as his people who are getting ready for the Lord’s coming and empowered with the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the gospel.  We are called to do justice by practicing radical generosity.

There are so many ways in which you are already doing this.  I’m amazed at the way, every year, we provide gifts for foster children through the Bethany Christmas Project—and each year they keep increasing the amount of kids they give us!  I’m amazed at how we fill up every single slot for bell-ringing at Walgreen’s for the Salvation Army.  I’m amazed at how much generosity goes into our HOPE store, which displayed Christ’s love to fifty families and over 150 kids this year.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon us.

And I want to challenge you to keep growing in your generosity.   Isaiah and the rest of Scripture calls us to be radical in our generosity—to go above and beyond.  And not just for a couple months out of the year, but to make this a part of our lifestyle.  To wear justice like a robe.  Generosity includes money, but it so much more—time and talents, love and patience, even suspending our judgments of others and being generous in our empathy.

This is how we can resist the commercialization of Christmas.  This is how we can teach our children what it means to really, in the words of Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol), “keep Christmas well in our hearts”—to get at the real meaning of it.

I began this morning with Sally’s letter to Santa Clause, spelling out the long list of presents she wants, and making it easier on Santa by suggesting, should it be too complicated, to just send money.   What’s so puzzling and sadly ironic about our view of Santa Clause today is that it is worlds apart from the original “Santa Clause,” Saint Nicholas who served as the bishop of Myra during the fourth century.

Do you know the story behind the man in the red suit and white beard?  Nicholas was born to a deeply devoted Christian couple, Theophanes and Nonna, who were barren for many years.  Nonna, like Hanna in the Old Testament, poured out her soul to God, praying for a child.  And the Lord gave her a child.

Theopanes and Nonna, from an early age, taught Nicolas in a “fend for yourself or die” Roman culture that it was the calling of Christ-followers to care for the poor and the sick.  After a terrible plague swept through Lycia, taking the lives of rich and poor alike, including his beloved parents, Nicholas decided to join a monastery.  While in the monastery, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in such a way that he resolved to train for the priesthood and his love for Christ compelled him to give away his possessions to the poor, including the large inheritance his parents left him.  This decision led to one of the most beloved stories about Nicholas.

In Patara, there lived a family that had fallen upon hard times.  They were so poor they had barely enough to live on.  The man had three daughters of marriageable age, but their chances for finding husbands were grim since the father could not afford to pay the dowries (in those days, women needed a dowry to attract a suitor for marriage).  As their financial situation grew desperate, the father realized the only way to ensure the survival of his children was to sell them as slaves.  At least then they would have enough to eat.

When news of the family’s plight reached Nicholas, he came up with a plan to help them.  That night, he put several coins in a small bag and went to the home of the father and the three daughters.  The hour was late, and the family was sleeping.  Nicholas crept up to a window, reached through, and dropped the bag of gold.  Some say it landed in a shoe, others in a stocking that had been left hanging to dry (this may or may not be true).  Then he hurried away before anyone saw them.

The next morning the family discovered the bag of gold.  Weeping with joy and astonishment, they fell to their knees to thank God for the generous gift.  Not only did they have money to live on for some time, there was enough to provide a dowry for the oldest daughter, who was soon married.

Nicholas would do this two more times, providing dowries for the two other daughters as well, and preventing them from having to live a life of slavery.  After the second time Nicholas did this, the father, anticipating he’d do it again for the last daughter, stayed up night after night, wanting to find out who this earthly angel was that had been so generous to them.

When that night finally came, and the third bag of gold came flying through the window, the father rushed out of the house and chased the shadowy figure down the empty streets.  The father finally caught up to Nicholas, fell to his knees and begin to kiss Nicholas’ hands profusely.  But Nicholas told him to stand up and to thank God instead.  He then begged the father not to tell anyone the secret of who had left the gold.

Obviously, the father was not very good at keeping a secret!  Nicholas’ act of generosity set him on the path to becoming the worlds’ most famous gift-giver.  This was not an isolated incident for Nicholas but he would go on to the priesthood, eventually become bishop of Myra, where he lived a life advocating for the poor and the vulnerable.  Bishop Nicholas would undergo great persecution during the reign of the cruel Emperor Diocletian, be tortured many times and imprisoned.  He was eventually freed when a more tolerant Emperor took the throne, and Nicholas would continue to serve Christ and Christ’s church all the days of his life, never forgetting what his parents taught him: care for the poor and the sick.  This is what it means to be a Christian. This is the true story of Santa Clause.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, said Jesus, to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

This is the same Spirit that was sent upon his disciples.  The same Spirit that was sent upon Saint Nicholas.  And it is the same Spirit that is sent upon us.  The Lord is near.  Let us put on the robe of righteousness and join God in his work of justice.

For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
 

Amen!

 

Click here for the video "Pray for Understanding" a poem by Bob Lenz