Isaiah 61:1 - 62:3 (links validated 11/9/23)

this past week, as Jews worldwide celebrated Hannukah, a Rabbi friend shared this striking photo of the menorah, I remembered first seeing just a few years ago. Initially, what caught my attention was that it was in black and white. These days, we’re so accustomed to colorful photos, videos, and GIFs that the sheer simplicity of it made you want to stop your thumb from scrolling and pause. But then, when you began focusing on the picture, you could see the Nazi flag in the background. As told by the New York Times in 2017, the story explained how this picture came from the home of Rabbi Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel. The Posners witness was compelling in explaining how the holiday and, equally importantly – this display – was more important than my friends may have led me to believe growing up. Since this glorious miracle first took place all those centuries ago, God had directed His Chosen People to publicize it by sharing the menorah to ensure people could see it clearly across marketplaces or through the windows of their homes. The menorah was another clear sign of God’s relationship with His people. However, in times of danger and persecution – which, sadly, the Jewish people have not been alien to (and somewhat dumbfounding to us living in these oh-so-progressive and enlightened times and places again in 2023 right here in the United States are experiencing once again which should be of great shame, concern and movement to action for all of us) – – the Jewish people were told by their leaders that in times of persecution that they could light the candles in private. The Posners would forgo that loophole as the rise of Nazism ended up having a firm grip on their homeland...

With a toddler in our home, I can vouch for how willing children are to hear the same story over and over again. They notice every skipped page to hasten bedtime and, in the case of their most treasured books, parents have them nearly memorized by the time their child graduates to reading for themselves. This week, you might consider reaching out to some members of the congregation with young children, asking for their favorite books. During a children message or even at the start of the sermon, consider starting off with some lines from these books: “In the great green room, there was… “Oooo snuggle puppy of mine, everything about your is especially fine…” “I’ll love your forever, I’ll like you for always…” That is how beloved this text was to the Israelites on the underside of power, at first in exile and then under Roman occupation. But the One whose coming we await in this Advent season will change the text. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that, as the human mediator, he allows it to say what it was always intended to say!

Holding the tension of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, It is the time of year for new and continued commitments, for fresh starts and the opportunity to remember and renew our participation in God’s covenant with us. When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled by Howard Thurman, serves as a beautiful call to covenant renewal. When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among people, To make music in the heart.

Not long ago people discovered a lengthy correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiancée, Maria von Wedmeyer. The Nazis had imprisoned him for plotting with members of the German resistance to assassinate Adolf Hitler. They executed Bonhoeffer just a few days before World War II’s end. Yet not long before that, on a day like that on which we proclaim and hear Isaiah 61, just twelve days before Christmas, the prisoner wrote his fiancé: “Dearest Maria, let us celebrate Christmas … Don’t entertain any awful imaginings of me in my cell, but remember that Christ, too, frequents prisons, and that he will not pass me by.”...

In Isaiah 61:10 the prophet announces that God has “clothed” him in a distinct way. God has dressed him, he says, “with garments of salvation and arrayed” him “in a robe of righteousness.” In his book, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Vol. 1: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, William Manchester notes that Victorian London’s “Gentlemen, no less than ladies, could be identified by their clothing. They wore top hats, indoors and out, except in homes or churches. Cuffs and collars were starched, cravats were affixed with jeweled pins, waistcoats were snowy white, wide tabular trousers swept the ground at the heel but rose in front over the instep, black frock coats were somber and exquisitely cut...

Dave, age 16, acting out his frustrations, broke a window of a car a few blocks from his home. He didn’t know Mrs. Weber, the elderly owner, and she had not known any teenagers personally for years. So after years of absorbing society’s negative stereotypes about teenagers, this experience made her acutely fearful. The typical criminal justice system would have punished Dave and ignored Mrs. Weber. Instead, a restorative justice program enabled the parties to meet with a mediator and address the problem constructively. Their meeting helped Dave recognize for the first time that he had financially and emotionally hurt a real, live human being, and so he sincerely apologized. In turn, Mrs. Weber, whose fears had escalated and generalized to an entire generation, was able to gain a realistic perspective and feel compassion for this one individual. They agreed that Dave would compensate her loss by mowing her lawn weekly until September and performing a few heavy yard chores. Each day while Dave worked, Mrs. Weber baked cookies which they shared when he finished. They actually came to appreciate each other...

December 14, 2017 by RadicalDiscipleship Wild Lectionary: Holy Land Mt Erbal caves Mt Arbel Caves Advent 3B Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Luke 1:46b-55 By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson Just north of Magdala in Galilee stand the cave-pocked cliffs of Mt. Arbel. Twice in a hundred years, Roman soldiers shot fire into the caves to destroy Israelites who refused to give in to imperial rule. The first occasion was the imposition of Herod as king in 40 BCE, while the second was during the Roman-Jewish war of the mid-60s CE. We climb the startlingly rocky and steep path around the caves, marveling at both the modern, metal, hand-foot holds and cables that made our ascent possible, and the stubborn determination of both Romans and Israelites to accomplish their ends whatever the risk. The experience gave a profoundly new meaning to the Israelites’ hope for a Messiah, a God-anointed leader who would finally bring peace and freedom...

won’t lie to you, I am tired. I am weary of hearing day after day about an other one falling. Men, mostly. Wealthy, powerful, influential men who somewhere along the way forgot what it is to be human among humans. Humane among others who are so very vulnerable. And no, it’s not the news of this alone that tires me, but the realization that what I have experienced in times and places and ways which never made headlines (#metoo / #churchtoo) was in no way exceptional. Not at all. And weary, yes, at the necessity to revisit in my own heart, my own visceral memory, what happened to me when I was young. For while it has been decades ago now, you who have been there know it never really leaves you...

Actual pictures (or your own verbal pictures) of the fire ravaged towns on the West Coast and the hurricane blasted areas of the Gulf Coast and the riot ruined cities all over the US and the COVID induced chaos in emergency rooms and classrooms—such scenes of devastation will put your congregants in touch with “those who grieve in Zion… with a spirit of despair (verse 3).” Pair these with first responders moving through the smoke and sorrow to offer help that is heroic, but never enough. In Advent we await the coming of One who will bring help that is more than enough.

As I write this piece, I just finished performing a wedding for a young couple I have known for a long time. It was a festive celebration of their long-nurtured love and their solemn vows to stay faithful even if the love grows cold. They were filled with joy, but they both knew very well that this one event was not the end of their work. In a pre-marriage counselling session, I asked them what they expected their marriage to be like. She answered, “a struggle, hard work, but well worth it.” That’s realistic. They are already married, but they have a long way to go to full marital maturity. They are already together, but not yet one flesh in the fullest sense. A wedding does not a marriage make. Incarnation alone does not accomplish salvation. There’s atonement through death and resurrection. And restoration through Word and Spirit in the church. And consummation when the Incarnate, crucified and risen Christ completes his work in the world.

Caspar David Friedrich uses some of the same elements as Isaiah but tells a different story in his painting Abbey in the Oakwood. The painting, like many of Friedrich's, has humans and human-made elements in small proportion to the size of the painting. The majority of the canvas is filled with the vastness of nature.

Napoleon Bonaparte decided to give himself a crown. He had demanded the Pope attend the coronation ceremony as Emperor, but when the moment came to put the crown on his head, Napoleon took the crown from the Pope and placed it on his own head. The sketch here was drawn by Jacques Louis David, who attended the coronation and created finished paintings of other episodes of Napoleon's rise to Emperor...

One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures she'd seen on holy cards and devotional pictures. She finally got up her nerve and asked, "Excuse me, are you Jesus?" "I am." "Do you work here?" "No, I own the store." "Oh, what do you sell here?" "Just about everything," Jesus said. "Feel free to walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is you want and then come back and we'll see what we can do for you." She did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up at her and smiled. "No problem." And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up and laid out the packets. She asked, "What are these?" "Seed packets," Jesus said. "This is a seed store." She said, "You mean I don't get the finished product?" "No, this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits." "Oh," she said. And she left the store without buying anything...

("One of the great stories to come out of the Second World War was the rescue and liberation in January of 1945 of 513 American and Allied prisoners of war, survivors of the Bataan Death March held in a prison camp in the Philippines..." and other illustrations)

("About the same time that Ambrose ministered in Italy, Saint Basil the Great served as Bishop of Caesarea in central Turkey. Like Ambrose he too spoke Marian truth to the powerful emperor Valens who tried to intimidate him...")

John Claypool, a brilliant Southern Baptist pastor and preacher who became an Episcopalian priest, preached four sermons from the Book of Job while his nine-year-old daughter, their only daughter, was dying of leukemia. In the final sermon he said: 'God reminded Job that the things he had become so indignant about losing actually did not belong to him in the first place. They were gifts - gifts beyond his deserving, graciously given him by Another... To be angry because a gift has been taken away is to miss the whole point of life. That we ever have the things we cherish is more than we deserve. Gratitude and humility rather than resentment should characterize our handling of the objects of life.' In his book Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, he tells how he came to thank God for the *nine years!!!* he and his family had enjoyed the company of their gorgeous little girl, Laura Lue...

("If you are a devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, then not only have you read these outstanding novels, you have likely seen the film versions of The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's fictional world of Middle Earth, there is a threat arising in the east as the dark Lord Sauron attempts to find the one ring of power....")

("I once read a poem written by a Korean girl. It is just one girl's words and yet, as Douglas John Hall has noted, these words could fit equally well on the lips of altogether too many people with whom we share this planet: My mother's name is Worry...")

("A Sunday school teacher in Kansas reports this conversation in her class: 'If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?' she asked the children in her Sunday school class...")

("Back in the 1990s Mary Fisher learned that her husband had AIDS. She got tested and learned that she was HIV positive. Suddenly, she was plunged into a wilderness in which she described herself as 'a pilgrim on the road to AIDS'. She began to prepare their two young sons to become orphans. She spoke out, wrote and advocated for justice and mercy. In her book, I'll Not Go Quietly, she wrote about today's text from Isaiah...")

Christian Peacemaker Teams have been present in Iraq since October 2002. They work with detainees of both United States and Iraqi forces. They host regular delegations of committed peace and human rights activists to conflict zones, who join teams in working with civilians to document abuses and develop non-violent alternatives to armed conflict. James Loney, 41 years old, from Toronto, has been a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams since August 2000, and is currently the Program Coordinator for CPT Canada. On previous visits to Iraq, his work focused on taking testimonies from families of detainees for a report on detainee abuse, and making recommendations for securing basic legal rights. James was leading the November 2005 delegation in Iraq when he went missing—kidnapped by a group called ‘Sword of Righteousness’ along with Harmeet Singh Sooden, Tom Fox and Norman Kember. Two years ago James wrote this article. “My father is 70 years old. I am 39. I first told him in September [2003] that I was planning to go to Iraq with a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams to do human rights work. He said, “Well James, I’m not very excited about it,” and then, “I wish you’d think of your mother and I when you do these things.”...

He sat in the kitchen staring at a cup of coffee. He had spent the previous night in jail; arrested and imprisoned for going 25 in a 30 mph zone. A few minutes before someone called. They introduced their remarks with a racial slur and then said. "We are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this two in tree days, we're going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house. In the next room, Coretta was sleeping along with their newborn daughter, Yolanda. In his own words, the Rev. dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described that moment: And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep.... And I got to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. I was weak...

There is a lot of mourning going on in our world today. The British journalist killed in Yemen. The Somali security personnel killed by a car bomb meant for a United Nations convoy The 36 innocent workers executed in Kenya The Arab-Jewish school that was set on fire...

At my son’s birth a very conscientious pediatrician took the time and patience to really LOOK into my infant’s eyes. It’s very hard to look deep into the eyes of a crying newborn with an ophthalmoscope in order to see back beyond the lens. When an infant cries they instinctively squeeze their eyes shut very tight...

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