The Promise of Homecoming
Sermon
Promise of Peace, Call for Justice
SERMONS FOR ADVENT, CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY
Cate Strickland Galitsky is almost forty years old. She is twice married and divorced. She has been teaching English at Melanchthon College, in Iowa but her job has been cut out in an economic squeeze. An affair with an older man has led to pregnancy and her aborting the child. Cate's life is falling down around her head. She picks up the phone and calls her mother, just widowed, in Mountain City, North Carolina. She asks if she could use the family beach cottage at Ocracoke for the summer to help heal her wounds.
Cate returns to Mountain City to visit her mother before going on to Ocracoke. Her mother has invited herself and her younger daughter Lydia, Cate's sibling, to go to the beach. During their stay at the beach Cate and Lydia have a fierce fight. Cate burns cardboard in the summer cottage's fireplace. Sparks set the roof on fire and the cottage burns. Cate then decides to go to her parents' home in Mountain City while her mother goes to Virginia to care for a school friend who has cancer.
Cate's return to her home place is therapeutic and a "balm of Gilead" for her bruised and torn life. She heals a broken relationship of years with her crotchety old Aunt Theodora. She spends time with her elderly Uncle Osgood on his small farm up in the mountains, hearing family stories. She turns forty while she is in Mountain City. She is reconciled with her sister Lydia. Her homecoming effects healing and putting back together for her bruised and broken life.
Cate Strickland Galitsky is a major character in Gail Godwin's novel, A Mother and Two Daughters. Gail Godwin narrates that one can go home again and, in the homecoming, there is a healing and renewing which can occur in order to continue to live life afresh.
The promise of homecoming permeates our text for this day. Israel - both the Northern Kingdom and Judah - have experienced the shattering reality of military defeat and exile. The life of God's people has been broken by divine judgment because of the people's unfaithfulness. Now God speaks a new word to Israel who is weak and powerless. God promises to save the people of Israel, to gather them from the scattered places they have been sent, to protect and defend them as the Shepherd who will lead them home by the most direct route and by brooks of water to sustain and nourish them.
In the midst of our shattered dreams, broken hopes, torn lives, God speaks a similar word. The promise is God will provide a homecoming for us. The word that God speaks has taken human flesh and been born in a Bethlehem stable. The word of salvation our God speaks is nailed fast to a cruel cross and burst forth from an empty tomb. The "balm of Gilead" for our exiled lives is poured out for us in the rushing waters of baptism, in broken bread and gushing wine, in the presence of the Holy Spirit calling and gathering us together in the community of God's church, in which community we are enlightened, sanctified, and protected. God promises us a homecoming that will heal, that will refresh, that will restore us and our lives.
God promises a homecoming for the people whom God has saved and delivered from the exile of defeat and disaster. And, coming home again, God will provide for their needs to feed and nourish and sustain them. We can come home and be made whole. Our "life shall be like a watered garden, and (we) shall languish no more." (Jeremiah 31:12)
The promise of homecoming that God effects for us then involves celebration. We shall be enabled to dance and make merry, for our mourning is turned into sorrow and our sadness into gladness. We can joyously make fools of ourselves for the One who loves us, just as lovers have always done.
Gail Godwin's story of A Mother and Two Daughters closes with a party that Cate Strickland Galitsky throws at Uncle Osgood's farm, which he left to her in his will. The party is in honor of Lydia's son, Dicky, who has married a black woman from Atlanta. There is food and wine and laughter. The whole family is gathered for this homecoming. Mother Nell and her two daughters, Lydia and Cate, are shown to be healed from their pain, their brokenness, and their own exiles of widowhood, divorce, and unemployment.
God comes to be like us in Jesus and to be with us in order that we may come home to our God. We can go home again in spite of who and what we are, because our God loves us and, in divine prodigality, showers us with the gift of salvation, the gift of sustenance, the gift of wild celebration for Jacob is free again!
Isaiah 60:1-6
The Epiphany of our Lord
The Promise of Light
During the 1960-61 academic year I was a first-year seminarian at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. It snowed that winter the week before Christmas vacation. When we left in mid-March for spring break we had not seen the ground clear of snow since early December. There was a period of two weeks in January-February when the temperature never got above zero. The winter was cold, dark, dreary, and depressing for me.
Being from Concord, North Carolina, I had never experienced so much snow at one time nor for such an extended period of time. It was the first time in my life I had been that far away from home for that length of time. My academic work was challenging and calling for me to rethink and reconstruct a lot of things that I thought had been settled and fixed.
That year was also the beginning of the Civil Rights movement attack on racial discrimination through bus rides into the deep South. It was the year John F. Kennedy was elected President of the U.S.A. It was a year of turmoil, of loneliness, of upheaval, of darkness and pain. I experienced exile from my roots, my family, myself, and the symbols and institutions that had rooted me with purpose and meaning in my life in the world. Darkness, thick darkness, permeated the world in which I lived.
Today our world is heavy with the darkness of defeat, despair, and death. The economic disasters of industry and agriculture have turned light into darkness through loss of jobs, loss of farms, loss of homes, loss of a sense of human dignity and worth. The oppressive weight of unjust political and racial policies across our world create a darkness of inhumanity and death and homelessness for thousands of people. The emrror and oppression of poverty and homelessness in our cities, of institutional "holding tanks" for the elderly and infirm, of drug and alcohol abuse, of child and spouse abuse shut out light and drop a curtain of impenetrable darkness that chokes and kills. In our well-manicured and security-tight suburban communities there is the darkness of exile rooted in our meaningless boredom and routine without knowing why we do it or what our lives are all about.
The prophet called Third Isaiah addresses a word of God to Jerusalem and her inhabitants who have returned from Babylonian exile. These peonle had heard the enlightening promise of Second Isaiah that God would return them from their exile of defeat and death to a restored and magnificent city. The reality of this city and the return from Babylon did not match the promise. The city was in ruins, the people were weak, defenseless, and poor. Thick darkness covered the people of God and Jerusalem.
The prophet cries out in exultation that the glory of God will certainly arise upon the people. God will shine the light of the divine presence upon the people and Jerusalem. They will be reflectors of that light of God to attract and bring to Jerusalem strangers, nations and kings. In their coming, these people will bring with them the sons and daughters of exile and wealth and animals to replace Jerusalem's poverty. The foreigners will also praise God in Jerusalem. The light of God's active presence will bring new life and prosperity for Judah and Jerusalem.
The light of the world, Jesus, shines in the manger of Bethlehem. The foreign wise men come to praise God and bring gifts for the presence of God in our midst. Jesus is the light of the presence of God and the light of the salvation of God that pierces the veil of darkness which covers our world and lives. The darkness of Good Friday could not stop the Easter's dawn from bursting forth to shine radiantly into every drab and dark nook and cranny of our lives and world.
There are people and structures in our cities at work to provide food and shelter for the poor and the homeless. There are people hard at work in our cities seeking ways to change our structures and systems which produce dark despair for the weak and the powerless. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
There are people and structures seeking ways to support and assist people who have lost their land, their homes and their jobs. There are people hard at work seeking ways to change the realities of darkness that have destroyed and depressed so many dreams and lives. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
Through social service agencies people are hard at work seeking to provide support, counsel, and necessary care for abusers of drugs and alcohol and their families. There are people and institutions seeking to give care and support and protection for abused children and spouses. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
In April of 1961, after the snow melted and the dark cold of winter was displaced by spring, I, often with others, would go onto the green lawn of the quad in front of the dorm. We would take a blanket, stretch out with our shirts off, and bask in the light and warmth of the spring sun. Energy and enthusiasm replaced tiredness and despair. The dreary reality of papers and final exams seemed not so formidable and threatening. The light did shine in the darkness.
And in that warm light of the New Haven spring we rejoiced, danced and gave thanks. The returned exiles in Jerusalem would reflect the light of God's shining presence and salvation, attracting foreigners to Jerusalem to worship and praise God. The light of God's guiding star led the foreign Magi to the Babe in the stable and they worshiped him.
We have known the brilliant love of our God's glory manifested to us. God in Christ has led us out of darkness into his marvelous light. We are warmed and energized by God's salvation given to us so freely. In the waters of baptism we have been washed clean and now become those who reflect the light of our God's goodness so others may come to praise and worship God and join with us in our lives of service and redemption of all that God has made.
Epiphany! God is made manifest to us and the world. God's light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, will not overturn it. We have beheld God's glory in the Christ who has come to be with us. Thanks be to God.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Baptism of Our Lord (Epiphany 1)
The Call to Servanthood
In a small textile town in North Carolina, more years ago than I want to remember, there was a house and yard in a neighborhood that collected children from six to sixteen years of age to play. The children would swarm, sometimes as many as two dozen, to play baseball, kickball, hide and seek, old man kick the can, prisoner's base. Usually someone would volunteer, or be volunteered, for captain, to choose sides. When it was my turn to be captain, to choose the side, I always wanted the best hitter or fastest pitcher. I always made sure I got the fastest runner or the quickest and best hider. I wanted to be on the side of the one who could kick the can the farthest. I liked to win. I wanted to win. I was known to cry if I did not win.
In that same town I remember my grammar school days. Some of us had a team in the Boys' Club Basketball League. One friend of mine who was very small was on the team. He was not very adept at playing basketball, but he was on the team. Yet he was never chosen to play very much. When he did play, he usually hurt the team. One year the team was runner-up in the league. At the banquet they gave each of us little silver basketballs. But we had one player too many. We had to choose who would not get a silver basketball. Several felt the runt ought not receive a silver basketball. However, the biggest guy on the team said he would give up his award for the runt. Later the team chipped in to buy a basketball for the fellow who gave his up.
In the matter of choosing, the world is not much different today. Always we seek the best, the brightest, the richest, the strongest, the fastest, the largest. All of us here in this Seminary
community are here after some sort of screening process, faculty and student alike. Our credentials have been checked. Our grades, interviews, publications, possibilities, potentialities, and worth have been weighed and measured. And after a rigorous screening process, still we are checked to see that we were correctly chosen.
We have just gone through a period of evaluation. People have been checking out our chosenness. Who can make the grade teaching or learning, publishing or producing papers? Who can pass ecclesiastical, colleague, student, or faculty scrutiny? It always seems that people seek to choose the best.
The congregation I served in Greensboro, North Carolina, is still looking for a pastor. They have diligently interviewed, read credentials, talked with people, looking for the best person for their pastor. Seniors here at our Seminary will be wrestling with calls to serve with congregations. Our choice may depend upon salary, size of congregation, many factors. But we seek the best opportunity for ministry. And that is pretty much the way our world operates.
Today's Old Testament Lesson reports an act of choosing someone for a task. God announces that a servant has been chosen for God's task. The name of the chosen one is not mentioned. None of the personal qualifications are given. "I have chosen you, whoever you are, to be my servant," says God. That sounds strange and weird to our ears and experience. It is strange, but then that is God's way.
God chose Abram in Ur, not because he was good-looking or rich or fertile or powerful. God simply chose Abram and told him to go to the land; there God would bless him and Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
God chose Moses to lead Israel from slavery. According to the story in Exodus, Moses felt himself unqualified to lead a slave revolt. Yet God chose Moses for that task. Deuteronomy says God chose Israel out of all the peoples of the earth, not because she was larger than other peoples or looked more beautiful or smelled nicer, but simply because God loved her.
Our Gospel for this day seems to be a fulfillment of our Old Testament text. Jesus is baptized and the voice from heaven says Jesus is God's beloved Son. Jesus is a nobody carpenter from a backwoods crossroad town in Galilee. Jesus' birth was unspectacular, in fact, ordinarily poor and common. Yet God says that this one, Jesus is pleasing to him, and the Spirit of God is placed upon Jesus to give him strength for his task.
We have been chosen by God. Our baptism, being washed in the flooding waters, is God's choosing us to be God's own people. We all know our weaknesses, at least some of them. But the fact is, we are God's people because God has loved us. God has set the Holy Spirit upon us. God has made us God's own. In spite of our frailties, our failures, our weaknesses, God promises to love us, to take us by the hand, to strengthen us.
Here this morning our God is doing precisely what has been promised. The one, who faithfully enfleshed the words of the servant in Second Isaiah, feeds us his broken body and his shed blood for the forgiveness of our sins, for the strengthening of our faith. Here the risen Lord meets us because he loves us, because he desires that we be strengthened, that we be upheld to be the servant people of God in the world.
In our text the servant is to bring forth justice to the nations. The servant is to be the mediator between God and all the peoples of the earth. The servant is to manifest God's saving and sparing action to all people. In weakness, in silence, in binding up, in giving sight to the blind, in setting free the prisoner, in being a covenant to the people, this one named Servant is to serve God by mediating God's saving love to all the earth.
This servanthood action cuts against the grain of the world of Second Isaiah, just as the servanthood action of Jesus cut against the grain of the world of his day. How could God act in becoming human, taking human flesh, accepting our lot, dying the death of a despised derelict? Surely God would come in power and might, with neon signs and lights flashing glory in the coming of the divine king. Brass bands would play "Hail to the Chief."
Yet our text for this day speaks of God's hidden, surprising act of grace, by which God establishes justice, creates peace and righteousness. An unnamed servant who suffers greatly, a nobody rabbi who was born in a stable, dunked in a muddy river. This one called a bunch of rag-tail outcasts to be his followers. This one lost the power-play game with the world and was executed on the capital city's garbage dump. But that is God's surprise. That is God's victorious way of coming to establish justice, peace, aad righteousness.
Isn't that same surprising action of God at work here in this Seminary community? God chooses us to be servants. God chooses us to live together here in the work of ministry, preparing ourselves to serve God's people, yet ministering to each other and to the Church and world as we prepare for ministry.
Professors fail to meet the expectations of students and their demands. Students fail to meet professorial expectations and demands. Burdens are not sometimes mutually carried. Often we seek to be served rather than to serve, both here and in the Church.
Yet the wonder is - God still loves us. God still comes to us to meet us here in bread and wine, the common everyday stuff of the earth. God still chooses to feed us, to forgive us, to free us to be his servants, because he loves us and has chosen us.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations ...
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth.
(Isaiah 42:1, 4, RSV)
Cate returns to Mountain City to visit her mother before going on to Ocracoke. Her mother has invited herself and her younger daughter Lydia, Cate's sibling, to go to the beach. During their stay at the beach Cate and Lydia have a fierce fight. Cate burns cardboard in the summer cottage's fireplace. Sparks set the roof on fire and the cottage burns. Cate then decides to go to her parents' home in Mountain City while her mother goes to Virginia to care for a school friend who has cancer.
Cate's return to her home place is therapeutic and a "balm of Gilead" for her bruised and torn life. She heals a broken relationship of years with her crotchety old Aunt Theodora. She spends time with her elderly Uncle Osgood on his small farm up in the mountains, hearing family stories. She turns forty while she is in Mountain City. She is reconciled with her sister Lydia. Her homecoming effects healing and putting back together for her bruised and broken life.
Cate Strickland Galitsky is a major character in Gail Godwin's novel, A Mother and Two Daughters. Gail Godwin narrates that one can go home again and, in the homecoming, there is a healing and renewing which can occur in order to continue to live life afresh.
The promise of homecoming permeates our text for this day. Israel - both the Northern Kingdom and Judah - have experienced the shattering reality of military defeat and exile. The life of God's people has been broken by divine judgment because of the people's unfaithfulness. Now God speaks a new word to Israel who is weak and powerless. God promises to save the people of Israel, to gather them from the scattered places they have been sent, to protect and defend them as the Shepherd who will lead them home by the most direct route and by brooks of water to sustain and nourish them.
In the midst of our shattered dreams, broken hopes, torn lives, God speaks a similar word. The promise is God will provide a homecoming for us. The word that God speaks has taken human flesh and been born in a Bethlehem stable. The word of salvation our God speaks is nailed fast to a cruel cross and burst forth from an empty tomb. The "balm of Gilead" for our exiled lives is poured out for us in the rushing waters of baptism, in broken bread and gushing wine, in the presence of the Holy Spirit calling and gathering us together in the community of God's church, in which community we are enlightened, sanctified, and protected. God promises us a homecoming that will heal, that will refresh, that will restore us and our lives.
God promises a homecoming for the people whom God has saved and delivered from the exile of defeat and disaster. And, coming home again, God will provide for their needs to feed and nourish and sustain them. We can come home and be made whole. Our "life shall be like a watered garden, and (we) shall languish no more." (Jeremiah 31:12)
The promise of homecoming that God effects for us then involves celebration. We shall be enabled to dance and make merry, for our mourning is turned into sorrow and our sadness into gladness. We can joyously make fools of ourselves for the One who loves us, just as lovers have always done.
Gail Godwin's story of A Mother and Two Daughters closes with a party that Cate Strickland Galitsky throws at Uncle Osgood's farm, which he left to her in his will. The party is in honor of Lydia's son, Dicky, who has married a black woman from Atlanta. There is food and wine and laughter. The whole family is gathered for this homecoming. Mother Nell and her two daughters, Lydia and Cate, are shown to be healed from their pain, their brokenness, and their own exiles of widowhood, divorce, and unemployment.
God comes to be like us in Jesus and to be with us in order that we may come home to our God. We can go home again in spite of who and what we are, because our God loves us and, in divine prodigality, showers us with the gift of salvation, the gift of sustenance, the gift of wild celebration for Jacob is free again!
Isaiah 60:1-6
The Epiphany of our Lord
The Promise of Light
During the 1960-61 academic year I was a first-year seminarian at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. It snowed that winter the week before Christmas vacation. When we left in mid-March for spring break we had not seen the ground clear of snow since early December. There was a period of two weeks in January-February when the temperature never got above zero. The winter was cold, dark, dreary, and depressing for me.
Being from Concord, North Carolina, I had never experienced so much snow at one time nor for such an extended period of time. It was the first time in my life I had been that far away from home for that length of time. My academic work was challenging and calling for me to rethink and reconstruct a lot of things that I thought had been settled and fixed.
That year was also the beginning of the Civil Rights movement attack on racial discrimination through bus rides into the deep South. It was the year John F. Kennedy was elected President of the U.S.A. It was a year of turmoil, of loneliness, of upheaval, of darkness and pain. I experienced exile from my roots, my family, myself, and the symbols and institutions that had rooted me with purpose and meaning in my life in the world. Darkness, thick darkness, permeated the world in which I lived.
Today our world is heavy with the darkness of defeat, despair, and death. The economic disasters of industry and agriculture have turned light into darkness through loss of jobs, loss of farms, loss of homes, loss of a sense of human dignity and worth. The oppressive weight of unjust political and racial policies across our world create a darkness of inhumanity and death and homelessness for thousands of people. The emrror and oppression of poverty and homelessness in our cities, of institutional "holding tanks" for the elderly and infirm, of drug and alcohol abuse, of child and spouse abuse shut out light and drop a curtain of impenetrable darkness that chokes and kills. In our well-manicured and security-tight suburban communities there is the darkness of exile rooted in our meaningless boredom and routine without knowing why we do it or what our lives are all about.
The prophet called Third Isaiah addresses a word of God to Jerusalem and her inhabitants who have returned from Babylonian exile. These peonle had heard the enlightening promise of Second Isaiah that God would return them from their exile of defeat and death to a restored and magnificent city. The reality of this city and the return from Babylon did not match the promise. The city was in ruins, the people were weak, defenseless, and poor. Thick darkness covered the people of God and Jerusalem.
The prophet cries out in exultation that the glory of God will certainly arise upon the people. God will shine the light of the divine presence upon the people and Jerusalem. They will be reflectors of that light of God to attract and bring to Jerusalem strangers, nations and kings. In their coming, these people will bring with them the sons and daughters of exile and wealth and animals to replace Jerusalem's poverty. The foreigners will also praise God in Jerusalem. The light of God's active presence will bring new life and prosperity for Judah and Jerusalem.
The light of the world, Jesus, shines in the manger of Bethlehem. The foreign wise men come to praise God and bring gifts for the presence of God in our midst. Jesus is the light of the presence of God and the light of the salvation of God that pierces the veil of darkness which covers our world and lives. The darkness of Good Friday could not stop the Easter's dawn from bursting forth to shine radiantly into every drab and dark nook and cranny of our lives and world.
There are people and structures in our cities at work to provide food and shelter for the poor and the homeless. There are people hard at work in our cities seeking ways to change our structures and systems which produce dark despair for the weak and the powerless. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
There are people and structures seeking ways to support and assist people who have lost their land, their homes and their jobs. There are people hard at work seeking ways to change the realities of darkness that have destroyed and depressed so many dreams and lives. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
Through social service agencies people are hard at work seeking to provide support, counsel, and necessary care for abusers of drugs and alcohol and their families. There are people and institutions seeking to give care and support and protection for abused children and spouses. Light is shining in the midst of darkness.
In April of 1961, after the snow melted and the dark cold of winter was displaced by spring, I, often with others, would go onto the green lawn of the quad in front of the dorm. We would take a blanket, stretch out with our shirts off, and bask in the light and warmth of the spring sun. Energy and enthusiasm replaced tiredness and despair. The dreary reality of papers and final exams seemed not so formidable and threatening. The light did shine in the darkness.
And in that warm light of the New Haven spring we rejoiced, danced and gave thanks. The returned exiles in Jerusalem would reflect the light of God's shining presence and salvation, attracting foreigners to Jerusalem to worship and praise God. The light of God's guiding star led the foreign Magi to the Babe in the stable and they worshiped him.
We have known the brilliant love of our God's glory manifested to us. God in Christ has led us out of darkness into his marvelous light. We are warmed and energized by God's salvation given to us so freely. In the waters of baptism we have been washed clean and now become those who reflect the light of our God's goodness so others may come to praise and worship God and join with us in our lives of service and redemption of all that God has made.
Epiphany! God is made manifest to us and the world. God's light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, cannot, will not overturn it. We have beheld God's glory in the Christ who has come to be with us. Thanks be to God.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Baptism of Our Lord (Epiphany 1)
The Call to Servanthood
In a small textile town in North Carolina, more years ago than I want to remember, there was a house and yard in a neighborhood that collected children from six to sixteen years of age to play. The children would swarm, sometimes as many as two dozen, to play baseball, kickball, hide and seek, old man kick the can, prisoner's base. Usually someone would volunteer, or be volunteered, for captain, to choose sides. When it was my turn to be captain, to choose the side, I always wanted the best hitter or fastest pitcher. I always made sure I got the fastest runner or the quickest and best hider. I wanted to be on the side of the one who could kick the can the farthest. I liked to win. I wanted to win. I was known to cry if I did not win.
In that same town I remember my grammar school days. Some of us had a team in the Boys' Club Basketball League. One friend of mine who was very small was on the team. He was not very adept at playing basketball, but he was on the team. Yet he was never chosen to play very much. When he did play, he usually hurt the team. One year the team was runner-up in the league. At the banquet they gave each of us little silver basketballs. But we had one player too many. We had to choose who would not get a silver basketball. Several felt the runt ought not receive a silver basketball. However, the biggest guy on the team said he would give up his award for the runt. Later the team chipped in to buy a basketball for the fellow who gave his up.
In the matter of choosing, the world is not much different today. Always we seek the best, the brightest, the richest, the strongest, the fastest, the largest. All of us here in this Seminary
community are here after some sort of screening process, faculty and student alike. Our credentials have been checked. Our grades, interviews, publications, possibilities, potentialities, and worth have been weighed and measured. And after a rigorous screening process, still we are checked to see that we were correctly chosen.
We have just gone through a period of evaluation. People have been checking out our chosenness. Who can make the grade teaching or learning, publishing or producing papers? Who can pass ecclesiastical, colleague, student, or faculty scrutiny? It always seems that people seek to choose the best.
The congregation I served in Greensboro, North Carolina, is still looking for a pastor. They have diligently interviewed, read credentials, talked with people, looking for the best person for their pastor. Seniors here at our Seminary will be wrestling with calls to serve with congregations. Our choice may depend upon salary, size of congregation, many factors. But we seek the best opportunity for ministry. And that is pretty much the way our world operates.
Today's Old Testament Lesson reports an act of choosing someone for a task. God announces that a servant has been chosen for God's task. The name of the chosen one is not mentioned. None of the personal qualifications are given. "I have chosen you, whoever you are, to be my servant," says God. That sounds strange and weird to our ears and experience. It is strange, but then that is God's way.
God chose Abram in Ur, not because he was good-looking or rich or fertile or powerful. God simply chose Abram and told him to go to the land; there God would bless him and Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
God chose Moses to lead Israel from slavery. According to the story in Exodus, Moses felt himself unqualified to lead a slave revolt. Yet God chose Moses for that task. Deuteronomy says God chose Israel out of all the peoples of the earth, not because she was larger than other peoples or looked more beautiful or smelled nicer, but simply because God loved her.
Our Gospel for this day seems to be a fulfillment of our Old Testament text. Jesus is baptized and the voice from heaven says Jesus is God's beloved Son. Jesus is a nobody carpenter from a backwoods crossroad town in Galilee. Jesus' birth was unspectacular, in fact, ordinarily poor and common. Yet God says that this one, Jesus is pleasing to him, and the Spirit of God is placed upon Jesus to give him strength for his task.
We have been chosen by God. Our baptism, being washed in the flooding waters, is God's choosing us to be God's own people. We all know our weaknesses, at least some of them. But the fact is, we are God's people because God has loved us. God has set the Holy Spirit upon us. God has made us God's own. In spite of our frailties, our failures, our weaknesses, God promises to love us, to take us by the hand, to strengthen us.
Here this morning our God is doing precisely what has been promised. The one, who faithfully enfleshed the words of the servant in Second Isaiah, feeds us his broken body and his shed blood for the forgiveness of our sins, for the strengthening of our faith. Here the risen Lord meets us because he loves us, because he desires that we be strengthened, that we be upheld to be the servant people of God in the world.
In our text the servant is to bring forth justice to the nations. The servant is to be the mediator between God and all the peoples of the earth. The servant is to manifest God's saving and sparing action to all people. In weakness, in silence, in binding up, in giving sight to the blind, in setting free the prisoner, in being a covenant to the people, this one named Servant is to serve God by mediating God's saving love to all the earth.
This servanthood action cuts against the grain of the world of Second Isaiah, just as the servanthood action of Jesus cut against the grain of the world of his day. How could God act in becoming human, taking human flesh, accepting our lot, dying the death of a despised derelict? Surely God would come in power and might, with neon signs and lights flashing glory in the coming of the divine king. Brass bands would play "Hail to the Chief."
Yet our text for this day speaks of God's hidden, surprising act of grace, by which God establishes justice, creates peace and righteousness. An unnamed servant who suffers greatly, a nobody rabbi who was born in a stable, dunked in a muddy river. This one called a bunch of rag-tail outcasts to be his followers. This one lost the power-play game with the world and was executed on the capital city's garbage dump. But that is God's surprise. That is God's victorious way of coming to establish justice, peace, aad righteousness.
Isn't that same surprising action of God at work here in this Seminary community? God chooses us to be servants. God chooses us to live together here in the work of ministry, preparing ourselves to serve God's people, yet ministering to each other and to the Church and world as we prepare for ministry.
Professors fail to meet the expectations of students and their demands. Students fail to meet professorial expectations and demands. Burdens are not sometimes mutually carried. Often we seek to be served rather than to serve, both here and in the Church.
Yet the wonder is - God still loves us. God still comes to us to meet us here in bread and wine, the common everyday stuff of the earth. God still chooses to feed us, to forgive us, to free us to be his servants, because he loves us and has chosen us.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations ...
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth.
(Isaiah 42:1, 4, RSV)
