(The people of Israel are back in their own land, rebuilding what was destroyed when they went into exile. The rebuilding is slow and frustrating. But the prophet assures them God wills a new kingdom for them -- one that will draw the admiration of all the world for the way it re-organizes society according to God's care for the poor and oppressed.
In the reading, the word "liberty" in "liberty to the captives" is a word used to describe the release of slaves in the sabbatical year. It was one of God's laws that every seven years, any person who had entered into servitude to another because of unpaid debts, bankruptcy or any other reason, was to be freed, all debts cancelled and forgiven, and be given a free and fresh start again in life.
The phrase, "the year of the Lord's favour" is the year of Jubilee -- the 50th year, the year after every seven seven-year cycles, when all property gained at the expense of other people or taken from them is to be returned to its original owner -- again, to give everyone a chance to start over, to go back to square one, everyone on equal footing and on their home square.
Joseph was a carpenter. Which means he wasn’t really poor. At least, not the poorest of the poor.
He had his tools. His trade. And work for which he would be paid. Maybe not always with money. Sometimes with a chicken or two, or some grain for meal, or some oil for heating and lighting his house. But he had an income he could count as his own.
And
his work was portable. He wasn’t tied to
a piece of land, and to the whims of weather, markets and an unjust landlord. He could go where the work was – within
reason. And with where he was living –
in Nazareth, in the northern province of Galilee, an area of considerable
unrest and sporadic uprisings against the government in Jerusalem and the
empire in Rome, where every now and then the army would have to come in and
root out a few zealots, knock down a few houses, burn a few buildings to the
ground that would have to be rebuilt – along with whatever normal jobs he had
putting on additions for growing families, building chicken coops, making
tables, carving door posts, making oxen yokes, maybe even crafting family altars,
Joseph was as close as anyone in those days could be to being guaranteed a good
living.
Which
means Jesus, had he learned the trade from his father, accepted his father’s
tools, and taken over the business, could have had a good and comfortable
life. He had a rough start – born in a
Bethlehem barn because of the Emperor Caesar’s untimely edict and the absence
of Trivago or even a travel agent to book a room ahead, and then a few years in
Egypt as a refugee family because of King Herod’s political paranoia and
insecurity. But once that was over and
the family settled into Nazareth, Jesus could have had the good and comfortable
life that all parents probably want, and spend their lives working for their
children to have.
Except
Jesus was drawn to something else. To
being a different kind of carpenter.
Building something else in the world.
Working with a blueprint for something other than houses and tables and
oxen yokes.
The Gospel
of Matthew tells a story of twelve-year-old Jesus wandering away from his
parents on a trip to Jerusalem, to sit in the Temple and chat with the scribes
and the teachers of God’s law. “I must
be about my Father’s business – capital-F father,” he said.
New
studies in the historical Jesus suggest he actually went to rabbinical school
to study Torah – the Law and the Prophets, and all the traditions around
them. Joseph was well-off enough to give
him that opportunity. But Jesus came to
interpret the Law and the Prophets differently than his teachers. He saw things in the tradition they
overlooked. He took seriously the things
about the good will and love of God they explained away. He grew restless with the rules and
restrictions they placed on the people to keep them divided from one another
and under control.
Which
leads to what we read in the Gospel of Luke – in chapter 4, just 2 chapters
after the story of his Bethlehem birth – where we read of the now-adult Jesus,
30 years old, leaving the school and its distortion of the real will of God, to
start teaching God’s kingdom in the towns and villages of Galilee, healing and
casting out unclean spirits, forgiving people their sins and setting them free
for new life, calling them together and creating new grassroots networks of
inclusive spiritual community … until finally he works his way back to
Nazareth, and one sabbath day in the synagogue, when it’s his turn to read, he
reads the Scripture for the day, which was the same that we had today from the
prophet Isaiah – the one that includes God’s ancient laws of compassion and
freedom for those who fall into unjust debt and servitude, and forgiveness and
support for families that along the way lose their place in the world. Jesus reads the same words we heard David
read today:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, [he
reads]
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.
Then,
he rolls up the scroll. Gives it back to
the attendant. Sits down – as the
teacher for the day would, before beginning the interpretation of the reading. And with the eyes of all in the synagogue
fixed on him, he utters these momentous words, “Today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing. The kind of
world Isaiah talked about God building, is being built all around you even as
we speak. The blueprint God has given us
to follow, to make the world over into the kind of world God desires Earth to
be, is the blueprint that I and others who are with me, are following.”
At
which point they run him out of town.
The
prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus and we have read, lived in a time of
rebuilding. The people of Israel were
back home in the promised land, after years of exile. Everything they had left behind was in ruins,
and they were trying to rebuild the city, reconstruct the Temple, regain the life
they had known, restore the glory they used to have.
And it
wasn’t working. Things weren’t fitting together
the way they used to. They leaders
couldn’t agree on what to start first.
People weren’t working together very well. The rebuilding and reconstruction of the
kingdom was not going well. They were not
succeeding in making Israel great again the way they remembered it.
To
which Isaiah says, “The problem may be you’re not focused on building what God
wants, and what God is doing among us.
God isn’t really into rebuilding what used to be. Just reconstructing the kingdom the way we
remember it, isn’t what God has in mind.
“Because
what God wants to do – and already is doing, is to build a different kind of
kingdom, a different kind of social structure, a different kind of community
than the old one was. God has a blueprint
for how the world is to work, a blueprint that aims at forgiveness, compassion
and support as social norms, and God is calling people – even right here and
now, to help build up the world we have into the kind of world God wants it to
be – a world, a society, a kind of kingdom, a network of communities that will
be good news to the poor, will free the captives, will offer new life for the
oppressed, and create hope for all who have been left out and excluded –
nothing less than the good will of God done on Earth as in heaven.”
I can
imagine that promise, and that vision of God already and always building the
world in the way it’s intended to be, being somewhat unsettling to people around
Isaiah who were tied to their place of privilege in the way the kingdom used to
be. But to Isaiah and to those who
followed him, and many who heard him, the message was joyful.
And
isn’t it also, for us, part of the joy of Christmas?
That
in the birth of Jesus we see God coming in with both feet, entering fully into
the life of this world to help build it the way it’s to be?
To
show us that much more clearly – in living colour and life-size, really, what
the blueprint really is?
And
thus to call us that much more deeply and lovingly into helping to make the
world over into the kind of society, the kind of kingdom, the kind of
communities God really intends this world to be?
We
live it out so happily at Christmas.
And
we know the call to live it out all year.
Thanks be to God.
