Listen to the Prophets

Homily, Advent 3, Yr. B 2011

“And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. And the tenement halls. And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

Simon and Garfunkel wrote those words more than 50 years ago. And they could apply to the words of the Prophet Isaiah we heard today.

“The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me. He sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all prisoners.

This passage in Isaiah was so important that it was read by Jesus in the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, when he was beginning his ministry.

When Jesus read it, and said it applied to him, people got so mad they kicked him out of town. He was a threat to the way things worked in that community and every other community.

The message of Jesus was to change lives—heal the sick, comfort the afflicted, and most threatening—afflict the comfortable.

What Jesus preached was not salvation in some future existence—pie in the sky by and by.

The words of the prophet Isaiah were for Isaiah’s time, they were for Jesus time and they are for today.

The words of the prophet are aimed at those groups who are marginalized in society: the poor, the heartbroken, captives and prisoners. These are real people.
Salvation, according to Isaiah, is not about getting to heaven
but about life in the here and now.

So what would salvation look like in Isaiah’s view?

God sent me to announce the year of his grace -to comfort
all who mourn, To care for the needs of all who mourn in Zion, give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes, Messages of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit. Rename them "Oaks of Righteousness" planted by God to display his glory.

That’s Isaiah’s vision. That is a vision of a mission for God’s people.

Our Diocese is trying to seek a new direction—a direction which turns our focus outward into mission. Mission happens when we turn our attention to those who are named as recipients of the Good News: the poor, the oppressed, , the brokenhearted, the captives, the poor in spirit.

When we are called to turn our attention, we are not called just to write a cheque. Financial support of mission is important, but it is our personal engagement as members of the body of Christ, and members of a faith community that matters even more.

The great Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said the church is the only institution that exists for those who are not its members.

We exist, not to give money, but for the sake of those who are poor, oppressed and brokenhearted. How we are living out the words of Isaiah?

One of the ironies of our current economic system is that the richest part of society—the top one percent the Occupy movement has been directed against-- is rewarded so out of proportion to its
contribution to our economy.

While the church has often been aligned with power and privilege, the Bible, especially in pssages like this one in Isaiah is firmly rooted in caring for the poor and the oppressed.

Mary’s Magnificat has vision of that redistribution of wealth when it says God has “filled the hungry with good things and has sent the rich empty away.”

Jesus has many things to say about the rich people of his time, mostly landowners because Israel was a feudal agrarian society. And most of them are not good.

So as we live in a world where millions upon millions of people are homeless and hungry, while others live in unimaginable—even to us—opulence, there is a need for the church to remember its prophetic roots in Hebrew scripture.

There is a deep yearning for peace and justice, not in some distant future, but as a goal worth struggling for now.

Our Christian faith should not be a privatized faith that sees Christ’s teaching as something which will have to wait until Heaven.

We believe as Christians that God’s kingdom can be realized on earth through the struggle for peace and justice, and following Christ’s great command—to love God and love our neighbours as ourselves.

In Advent we are proclaiming the good news, the good news of John, that God cares for us, and he sends his son as a light to the world.

That Good News means paying attention to the prophets—who tell us that God hates robbery and wrongdoing, loves justice, and offers comfort to the poor, the afflicted and the downtrodden.

I was watching 60 Minutes recently. The documentary reported that not a single executive involved in the banking industry has been brought to justice for the fraudulent mortgage schemes which caused the great economic downturn in 2008 and have forced many thousands of homes to be foreclosed, and caused many people to lose their homes.

In a society which imprisons more of its citizens—mostly poor people—than any other in the world per capita—this indicates what a complete absence of fairness and justice there is…and this in a predominantly Christian country.

So we have a long way to go. And we need to listen to the prophets and to Jesus as we seek to bring the good news to our own communities.