“Planting the Seeds of Justice”

by

Rev. Samuel Alexander

Preached at Old First Presbyterian Church

San Francisco, California

December 15, 2002

Sermon 339

Old Testament Reading:                       Isaiah 61:1-11 

{1}  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; {2} to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, 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 dishonor 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} I 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.

 New Testament Reading:                       Luke 4:16-30

{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 favor." {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." {22} All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" {23} He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" {24} And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. {25} But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; {26} yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. {27} There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." {28} When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. {29} They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. {30} But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

  Would you pray with me?

 Spirit of God, draw close to us.  Continue to work in our imaginations and in our hearts.  Strengthen us with your word for Christ’s sake.  Amen.

 Well, a couple of weeks ago we opened the Automatic God Machine, and we saw what was in it, and there was nothing there, and when I preached a sermon that day (some of you were here), we talked about redemptive imagination, about our ability as people of the word to imagine some wondrous work of God that might be drawn through the doors of Heaven into our world.  We sat in silence at the end of that sermon and tried to imagine what it was that our prayer would be, each one of us, during this advent season. 

 I wonder what some of them are.  I wonder what you chose, and if you weren’t here I wonder what you would chose now, what prayer, what great work of God would you like to see come through those doors into this world and into your life.  For some people it may be huge, like Peace in our time.  I listened to Jimmy Carter this week, I think it was an old interview, where he talked about what he prayed most of all for was to be able to keep the nation at peace during his presidency.  He also said he prayed more during his presidency than at any other time in his life.  I thought that was interesting.  So, maybe Peace. 

 On the other hand, maybe your interest is in finding a way to work out difficult relationships; a marriage, a partnership where there seems to be tension and always grousing and difficulty and fights, looking for ways to get inside the way people relate so there can be some peace and some encouragement in this season.  It might be internal stability for yourself.  You may have some sense that depression is completely clouded over your life, and it is very difficult to lift yourself up, and you are looking for the Lord to reach down through the doors into your heart and somehow lift you up just enough to be able to see the horizon and gather some word of hope. 

 Isaiah had an image of hope.  He put it this way, and I will read just a few verses of the passage we read this morning.  When Isaiah looked at the doors of heaven and wanted to call something down, it went like this, “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 vengence of our God, to comfort everyone who mourns, 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 the Lord’s glory.”

 Isaiah had a poetic way of describing what it was that he was interested in seeing come down through heaven.  This is one of those prophetic visions of hope that I talk about sometimes.  The prophets were a group of people that were largely very judgmental and dour.  They didn’t have a lot of good to say, and that is because they didn’t see a lot of good around them.  They had words of judgment mostly, judgment on a nation that did not follow God and did not take care of its poor.  Two things the prophets were interested in were worshiping God and taking care of the poor, and so the judgment was announced, and it was horrifying most of the time, but always in each one of the prophets just some little bit of hope beyond the horizon of the judgment.

 For Jeremiah it is the new covenant engraved in our heart.  For Ezekiel, if you read the end of it he imagines a huge, beautiful, perfect temple, a sanctuary where we could be close to our God coming down out of heaven.  Isaiah thinks about a servant.  Isaiah thinks about an anointed one, someone who is given power, who is empowered by God, an anointed one.  This empowered one brings liberty to people, sets them free from the things that have pressed them down and made their lives less than what God imagined them to be.  This one frees the slave.  This one is powered by the Spirit, and as this anointed one begins to fill people’s lives and work in the world we begin to see that people flourish and grow, and they reflect the Glory of God.

 Have you ever taken a good hard look at a plant?  Just from here they are beautiful, but if you study them you recognize how the cells operate, how everything works together, how different everything is.  The deeper you get into that the more incredible the creation becomes.  It reflects the Glory of God in the same way that the more God works in your life and in your soul the more you reflect the glory and the wonder of a Creator that wants nothing more for you than love, nothing more for you than the hope of a full life and a complete life working towards the goals of the Kingdom of God.  Plants, reflecting the Glory of God, and all of it comes because of an anointed one. 

 Scholars actually argue at some length about who the anointed one is.  Most scholars don’t make the assumption that Isaiah could see into the future and knew that it was Jesus.  He has a vision of hope, and he is thinking of a King, but after a certain point it begins to seem as though he is also envisioning a nation that is anointed, so it is a King that Isaiah is envisioning, but it is also this anointed kingdom that announces good news for the poor, that announces liberty, freedom for the captives of all kinds.  The King and the nation, but years later a man named Jesus came to his hometown of Nazareth, and he identified himself with that very passage.  He stood in the synagogue. He read that passage, and he said, “In your presence this prophesy has been fulfilled.  In your presence the Spirit of God has moved and is going to make his Kingdom grow in such a way that the plants will flourish, the people will be lifted up, hope will come through the doors of heaven.

 And so it is that Jesus is born into this world, born into this world as an infant, unformed in character but waiting to grow to maturity, born and always being born in each one of our lives as an infant, being formed waiting to grow into maturity, and each and every time you and I open up our hearts, open our souls and accept the anointing of the Spirit, the empowering of the Spirit of God  enables us to grow in maturity, so that we can come to reflect the glory and the love of God.

 Jesus, always growing to maturity in our hearts.  Each time we open our hearts we have the same power that empowers Jesus in his ministry.  The strength of the gospel, the strength of God’s hand coming down through the doors of heaven is every bit as strong in you as it was in Jesus of Nazareth because the promise from Jesus is that his life will grow inside you.  That is the enormous hope that the gospel brings.  We have hope and strength, spiritual power that comes to us because God reaches into this world and wants to love us.

 I think one more word has to be said about this power because you may not feel completely empowered to do all the things that you have dreamed to do, to accomplish all of the hopeful things that you have been praying for over these last weeks, and it is not surprising.  Nelson Mandela in one of his most famous speeches said this:  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”  Are we afraid that we are powerful beyond measure, because if we are powerful beyond measure, if the Spirit of God continues to grow and mature in us, then that carries a tremendous responsibility and tremendous possibility for change, change in our world, change in our hearts, and change is something we avoid and we are afraid of.  We resist it at all costs.

 My friend, Eric (I haven’t mentioned him in a while, and I thought I would take this chance), tells me that the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal is this.  A Conservative does not want change.  A Liberal wants change, but not now.  We resist.  We resist because it is painful.  We carry crosses that are painful, burdens that are painful, because to change would seem more painful still.  If you want to change what is going in your partnership or your marriage it could be that the light of the mirror will reflect back on you.  It could be that that will be a painful moment of change and vulnerability for you.  If you want to find out what is deep underneath you disturbing your stability and your peace, you will find things that will be painful, but the Spirit of God will be there.  The Spirit of Hope will live through those things.  Just be clear there is resistance to change.

 If you prayed for peace for this world and you work consistently for peace in this world, believe me you will find resistance, and that little child that was born into this world, that grew and was nurtured and matured found out what kind of resistance comes.  In this very story in Luke, when Jesus was in Nazareth, they objected to the man who wanted change, to the man who wanted peace.  They objected, and they tried to stone him.  Apparently this is the way you stoned people in those days.  You carried them out to a cliff.  You dumped them off head first - that should knock them out - and then you threw the stones at them.

 All the resistance in the world couldn’t stop the gospel from moving from that point and going further.  The deep, powerful, spiritual presence of Jesus of Nazareth moved him to move through that crowd and carry the message and the word of Hope beyond that place.  Nothing could stop the word of God.  Nothing could stop the Spirit, especially in the gospel of Luke.  It is a real theme with him.  Always the Spirit getting challenged, and always the Spirit breaking through, the ultimate challenge coming on the cross when you think the voice of the Spirit has been silenced, and then the hope of resurrection comes.

 You and I have a big challenge.  We are more powerful than we could possibly be imagining, because the Spirit of God is upon us.  It has anointed us, given us power to change the world.  Beware of that power.  It is scary sometimes.  It brings pain sometimes, but on the other side is hope and resurrection.  On the other side are all those things we prayed down out of heaven. On the other side is a plant that flourishes, people that flourish and reflect the Glory of God.  Courage!

 Let us pray.

" Spirit of God, we want to be anointed with your power, or at least we want it to be easy.  Send us your strength and your courage that we may make use of your driving force in our lives.  In Christ’s name we pray. Amen."

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