000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

126 Third Sunday of Advent/Year B
too long. To God the inhabitants of earth “are like grasshoppers” . . .
“princes . . . and . . . rulers of the earth are as nothing” (40:22–23).
God’s advent comes with the announcement: “Here is your God!”
(v. 9). The Lord “comes with might” to the salvation of Israel from oppression.
“He will feed his flock like a shepherd . . . and gently lead the mother
sheep” (v. 11). Faced with the horrors of history—far from home, dealing
with the great power of the day, its army and its king—Isaiah directs the
people to understand themselves in relation to the One who is God. The
God of steadfast love and forgiveness will “carry them in his bosom.”
In the apocalyptic statement of Mark 13:24–37, Jesus forth-tells the
advent of the “Son of Man coming in clouds” who will “gather his elect
from the four winds” (13:26–27). As Isaiah pointed the people in the direction
of the future that God had in store for them, a world re-created from
the chaos brought by armies and militarism and restored to God’s purposes
for it, Jesus points us ahead to the time when what we pray for, that
God’s rule may come on earth as it is in heaven, will be the case. He invites
us to live toward that day.
Third Sunday of Advent/Year B
Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–11
Today’s reading applies to more than one servant of God in the Scriptures.
The description that Second Isaiah provided of the Lord’s servant, that
the Lord has “put the Lord’s spirit upon him” (42:1) is said of a new servant
of the Lord, one who comes with a word to the oppressed (61:1b).
Luke 4:18 will tell of Jesus reading this passage and saying, “Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). In Isaiah the servant
was sometimes an individual, sometimes a group within Israel, and
sometimes the people Israel. Scholars have puzzled over the identity of
the servant in Isaiah, but to worry about that question is to miss the larger
point, that the fact that the servant is not named is deliberate. Many within
Israel could be the servant in different times, places, and circumstances; it
is utterly appropriate that Jesus is so regarded.
The early communities of Jesus-followers knew many people who
claimed that the Spirit of the Lord was upon them. Some were authentic
figures, but enough were charlatans that 1 John 4:1 advises us: “Do not
believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God;
for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” We should heed