On Being Ransomed
Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Advent 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55
Theme: Living in Joy
Advent is a tricky time.
We are called to engage in an act of anticipation – of waiting. But it is, essentially, an exercise. The event that we commemorate, the birth of Christ, has already occurred. What we are asked to do is to take ourselves back, spiritually, emotionally, theoretically, to that time and place, first century Palestine, through the words of the prophet Isaiah and Mary the mother of Jesus. We are asked to ponder, like her and like the children of Israel SINCE the time of Isaiah, the coming of the Messiah.
Our task, if you will, as Christ followers, is to relate that sense of anticipation, of expectation, of awaiting, to not only the anticipated SECOND coming of our Lord, but also to what Christ’s coming into our own lives involves on a daily basis.
We have our Advent Wreath to help us mark the weeks as they go by, with a candle for each Sunday; one to remind us of the Hope we have in Christ, the next to remind us of the Peace we have through him, the third to remind us of the Joy we find in him, and the last to remind us of the Love of Christ, before lighting the candle that represents Christ himself in the middle at the conclusion of Advent.
We are asked to do that, if we follow the liturgical year, each Advent season, regardless of what is going on in the world around us, regardless of what is going on in our congregational lives and our personal lives.
And sometimes that can be a source of tension. As believers we understand – or at least we TRY to understand – the eagerness with which the people of Israel anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We try to set in our minds what it would have been like to live under a foreign occupying army, our fate and the practice of our faith controlled – albeit temporarily – by forces belonging to the only world power in existence at the time: that of the Roman Empire. These forces more often than not were at odds with our understanding and worship of God. They were in some cases antagonistic to the most essential and basic claims of our faith.
So as part of our exercise, we try to come up with questions that spring from the contemporary context of the SCRIPTURE, but that relate to OUR present-day context.
The questions that come to mind are, honestly, difficult to pose if one has, to any degree, lived a life of dedication TO the pursuit of working out what Christ’s coming into our DAILY existence MEANS.
They are difficult not because we can’t imagine the context from which they come – although that CAN be a challenge – but because we lose touch with how WE were BEFORE WE knew Christ. So we forget to a degree what the questions were – if we indeed HAD any – BEFORE we decided to BECOME Christ followers. In those instances where we made that decision as very young children, it is doubly so because we tend to let those memories blur into the background of our minds. I realize I am making a generalized assumption in framing the issue like that – as though I am speaking to a roomful of Christ followers. I realize I am probably NOT.
Please understand if you are here and you are not a follower of Christ, or if you are unsure of where you stand in relationship to this whole business of “living in faith”: we are not leaving you out of this conversation. We are engaging in this discussion not JUST for our benefit, but for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. We don’t claim to suddenly receive all the answers when we become Christ followers. We don’t claim to understand all scripture. I want everyone to know that in this quest – in this working out of our faith – we are willing to admit to question for which we may not receive answers while in this life. We DO claim to live in the hope that we will one day – most likely in the NEXT life – come to an understanding that will make sense of it all, or put everything into a perspective of which we are not capable while ‘treading this mortal coil’ that will render the questions we have now either moot or irrelevant.
So what are we to do? We are still engaged in the study of scripture, and if we are true to our heritage, in accepting scripture as sacred, we actively seek to understand it in our own context as well as the original context in which it was written.
So we have before us this morning two very different passages. One written by one of the great prophets of Israel hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the other written by a follower of Christ after his death, quoting Mary’s words spoken (or some say sung) a few months before Christ’s birth.
What do they say to US, here, now, having been written twenty-eight hundred and two thousand years ago, roughly?
If you step back from them, there is a resonance in the tone of the writing of the two, a similarity in the themes.
There is recognition of the goodness and the majesty of God.
There is a hope expressed, a confidence in the eventual outcome of what are otherwise grim circumstances. We find in the book of Isaiah the stories of the deportation of the vast majority of the people Judah into Babylonian exile – a pivotal, traumatic, and defining moment in their history. In the life of Mary, we find her pregnant and unwed, facing the scorn of her family and neighbors, perhaps even her entire community.
The realities of the two instances are not being denied. It wasn’t just by accident that Jesus’ first reading at the synagogue at the beginning of his public ministry was from it. The people of Israel found in Isaiah’s passages words of comfort, hope, and encouragement when they faced times of crisis because they knew they had been through it before and that God would be with them regardless of how their present circumstance might seem.
The words of Mary echo the words of Hannah after the birth of Samuel, in what is called the Song of Hannah, found in 1 Samuel chapter 2. To read the Song of Hannah is to hear again the words of Isaiah, and again to find a statement of faith in the sufficiency of God despite what present reality seems to dictate. That parallel was not lost on those early Christ followers who first heard it and who came from a Hebrew tradition, and we would do well to treasure these words in our hearts as well.
The fact of the matter is, we live in a world that surrounds us with a reality that denies that there is any hope, any peace. Just in the past two weeks we’ve been horrified to hear of multiple instances of violence resulting in seemingly random, inexplicable deaths of innocent victims at the hands of pathetically sick individuals – whether by car bombs in the middle east somewhere or in a mall in the middle of our nation, or even in a center dedicated to the training of missionaries, or the parking lot of a church.
We are faced with circumstances that demand of us: what do you see here that would be a justified cause for joy? And what does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?
Within our own congregation, we have been faced with the news of a brother who is once again facing the possibility of a protracted battle with cancer. While it is not yet certain, simply coming to terms with the POSSIBILITY is a daunting task in itself; one which from past experience – again, within our own family – would lead us to give UP hope, to wrestle unsuccessfully with despair, to spend sleepless nights worrying about his welfare as well as our own.
We need to always be reminded that, as dismal and hopeless as a situation may seem, for a believer, for a Christ follower, there is an ultimate hope that truly CAN override any fears and sorrows, any worries and cares we may face in this world.
So what do we draw from our passages this morning?
We find in them a courage born not of reliance on our own skills, but rather a reliance on a reality that we cannot yet see – one which is infused with joy because we are in the hands of the one who loved us so much that he gave his life for ours, he ransomed us.
It seems a comment out of left field in the Isaiah passage – in the last verse – verse 10:
I’m sure it was as much a practice in ancient times as it is today – to hold someone for ransom.
The people of the tribe of Judah had been held in exile for decades in Babylon. Mary was facing an exilic existence away from the accepted norms of her society. But God stepped in and ransomed them all. Their response was hope and joy. And that ransom, along with the same hope and joy is still offered to us today, through Christ Jesus.
Let’s pray.
Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Advent 3
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Isaiah 35:1-10, Luke 1:46-55
Theme: Living in Joy
Isaiah 35:1-10
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 3Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” 5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 8A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Luke 1:46-55
46And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
Advent is a tricky time.
We are called to engage in an act of anticipation – of waiting. But it is, essentially, an exercise. The event that we commemorate, the birth of Christ, has already occurred. What we are asked to do is to take ourselves back, spiritually, emotionally, theoretically, to that time and place, first century Palestine, through the words of the prophet Isaiah and Mary the mother of Jesus. We are asked to ponder, like her and like the children of Israel SINCE the time of Isaiah, the coming of the Messiah.
Our task, if you will, as Christ followers, is to relate that sense of anticipation, of expectation, of awaiting, to not only the anticipated SECOND coming of our Lord, but also to what Christ’s coming into our own lives involves on a daily basis.
We have our Advent Wreath to help us mark the weeks as they go by, with a candle for each Sunday; one to remind us of the Hope we have in Christ, the next to remind us of the Peace we have through him, the third to remind us of the Joy we find in him, and the last to remind us of the Love of Christ, before lighting the candle that represents Christ himself in the middle at the conclusion of Advent.
We are asked to do that, if we follow the liturgical year, each Advent season, regardless of what is going on in the world around us, regardless of what is going on in our congregational lives and our personal lives.
And sometimes that can be a source of tension. As believers we understand – or at least we TRY to understand – the eagerness with which the people of Israel anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We try to set in our minds what it would have been like to live under a foreign occupying army, our fate and the practice of our faith controlled – albeit temporarily – by forces belonging to the only world power in existence at the time: that of the Roman Empire. These forces more often than not were at odds with our understanding and worship of God. They were in some cases antagonistic to the most essential and basic claims of our faith.
So as part of our exercise, we try to come up with questions that spring from the contemporary context of the SCRIPTURE, but that relate to OUR present-day context.
The questions that come to mind are, honestly, difficult to pose if one has, to any degree, lived a life of dedication TO the pursuit of working out what Christ’s coming into our DAILY existence MEANS.
They are difficult not because we can’t imagine the context from which they come – although that CAN be a challenge – but because we lose touch with how WE were BEFORE WE knew Christ. So we forget to a degree what the questions were – if we indeed HAD any – BEFORE we decided to BECOME Christ followers. In those instances where we made that decision as very young children, it is doubly so because we tend to let those memories blur into the background of our minds. I realize I am making a generalized assumption in framing the issue like that – as though I am speaking to a roomful of Christ followers. I realize I am probably NOT.
Please understand if you are here and you are not a follower of Christ, or if you are unsure of where you stand in relationship to this whole business of “living in faith”: we are not leaving you out of this conversation. We are engaging in this discussion not JUST for our benefit, but for the benefit of anyone who might be listening in. We don’t claim to suddenly receive all the answers when we become Christ followers. We don’t claim to understand all scripture. I want everyone to know that in this quest – in this working out of our faith – we are willing to admit to question for which we may not receive answers while in this life. We DO claim to live in the hope that we will one day – most likely in the NEXT life – come to an understanding that will make sense of it all, or put everything into a perspective of which we are not capable while ‘treading this mortal coil’ that will render the questions we have now either moot or irrelevant.
So what are we to do? We are still engaged in the study of scripture, and if we are true to our heritage, in accepting scripture as sacred, we actively seek to understand it in our own context as well as the original context in which it was written.
So we have before us this morning two very different passages. One written by one of the great prophets of Israel hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, the other written by a follower of Christ after his death, quoting Mary’s words spoken (or some say sung) a few months before Christ’s birth.
What do they say to US, here, now, having been written twenty-eight hundred and two thousand years ago, roughly?
If you step back from them, there is a resonance in the tone of the writing of the two, a similarity in the themes.
There is recognition of the goodness and the majesty of God.
There is a hope expressed, a confidence in the eventual outcome of what are otherwise grim circumstances. We find in the book of Isaiah the stories of the deportation of the vast majority of the people Judah into Babylonian exile – a pivotal, traumatic, and defining moment in their history. In the life of Mary, we find her pregnant and unwed, facing the scorn of her family and neighbors, perhaps even her entire community.
The realities of the two instances are not being denied. It wasn’t just by accident that Jesus’ first reading at the synagogue at the beginning of his public ministry was from it. The people of Israel found in Isaiah’s passages words of comfort, hope, and encouragement when they faced times of crisis because they knew they had been through it before and that God would be with them regardless of how their present circumstance might seem.
The words of Mary echo the words of Hannah after the birth of Samuel, in what is called the Song of Hannah, found in 1 Samuel chapter 2. To read the Song of Hannah is to hear again the words of Isaiah, and again to find a statement of faith in the sufficiency of God despite what present reality seems to dictate. That parallel was not lost on those early Christ followers who first heard it and who came from a Hebrew tradition, and we would do well to treasure these words in our hearts as well.
The fact of the matter is, we live in a world that surrounds us with a reality that denies that there is any hope, any peace. Just in the past two weeks we’ve been horrified to hear of multiple instances of violence resulting in seemingly random, inexplicable deaths of innocent victims at the hands of pathetically sick individuals – whether by car bombs in the middle east somewhere or in a mall in the middle of our nation, or even in a center dedicated to the training of missionaries, or the parking lot of a church.
We are faced with circumstances that demand of us: what do you see here that would be a justified cause for joy? And what does it mean for Jerusalem Baptist church at Emmerton?
Within our own congregation, we have been faced with the news of a brother who is once again facing the possibility of a protracted battle with cancer. While it is not yet certain, simply coming to terms with the POSSIBILITY is a daunting task in itself; one which from past experience – again, within our own family – would lead us to give UP hope, to wrestle unsuccessfully with despair, to spend sleepless nights worrying about his welfare as well as our own.
We need to always be reminded that, as dismal and hopeless as a situation may seem, for a believer, for a Christ follower, there is an ultimate hope that truly CAN override any fears and sorrows, any worries and cares we may face in this world.
So what do we draw from our passages this morning?
We find in them a courage born not of reliance on our own skills, but rather a reliance on a reality that we cannot yet see – one which is infused with joy because we are in the hands of the one who loved us so much that he gave his life for ours, he ransomed us.
It seems a comment out of left field in the Isaiah passage – in the last verse – verse 10:
10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
I’m sure it was as much a practice in ancient times as it is today – to hold someone for ransom.
The people of the tribe of Judah had been held in exile for decades in Babylon. Mary was facing an exilic existence away from the accepted norms of her society. But God stepped in and ransomed them all. Their response was hope and joy. And that ransom, along with the same hope and joy is still offered to us today, through Christ Jesus.
Let’s pray.
