Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Isaiah’s words seem harmless enough: “The Lord’s anointed me to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to captives and comfort mourners. Instead of ashes, I have a garland for you.” What’s not to like? Yet Isaiah was not so well received in his day, and six hundred years later it was this very passage that almost got Jesus killed! Our Lord was just thirty years old, you remember, fresh from the carpenter shop, and Luke says he was “filled with the power of the holy spirit.” (Watch out!) He’s been baptized by John, tested by the devil in the wilderness (and passed), he’s even taught in a few small-town synagogues to rave reviews. And now he decides to go home, to Nazareth, where everybody knows him. They invite him to speak in the synagogue, on the Sabbath, and hand him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he searches for and finds this passage:

“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 proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And, after reading from the scroll, Jesus rolls it up, hands it back, sits down and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” There is a long silence, and finally someone says, “Isn’t this Joseph’s kid? Isn’t this the runny nose little boy we all remember? What’s so special about him? He hasn’t performed any miracles here, like they say he did in Capernaum.” And Jesus points the finger back at them: “A prophet is never recognized in his own land,” he says. An argument begins. They grow so angry that they try to throw him off a cliff, but he walks away. (Bus drivers, today, point to a sheer rock wall on the side of Nazareth’s hill, and say that’s where they almost threw Jesus over.) Maybe. Who knows?

Here’s today’s question: what makes us reject the good? Two Sundays ago we talked about Advent being a season of waiting. (“But it’s not like waiting for a bus” I said. “Advent waiting is waiting in faith with a great hope.”) Last Sunday we talked about hope and said it was an essential part of human health and happiness. Today, on the third Sunday of Advent, as we wait hopefully for the coming of Jesus, we must ask ourselves a harder question: what is there in us that makes us want to reject him – as his fellow Nazarene’s did. Why couldn’t they rejoice (Why can’t we rejoice?), without reservation, at his coming, at his promise of healing for the heartbroken, freedom for the captives, etc? Why did they (why do we) turn away, and try to kill, one whose message was (and is) “a bouquet of roses instead of ashes.” Why is good news bad news sometimes?

Because we are more at home in the ashes. The “good news” of the Gospel is wonderful (I guess) – “the hopes and fears of all the years are met” therein -- but news of sin, and violence and punishment goes down easier. It’s the world we know. I keep forgetting Jesus loves me. But I am never unaware, not for one moment, of my own sinfulness or the sinfulness of those around me. I’ve developed a thousand strategies for dealing with sin. It’s been my life. It’s what my parents taught me. I know how to protect myself against the truth about myself and against the incursions of others. I can eat as many dogs as the next guy. But I don’t have any strategies for dealing with love…especially the kind of love that says, “I love you no matter what.” It just brings tears to my eyes. Ashes are easier for me to receive than roses. Isn’t that perverse?

When Peter first meets Jesus, and Jesus tells him where to catch a lot of fish, he is amazed, but he doesn’t say (as we, naively, might have expected), “I want to follow you, Jesus.” He says, “Lord, you better get out of here. I’m a foul-mouth man, and so are all my friends.” Peter can deal with his own world (rough and unsatisfying though it might be), but he has no idea what to do with Jesus – except to send him away.

It’s not simply that we have no mental pigeon hole for Jesus. (That’s always a dizzying experience, not knowing where to place something, or someone, in our brains.) It’s more than that. Because when we do figure what Jesus is all about, we sense, as in a horrifying dream, what enormous changes we will have to make if he is, in fact, the coming of God. And that’s a “stopper” for many of us. If he is what he has always said he was, we cannot be what we have always been. So, maybe, better to reject him.

Jesus’ fundamental message was that, in the Kingdom of God, everything will be reversed: the crooked will be made straight, the weak will have the power, the poor will have the money. His mother, Mary, saw it right off in her own calling: “He hath regarded the lowly estate of his handmaiden,” she marveled. God didn’t take this honor to some pretty little rich girl. Wow! Things are going to be different. He hath filled the hungry with good things to eat, and sent the rich empty away.” Mary saw it. In Jesus we have a new perception of God, and we must, therefore, gain a new perception of ourselves. And when that happens, none of the old rules apply. God doesn’t give us all things that we might enjoy life (as we used to think). God gives us life that we might enjoy all things. And so on. Nothing is ever the same. Better, maybe, to kill him in his cradle, as Herod tried to do.

If we can clear these unspoken objections out of our heads, we will enjoy Christmas more. And the way we clear them is to look them straight in the eye. Yes, this little child is fundamentally different from anything we have ever encountered…after all, he is God, on earth. And yes, to receive him right means we have to change all our strategies for life. Only a few people will pick up on Christmas this year…the rest will simply walk through it. “He (meaning the Word of God, the essence of God himself) was in the world, and (in fact) the world had come into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own (the Jews), and his own people did not accept him (like those in Nazareth). But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” We really don’t want to miss Christmas this year.