The idea of Sabbath comes from the Creation story … on the seventh day God rested. So once a week we have a Sabbath. But it was extended to include every seventh year … a time to let the fields go fallow as a means of restoration. In the book of Deuteronomy we have the concept of Jubilee … a Sabbath of Sabbaths. That is, every fifty years … seven Sabbath years … every fifty years would be a Jubilee year. In the reading from Isaiah this morning we hear about Jubilee.
In the name of the God of all Creation,
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
The God alive in each of us as God was alive in Jesus,
And the power of God known in the Spirit.
Amen.
The idea of Sabbath comes from the Creation story … on the seventh day God rested. So once a week we have a Sabbath. But it was extended to include every seventh year … a time to let the fields go fallow as a means of restoration. In the book of Deuteronomy we have the concept of Jubilee … a Sabbath of Sabbaths. That is, every fifty years … seven Sabbath years … every fifty years would be a Jubilee year. In the reading from Isaiah this morning we hear about Jubilee.
You’ve heard me say that the way I read Holy Scripture is “just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” For me, it is about how I know this story to be true in my life. Scholars have said that there is no record … in Holy Scripture or elsewhere … that a Jubilee year was ever observed. However, I know for a fact that Jubilee can happen.
40 years ago I was a senior at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Several years before I was teaching mathematics in at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga and planning a leave of absence to finish the work on my doctorate … but my life took an abrupt turn. In the spring of 1972 a very close friend, next door neighbor, and faculty colleague committed suicide just months after receiving his PhD. His death was tragic, but it made me reconsider the life-path I was following. That summer I chose to pursue a call to the ordained ministry. I sold my house in Signal Mountain, Tennessee and moved to Alexandria … outside Washington … to attend seminary. The funds from the sale of our house were to help pay for my three years of studies.
But by the end of 1974 the money had run out. My wife was working in Washington, and I was holding two jobs as well as going to classes. And when my two boys, ages 7 and 4, were not in school, I was also taking care of them. Advent that year … those weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1974 … was a dark time, and I was seriously thinking of postponing my last semester of classes so that my family could get back on its feet. And, as the festival holy day of Jesus’ birth approached, I was anything but joyful.
Just a few months before, at the beginning of fall, I had enrolled my youngest son, Christopher, in a pilot preschool program. We had applied for the program because we qualified as “low-income.” That was the “good news.” However, qualifying as “low-income” also carried a label, and it put us on certain list. In October, when the voucher for free toys from the Salvation Army arrived in the mail I chuckled to myself and thought that it would make a good keepsake … memories of my years in seminary. Little did I know that when December rolled around I would be dependent upon that voucher to put the only gifts that we would share under the Christmas tree … we were that broke.
It was a surreal experience for me to go to the National Guard Armory for the Salvation Army Toy Give-Away. As I stood in line I realized that those around me were just like me, embarrassed … almost ashamed … to be there. There was no holiday cheer in the waiting area, no smiles, no eye contact … only the hush of humiliation. When it came my turn to enter the gymnasium I found rows of tables marked “Girls” and “Boys” and various ages … and large signs saying “Only one toy per child.” Volunteers on the other side of the tables … as well-intentioned as they may have been … seemed to act more like police than Santa’s elves. We were encouraged to move quickly, and as I headed to the exit someone handed me two bags of groceries … and then I was out in the cold.
I stood there trying to comprehend the experience … and tears rolled down my cheeks. I wanted to take it all back inside and shout that I didn’t want their condescending charity, but I knew I had no choice … I needed the toys if there was going to be any Santa at Christmas, and I needed the food if we were going to eat.
It was in that dispirited state that I went, on the Third Sunday of Advent, to my fieldwork parish, St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. I was assigned to read the portion of Isaiah that we heard this morning. Isaiah is proclaiming the spirit of a Jubilee Year. It is a time of forgiving debts, of restoring status, of releasing prisoners, of rescue to the oppressed. Listen again to the words of Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me 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, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
As I read those words I heard them as I had never heard them before. At that moment I truly felt oppressed, and brokenhearted, and a captive to the system … it was as if I was lying in the midst of ashes. Yet, I also heard a promise that was no longer mere words. I knew that my yearning for “everlasting joy” was a gift that would come. I longed for “garlands instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit” … and somehow in my spirit I knew that those promises were a reality that could break through my fears.
As I sat down from reading the portion of Isaiah the choir began singing the Song of Mary … the Magnificat. The Magnificat may be one of the Church’s earliest hymns. It is found in the in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Mary has been visited by the Angel Gabriel and told that she will bear the holy child of God. She immediately goes to see her kinswoman, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Elizabeth greets her with a blessing. It is at that point the Mary sings … and she sings of a world turned upside down … the powerful will be brought down and the lowly lifted up … the rich will be banished and the hungry filled with good things. We sing a version of the Song of Mary each Sunday in Advent as our Hymn of Praise at the beginning of our worship. But as the choir at St. Mark’s, Capitol Hill sang on that Third Sunday of Advent forty years ago, tears again ran down my cheeks.
I would like to be able to tell you that Christmas that year was full of abundance; that some secret Santa filled all our stockings … and my bank account … and the spirit of the holiday overcame my depression. In fact, Christmas that year was cold, rainy, and dark, the gifts were sparse, and Christmas dinner was … well, just another dinner. There were moments of joy and laughter as the boys found what Santa had left them … and tears at our feelings of inadequacy.
However difficult the Christmas of 1974 is in my memory it has also fed my spirit in the ensuing years. Relatively speaking, what my family experienced was minimal compared to the real poverty, and oppression, and captivity, and imprisonment that others in the world know on a daily basis. All one has to do is to look around us today to see those who are homeless, and hungry, and held captive by racism, and imprisoned in abusive relationships. Compared to the security that I had taken for granted, the relative discomfort and inconvenience of the winter of 1974 seems embarrassingly mild.
The reason we read from Isaiah on this Third Sunday of Advent, just a week and a half away from Christmas, is its promise of Jubilee. Not as an abstract notion of celebrating the 50th year … a sabbath of sabbaths … but as a reality incarnate in the world of our own lives
The promise of Jubilee in Isaiah is not an event that happens every 50 years. Rather it is the reality of the Incarnation … Jubilee alive in Jesus. Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God … a world as it would be if the Jubilee year were celebrated all the time. A world where things would be turned upside down. There would be no more oppression … from outside powers or inside forces. There would be no more poverty … no more material poverty and no more spiritual poverty. There would be no more captivity … no more prisons with walls in the world out there, and no more prisons without wall in our own psyche.
On that Third Sunday of Advent in 1974 … when I was a student at Virginia Seminary … I heard the words of Isaiah as I had never heard them before. I recognized my own poverty, brokenhearted-ness, captivity, and that which oppressed me. I also saw with new eyes the oppression of social and economic forces in the greater world. I understood how people of color were held captive by a system that wouldn’t change. And I knew that poverty was much more than just doing without material wealth. And when I heard the words of the Magnificat proclaiming a world turned upside down I could only hope. Yet, when Christmas came in 1974 I felt like I had been cast out. And, yet, I also felt something coming alive in me that has driven me ever since.
If we are to be God’s Incarnation the way that Jesus is God Incarnate then we have to both know those states of poverty, and captivity, and oppression, and grief in our own lives … and then go beyond them to Jubilee. When we celebrate Christmas in just a week-and-a-half it is not just the birth of Jesus we celebrate … we also celebrate the divine spirit of God coming alive in every act of proclaiming good news to the oppressed; the divine spirit of God coming alive every time we reach out to another who is brokenhearted; every time we declare liberty to those in captivity, and every time unlock the doors that hold people in prisons. When we sing our songs of jubilee we become the Incarnation of God … just like Jesus … as we turn the world upside down.
In just a week-and-a-half we will celebrate the birth of Jesus. The holy day is called Christmas. It is also called the Feast of the Incarnation … God coming alive in the world. You and I make that true every time we bring the divine spirit of God into this world … that is the real celebration of the Incarnation. Even in those dark places in our own lives we can remember the promise of Advent … God is coming alive in this world. The promise of Isaiah, and the proclamation of Mary is that when God comes alive in this world it will turn it upside down. God came alive in Jesus. God can also come alive in each of us.
Amen.
You’ve heard me say that the way I read Holy Scripture is “just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” For me, it is about how I know this story to be true in my life. Scholars have said that there is no record … in Holy Scripture or elsewhere … that a Jubilee year was ever observed. However, I know for a fact that Jubilee can happen.
40 years ago I was a senior at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. Several years before I was teaching mathematics in at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga and planning a leave of absence to finish the work on my doctorate … but my life took an abrupt turn. In the spring of 1972 a very close friend, next door neighbor, and faculty colleague committed suicide just months after receiving his PhD. His death was tragic, but it made me reconsider the life-path I was following. That summer I chose to pursue a call to the ordained ministry. I sold my house in Signal Mountain, Tennessee and moved to Alexandria … outside Washington … to attend seminary. The funds from the sale of our house were to help pay for my three years of studies.
But by the end of 1974 the money had run out. My wife was working in Washington, and I was holding two jobs as well as going to classes. And when my two boys, ages 7 and 4, were not in school, I was also taking care of them. Advent that year … those weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1974 … was a dark time, and I was seriously thinking of postponing my last semester of classes so that my family could get back on its feet. And, as the festival holy day of Jesus’ birth approached, I was anything but joyful.
Just a few months before, at the beginning of fall, I had enrolled my youngest son, Christopher, in a pilot preschool program. We had applied for the program because we qualified as “low-income.” That was the “good news.” However, qualifying as “low-income” also carried a label, and it put us on certain list. In October, when the voucher for free toys from the Salvation Army arrived in the mail I chuckled to myself and thought that it would make a good keepsake … memories of my years in seminary. Little did I know that when December rolled around I would be dependent upon that voucher to put the only gifts that we would share under the Christmas tree … we were that broke.
It was a surreal experience for me to go to the National Guard Armory for the Salvation Army Toy Give-Away. As I stood in line I realized that those around me were just like me, embarrassed … almost ashamed … to be there. There was no holiday cheer in the waiting area, no smiles, no eye contact … only the hush of humiliation. When it came my turn to enter the gymnasium I found rows of tables marked “Girls” and “Boys” and various ages … and large signs saying “Only one toy per child.” Volunteers on the other side of the tables … as well-intentioned as they may have been … seemed to act more like police than Santa’s elves. We were encouraged to move quickly, and as I headed to the exit someone handed me two bags of groceries … and then I was out in the cold.
I stood there trying to comprehend the experience … and tears rolled down my cheeks. I wanted to take it all back inside and shout that I didn’t want their condescending charity, but I knew I had no choice … I needed the toys if there was going to be any Santa at Christmas, and I needed the food if we were going to eat.
It was in that dispirited state that I went, on the Third Sunday of Advent, to my fieldwork parish, St. Mark’s on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. I was assigned to read the portion of Isaiah that we heard this morning. Isaiah is proclaiming the spirit of a Jubilee Year. It is a time of forgiving debts, of restoring status, of releasing prisoners, of rescue to the oppressed. Listen again to the words of Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me 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, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
As I read those words I heard them as I had never heard them before. At that moment I truly felt oppressed, and brokenhearted, and a captive to the system … it was as if I was lying in the midst of ashes. Yet, I also heard a promise that was no longer mere words. I knew that my yearning for “everlasting joy” was a gift that would come. I longed for “garlands instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit” … and somehow in my spirit I knew that those promises were a reality that could break through my fears.
As I sat down from reading the portion of Isaiah the choir began singing the Song of Mary … the Magnificat. The Magnificat may be one of the Church’s earliest hymns. It is found in the in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Mary has been visited by the Angel Gabriel and told that she will bear the holy child of God. She immediately goes to see her kinswoman, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Elizabeth greets her with a blessing. It is at that point the Mary sings … and she sings of a world turned upside down … the powerful will be brought down and the lowly lifted up … the rich will be banished and the hungry filled with good things. We sing a version of the Song of Mary each Sunday in Advent as our Hymn of Praise at the beginning of our worship. But as the choir at St. Mark’s, Capitol Hill sang on that Third Sunday of Advent forty years ago, tears again ran down my cheeks.
I would like to be able to tell you that Christmas that year was full of abundance; that some secret Santa filled all our stockings … and my bank account … and the spirit of the holiday overcame my depression. In fact, Christmas that year was cold, rainy, and dark, the gifts were sparse, and Christmas dinner was … well, just another dinner. There were moments of joy and laughter as the boys found what Santa had left them … and tears at our feelings of inadequacy.
However difficult the Christmas of 1974 is in my memory it has also fed my spirit in the ensuing years. Relatively speaking, what my family experienced was minimal compared to the real poverty, and oppression, and captivity, and imprisonment that others in the world know on a daily basis. All one has to do is to look around us today to see those who are homeless, and hungry, and held captive by racism, and imprisoned in abusive relationships. Compared to the security that I had taken for granted, the relative discomfort and inconvenience of the winter of 1974 seems embarrassingly mild.
The reason we read from Isaiah on this Third Sunday of Advent, just a week and a half away from Christmas, is its promise of Jubilee. Not as an abstract notion of celebrating the 50th year … a sabbath of sabbaths … but as a reality incarnate in the world of our own lives
The promise of Jubilee in Isaiah is not an event that happens every 50 years. Rather it is the reality of the Incarnation … Jubilee alive in Jesus. Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God … a world as it would be if the Jubilee year were celebrated all the time. A world where things would be turned upside down. There would be no more oppression … from outside powers or inside forces. There would be no more poverty … no more material poverty and no more spiritual poverty. There would be no more captivity … no more prisons with walls in the world out there, and no more prisons without wall in our own psyche.
On that Third Sunday of Advent in 1974 … when I was a student at Virginia Seminary … I heard the words of Isaiah as I had never heard them before. I recognized my own poverty, brokenhearted-ness, captivity, and that which oppressed me. I also saw with new eyes the oppression of social and economic forces in the greater world. I understood how people of color were held captive by a system that wouldn’t change. And I knew that poverty was much more than just doing without material wealth. And when I heard the words of the Magnificat proclaiming a world turned upside down I could only hope. Yet, when Christmas came in 1974 I felt like I had been cast out. And, yet, I also felt something coming alive in me that has driven me ever since.
If we are to be God’s Incarnation the way that Jesus is God Incarnate then we have to both know those states of poverty, and captivity, and oppression, and grief in our own lives … and then go beyond them to Jubilee. When we celebrate Christmas in just a week-and-a-half it is not just the birth of Jesus we celebrate … we also celebrate the divine spirit of God coming alive in every act of proclaiming good news to the oppressed; the divine spirit of God coming alive every time we reach out to another who is brokenhearted; every time we declare liberty to those in captivity, and every time unlock the doors that hold people in prisons. When we sing our songs of jubilee we become the Incarnation of God … just like Jesus … as we turn the world upside down.
In just a week-and-a-half we will celebrate the birth of Jesus. The holy day is called Christmas. It is also called the Feast of the Incarnation … God coming alive in the world. You and I make that true every time we bring the divine spirit of God into this world … that is the real celebration of the Incarnation. Even in those dark places in our own lives we can remember the promise of Advent … God is coming alive in this world. The promise of Isaiah, and the proclamation of Mary is that when God comes alive in this world it will turn it upside down. God came alive in Jesus. God can also come alive in each of us.
Amen.
