Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Isaiah 61:1-2
1The 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; 2to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
Ever since the first Sunday of Advent, just a couple of weeks ago, people have been asking, “when are we going to start talking about Christmas?” And John and I keep responding with something about preparing the way, preparing our hearts, or in general getting ready for Christmas. Today, we are going to talk about Christmas. Well, sort of.
Once again though, I will ask, “What is Christmas?” And that is a question I have asked for some time. I got a lot mixed signals growing up. Mel Torme told me that Christmas is:
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yule-tide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.
Which, of course left out any notion of decking the halls with boughs of holly, something that we never managed to do at my house.
I knew as a young child that Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul, with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. But even now that I am married to my true love, I have yet to receive 12 drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French Hens, two turtle doves, not even one single partridge in a pear tree.
Now, I do know that Christmas has something to do with dashing through the snow, and being from Western New York, I have done that, though never in a one horse open sleigh.
I have dreamed of a white Christmas, and Corpus Christi even got one last year. I even remember as a child during one unusually warm December saying, “It’s not really Christmas if it doesn’t snow!”
I’ve sung:
I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
and presents on the tree
And I have spent December 25th at work, far away from home, with no mistletoe, no tree and no presents.
But still…
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling,
and everyone telling you,
"Be of good cheer,"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
I love all of these images, because they remind me of a wonderful time of year. They all give me warm and fuzzy feelings. They represent family and love and the magic of this time of the year and I embrace them. But, one of the things I am trying to do in Advent is clarify. I am trying to clarify what things are good in a sentimental way and what things are clearly about Jesus Christ.
There is a big outcry right now (not that it is really a new thing) about the “secularization” of Christmas. Someone the other day wanted me to boycott a large retailer because they were saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” I have to tell you, I think them saying “Happy Holidays” is just fine. I will instead decide whether or not to shop there based on how they treat their employees, who they buy their products from and how they help to take care of the environment.
You see, I am not so interested in what retailers are doing, for their business is to make money and more interested in what we, the church, whose business is changing lives, is doing.
Some people are upset at the President for sending out “Holiday” cards instead of Christmas cards. Once again, holiday cards are fine with me, because I am more interested in how public policy reflects our priorities of justice and mercy than I am in a small token of recognition sent out to friends and campaign contributors.
You see, I think if we are going to stand up at yell, “Put the Christ back in Christmas!” we better stop to consider what the heck that means.
So, as we continue on our journey of Advent, as we continue to prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, let’s take another look at what we are indeed celebrating. As we do that, let’s read about the very first sermon by the young man in question, Jesus of Nazareth.
Luke 4:16-21
16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18"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, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20And 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. 21Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
“C is For?”
Jesus was, of course reading from the prophet Isaiah, which we heard read during our Old Testament reading. As I read from that same passage this week, I realized that perhaps it might yield some clues about what it would actually mean to put Christ back in Christmas.
I don’t want to get all academic here, but let me explain something. The Luke text, I just read, was originally written in Greek but it recounts Jesus reading something that was written in Hebrew. So, I am going to be switching back and forth between Luke and Isaiah, don’t worry. It reads in Isaiah:
1The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me;
At the end of the today’s Luke text, Jesus says:
"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
He is claiming this prophecy. This is about him. He is the anointed one of God, the Christ, and this text tells us what that means.
I think, if we read this carefully, we can see what Jesus is all about, and as we continue to work our way through Advent, we can see what Christmas is all about and more importantly what we should do about it.
1The 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
The first word here is a word of comfort. In Luke’s Greek, there is actually a word euvaggeli,zw (euongaeleitzo) that means “to proclaim good news.” The first thing that Jesus feels called to do, the first thing that we can do to follow is to simply proclaim the good news, bring comfort to the world through sharing the gospel. We can tell the world “there is something else, there is a better way.” We might not totally get it, we don’t have all the answers but we believe that contained in the scriptures, in our tradition, in our attempt to be faithful, is a better life, here on earth and a promise of something more. A word of comfort.
But as Christians we quickly learn that comfort is not always enough. We learn that we have to do more than just talk. Because it doesn’t just say “bring good news,” it says
bring good news to the oppressed
And very often good news to the oppressed has to be more than “come to church” or “Jesus loves you.” The second word here is care. Care is a great word because it is a noun and a verb and even an active and passive verb. I can care deeply for you in my heart, but I can also reach out with my hands and care for you. That’s the kind of care I am talking about and the kind of care I think Isaiah is talking about. If I am oppressed for whatever reason, words of comfort are helpful, but I need more. If I am oppressed by hunger, yes I need to know that Jesus loves me, but I also need something to eat.
This is where I start to see the disconnect with the outcry over the direction Christmas is taking. If the world’s largest retailer says “Merry Christmas” to everyone who walks in, there might be, in there, a word of comfort, but does that translate into care?
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,
“Bind up the brokenhearted…” Bind up here is literally to bind up like you would a wound.
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted,
The third word I see here is the word compassion. That’s a word we bandy about quite a bit, but what does it mean?
com·pas·sion n. Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
That is another word I love, an active noun. It is not just a deep awareness, it is coupled with a desire to do something about it. If I leave it like that, it sounds just like care. But it is more. If we split this word apart and look at it, we have com which is a Latin root meaning with or together with and then passion. Now that is not passion in the intense emotion sense, but in the sense we use it around Easter, as in the passion of Christ, as in suffering. So put this word together and we get suffering with. That is to see one’s pain or burden and suffer with them.
This text isn’t the only clue that Jesus is all about compassion. When you read the gospels you see that Jesus was very concerned and deeply moved with the suffering of others, whether they were poor, sick, trapped by their own bad decisions. I get the impression from the gospels that Jesus would have made a terrible pastor. His disciples were always trying to get him here or there and he was always stopping to help someone. If Jesus was a pastor, he would be so distracted by the needs of others that he would never get his sermon written, never get the bulletin together. He would always be late for the staff meeting and he would probably never return his email, because Jesus had a deep awareness of the suffering of others, coupled with the wish to relieve it. Jesus suffered with those who suffered.
There is actually a word for this in Greek splagcni,zomai (splagknizomy) which means to be moved with compassion that is only used about Jesus, except when Jesus uses it to describe in a parable how we should act – with compassion.
If we are following Jesus we are suffering with those in the world who suffer. We are aware that they suffer and we are moved to relieve their suffering. Comfort and care are assumed in this and it is more. You see I can give comfort and I can give care, without really being all that in touch with one’s suffering. I sometimes help just because it’s the right thing to do or because I feel I should. But when I am truly moved with compassion, I don’t have much choice in the matter. I feel moved to help those I suffer with.
When I get here, I think back to the idea of being upset that the place I shop says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and I think, “so what?” This year alone, there have been a number of devastating hurricanes and floods, a massive earthquake, a record number of people falling below the poverty line, civil wars in countries too poor to feed their people in the first place. And right in our midst, people imprisoned by drug addiction, homelessness, violence, and disease.
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted
Compassion.
And you know what? Jesus will take us further than even compassion.
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor.
Jesus takes us one step further with a word about change. This is what eventually got Jesus into a whole bunch of trouble. No one gets all that upset when you want to bring words of comfort or care or even compassion, but when you start talking about change, people, even good people get upset.
When Jesus is talking about releasing prisoners here, he is not likely talking about murderers, and kidnappers, though Jesus compassion really knows no limit, he is probably talking about political prisoners but even more than that, he could be talking about people imprisoned by anything that keeps them from having a real shot at life. We have that now. We have people imprisoned by generational poverty, lack of education, drug addiction, lifetimes of bad decisions.
Jesus proclaims liberty and release and even more the year of the LORD’s favor. I don’t have time to go into the full ramifications of saying such a thing, but Jesus is talking about change. Jesus is talking about a change in the very systems of society that make put people in these prisons in the first place.
Now this is something that people don’t like to talk much about at Christmas, but this is the kind of savior whose birth we are getting ready to celebrate. This little baby born in a manger did and will call for radical change.
As we are moved with compassion, Jesus calls us to suffer with those who suffer and then begin to figure out why they suffer in the first place and then do something about it.
If you are being particularly attentive, you may fear that this is about to turn political, that I am about to tell you what the government should do to bring about change. I am not. I am going to do something much more difficult. I am going to suggest that we are responsible.
Let me give you an example. I am going to use something that is really on the hearts of some members of this congregation and that has come to my attention. When someone walks through our doors who is imprisoned by poverty, living with little hope of ever getting beyond a place in life that is defined by wondering every day how they will feed themselves and their family, we can follow this pattern.
We can comfort them, invite them in here and tell them the good news.
We can care for them, help to provide for some of the basic needs that they go without.
We can have compassion, taking the time to really understand what it is like to be them.
We can work for change, truly learning about the systemic condition that lead to a life of poverty. We can take time to put aside our assumption, our preconceived notions, our prejudices. And then with a deeper understanding we can look for our role in helping to bring about an individual or on a societal solution. Change.
Man, Christmas is a lot of work. But hear the good news, we are not in this alone. Coming, to this manger, a savior. The son of God born to save us from our own sin and to lead us in truly changing the world, to bring a glimpse of heaven to earth. It is a most wonderful time of year.
