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

Third Sunday of Advent/Year B 127
1 John’s counsel. Today’s text provides us with the criterion by which to
decide whether a particular claimant to the Lord’s spirit passes muster: the
true servant acts out the understanding of salvation at the heart of
YHWH’s purpose: “the LORD has anointed 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” (61:1–2). This is the jubilee year of Leviticus 25.
Isaiah promises that those who were in exile and now are in a bad way
in Judea will yet wear “a garland instead of ashes, . . . the mantle of praise
instead of a faint spirit” (v. 3). Their redemption will be expressed in tangible
ways: they will rebuild what has been ruined and restore the devastated
cities (v. 4). We should imagine them as like contemporary survivors
of a natural disaster, a tsunami or hurricane, which has destroyed towns,
cities, and countryside, wiped out the infrastructure, destroyed houses,
leveled everything. Redemption is never merely spiritual, except for gnostics.
It involves physical life in all its dimensions. Jesus actually fed the
hungry, instead of only talking to them about the bread of life. What the
people of Judea needed was to be able to live a reasonably safe life in a
functional society.
In verses 5–7, we find two emphases characteristic of some strands of
Second Temple Judaism. The first is the welcome to strangers and foreigners
(v. 5) that repeatedly marks the universalism and openness of the
Isaiah tradition. Another is the shift in emphasis, later characteristic of
the Pharisees, from the Temple priesthood to the people themselves as the
priests of YHWH in this new situation. “You shall be called priests of the
LORD, you shall be named ministers of our God” (v. 6). The Pharisees
regarded the table in every home to be as holy as the Temple altar, and all
Jews as priests (an early version of the priesthood of all believers); Isaiah
stressed that the people themselves are the priests of the Lord. This idea
has been around since Exodus 19:6: “you shall be for me a priestly kingdom
and a holy nation.”
Our passage ends on the note of God’s considerate justice: “For I the
LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing.” The kind of justice
involved cares for the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captive, the
mourners, the homeless. God is steadfast to the covenant, and if the people
also remain faithful to that covenant, being true to the gift of considerate
justice, the long hoped-for return of well-being will take place.
The heart of today’s reading is beautifully given voice in the Magnificat
(Luke 1:47–55), assigned for today.