Faith In Real Life Blog: “A Way to Live the Rest of Your Life”
Rev. Vernon Gramling
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Sharing Christ’s Love Worship Series
December 14, 2023
Isaiah 61:1-11
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 broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 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. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; 6 but you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory. 7 Because their shame was double, and dishonour was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs. 8 For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed. 10 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. 11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
Luke 4
16 When 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, 17 and 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, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ 20 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. 21 Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
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I’ve included the Luke text because it gives context to the prophecy in Isaiah. Jesus uses this passage to declare himself as the ‘anointed one’—the one who comes to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, …” You will notice he stops reading before the more traditional expectations of the Messiah are listed—-” They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; 6 but you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God; you shall enjoy the wealth of the nations, and in their riches you shall glory.” Jesus does not lay claim to a warrior Messiah who would make things right. Whatever it means to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, liberty to captives and release of the prisoners or even to proclaim the Lord’s favor did not happen literally. This does not mean that new, wondrous and unexpected things can and do happen—even in the midst of devastation—it just means they do not happen on our terms. We are welcome to our wants and our opinions, but as best as I can tell God has never consulted us about our preferences in the unfolding of history. (Believe me, I have offered my advice numerous times but to no avail). We must wait. We must trust that new things are possible even when we cannot imagine them.
As written this text combines a new vision of the Messiah with some very old visions. Scripture cannot escape our human biases. Our vision and understanding of God’s promises all too often reflect what we know. (We can only use words and images of what we know to describe what we do not know). It is hard not to imagine God as a superhuman hero. Without trying to deal with the countless examples, I will only point to what it turns out to mean to be the messiah.
Our understanding of God changed with Jesus. We believe that God sent Jesus to provide a critical course correction to our understanding of God. We are redirected from a God on High to God manifested as an ordinary man. We trust that new possibilities and new beginnings are always possible. We are called to use God’s presence to live in the present. The life that gives life is lived in our ordinary day to day connections. This is a far cry from the expectation that God’s favor would protect us from pain, suffering and death.
No generation has seen the ‘New Creation’ —at least as we wished and imagined. The exiles never enjoyed the wealth of the nations. Their descendants were more likely to be persecuted and genocidally assaulted than seen as a people who were blessed. Yet, all of these images describe a promise. That promise remains. We just shouldn’t get caught thinking that our vision of the realization of that promise is what God intended.
In FIRL, Jim Hudgins asked me what had the Israelites done to evoke such punitive rage from God? I responded in two ways. First, perhaps they did nothing. In Jim’s case it would be like asking him what he had done to have his wife taken from him in the middle of a vacation. Sometimes, devastation strikes, and we cannot explain it. We cannot explain why or who gets cancer. We cannot explain why some people can cheat their way to wealth and others can lose their jobs without warning. We would rather create imaginary cause and effect rather than face the fact that sometimes we must deal with inexplicable pain.
Notice the old visions of the Messiah in this scripture. The promises of God are compensations for the pain they had suffered— “Because their shame was double, and dishonour was proclaimed as their lot, therefore they shall possess a double portion; everlasting joy shall be theirs.” We so desperately hunger for a predictable world; we create our own version of justice—which almost always means it was somebody’s fault. In real life, this is painfully common. Abused men and women very often blame themselves for the cruelty of others. Paradoxically it is often easier to accept blame than face the fact that they are orphans with living parents. That is a terrible knowledge and it is hard enough to cope without adding the idea that the child somehow caused the pain. Sometimes, for reasons way above our pay grade, we are born in the wrong country, in the wrong time or to the wrong parents. We know this to be true but we cannot explain it. We are vulnerable creatures. But it is to such creatures that the anointed one, the messiah, comes. The messiah comes to meet us in the middle of the hardness of life. He comes to comfort, to bind up, to share our hardships. He comes to teach us that such presence is saving. Such presence allows the exiles to start a new life when their old one was shattered. Such presence allows us the same possibilities.
That said the Israelites, and we, are often complicit in the pain we experience. But as this passage demonstrates, even when we are the agents of our own suffering, the Messiah comes. In the biblical record, the confederacy of tribes wanted the security that a king and a nation would supposedly provide. Israel sought to ensure its safety through its own agency—and that is a guaranteed fail. Theologically it is a different version of works-righteousness. Nothing we do or acquire protects us from our fundamental mortality and vulnerability. “We are grass and the grass withers….” That is a hard but valuable lesson.
So, I ask the same question. How do we find comfort in the face of profound disappointment and loss? This week, the answer lies in the promise that no matter what happens to us, it is possible to rebuild our lives. Most of us will lose people we love, all of us will find our bodies decaying. Many of us will dream and be disappointed. Only when we live within ourselves and in the present can we honor God’s new way. The rebuild will not be measured by what we once had and certainly not by what we deserve. But life and love will be possible. That was the promise to the returning exiles. That is the promise to us.
I got my first taste of this lesson in my twenties. I visited an elderly woman in a nursing home. She and her roommate had roughly the same histories. Both were in wheelchairs, both had difficulty seeing and hearing, both had outlived their friends and both had very few visitors. But one was a joy to visit and the other not so much. She was angry and withdrawn. Her heart was still beating but she seemed to take little joy in her life. I asked the first woman how it was that she retained her joy when she had been through so much. She told me that as a young girl, she had been a runner. It gave her great joy. But early in her athletic career, she broke her knee cap. Her athletic career was over. She was depressed, discouraged and angry. But after a time, she asked herself the question: “What will I do with the rest of my life?” Her life would never be the same but it didn’t have to end. After that, whenever life took a left turn, she asked the same question.
Similarly, RG tells the story of his grandmother who had crippling arthritis. She lived for years with steadily increasing disability. But she spent those years calling people in her community. She expressed her mindfulness of others within the limitations of her life. She was a gift to the people who knew her. In both stories, it would have been easy to have lost the life they had left.
Some of us face great grief, some of us have lost children, some of us are estranged from the people we love, some of us are depressed and anxious. All of this and more makes it even more important to ask “What will I do with the rest of my life?” How can I live and love when all I can see is darkness? These are questions each of us must answer—no matter what disappointment or loss slaps us in the face. These are the questions of advent.
While the Old Testament promises a restoration of what was lost, such restoration certainly did not occur for the ancient Israelites. It took an anointed one, a Messiah, to show ‘a more excellent way’. Without such guidance we are very prone to losing our lives to what we think is fair or what we think we deserve.
Or in the words of Charlie Brown—a prophet of a different sort— “worrying won’t stop the bad stuff from happening, it just stops you from enjoying the good.” Take heart, Emmanuel is coming.
Trust that love will prevail even in the face of unimaginable loss. Live like love matters. In the end, it is all that matters. Let it be so.
Vernon Gramling is a Parrish Associate at DPC. He has been providing pastoral care and counseling for over 45 years. You can find more about Vernon, the Faith in Real Life (FIRL) gatherings and Blog at our staff page or FIRL.
