Message 12-11-05

Series: Unplugging Christmas
Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-11

Title: The Depth of Enjoyment

Intro:
A long, long time ago, but I can still remember I was faced with a dilemma. I was listening to my pastor and what he was saying about God was wrong. At least it felt wrong within me, but I was only in 9th grade. How could I challenge my pastor? But, you know, that’s sort of the way God wired me. So, I did. I stuck up my hand and asked a question. 

My pastor was telling us about the righteousness of God and comparing it to our sinfulness. He was quoting a passage from Isaiah that says that our righteous acts are like filthy rags. Now, I don’t doubt our sinfulness nor do I doubt the righteousness of God. I can even get my mind around the idea that no matter what we do, it isn’t really good enough, clean enough, and not the way God would do it. Thinking back on it as an adult I believe he was overstating his case to make his point. What he said was that our righteous acts were like filthy rags to God. And that’s what I wasn’t getting. How could God, who loves us, look at the things that we do in love for him as filthy rags? 

Well, the pastor and I argued over this for a while that evening. He was trying to make me understand what holiness meant and I wasn’t making the connection because I was focused on the relationship God has with his people. We just weren’t talking to each other but I didn’t know that then. 

I share all this because I made a mistake in preparing for this Sunday. I studied chapter 64 instead of chapter 61 over the past few weeks. Chapter 64 is where the prophet talks about our righteous acts as filthy rags. I’ve been thinking over this for a while but it wasn’t supposed to be for today. But the Bible says all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Even when we make mistakes, God uses them. And when I refocused my efforts to get prepared for this passage I discovered that a whole new insight came as I studied these very familiar words. I doubt I would have seen this passage the same way if I hadn’t been looking at 64 for so long.

Study:
Isaiah 61:1-11
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me
Because he has anointed me
To preach good news to the poor
He ahs sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim freedom for the captives
And release from darkness for the prisoners,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
And the day of vengeance of our God
To comfort all who mourn
And provide for those who grieve in Zion
To bestow on them a crown of beauty
Instead of ashes
The oil of gladness
Instead of mourning
And a garment of praise
Instead of a spirit of despair
They will be called oaks of righteousness
A planting of the Lord
For the display of his splendor
They will rebuild the ancient ruins
And restore the places long devastated
They will renew the ruined cities
That have been devastated for generations
Aliens will shepherd your flocks
Foreigners will work your fields and vineyards
And you will be called priests of the Lord
You will be named ministers of our God
You will feed on the wealth of nations
And in their riches you will boast
Instead of their shame
My people will receive a double portion
And instead of disgrace
They will rejoice in their inheritance
And so they will inherit a double portion in their land
And everlasting joy will be theirs
“For I, the Lord, love justice
I hate robbery and iniquity
In my faithfulness I will reward them
And make an everlasting covenant with them
Their descendants will be known among the nations
And their offspring among the peoples
All who see them will acknowledge
That they are a people the Lord has blessed”
I delight greatly in the Lord
My soul rejoices in my God
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
And arrayed me in a robe of righteousness
As a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
And a garden causes seeds to grow
So the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise
Spring up before all nations

How do we unplug from Christmas? A couple of weeks ago Rick Bennett brought a dynamic warning against all the Christmas froufrou that’s been created in our society… the Christmas movies and trappings and materialistic demands. I suggested last week that there is something within those movies and Christmas stories that touch on an ache in our heart and that the ache is in regard to reconciliation. I believe that both Rick and I suggested that the way to begin to unplug from the demand of Christmas and how to get to the celebration of Christmas was to remind ourselves of the truth of Christmas. I call this re-telling the story of Christmas. 

What was going on? What is going on with Christmas? 

Christmas is the work of God in reconciling the world to himself, in saving the world. Instead of focusing on the nativity, I’ve come to see Christmas in a much more allegorical or even abstract way. The image in my mind of Christmas is of a father or mother bursting into a house on fire, finding the children, grabbing them and running out again. That’s how I see Christmas. I was one of the kids. God found me huddled in the darkness and clouds of smoke and pulled me out and ran out of the place with me. That’s Christmas to me.

Christmas then is just joy. Christmas is that I thought I was going to die. I thought the world, the whole flaming world, that I couldn’t control and couldn’t survive was the biggest and strongest thing. But then a hero found me, saved me and took me home.

The easiest way to describe this hero is Jesus. Jesus found me and saved me not just from a problem, or from a bad relationship, or from loneliness but from everything that would consume me, even things I didn’t know. And Jesus gave me new life, he gave me fresh air and light and the ability to relax.

Now that’s an allegorical picture, but it is in the core of my thinking. It is how I experience Christmas.

So when I read these words I hear them with that kind of impression in my heart. When I read these words I realize that these are the words that Jesus read in the beginning of his ministry. These are the words we hear from Jesus’ mouth in Luke when he reads the Scripture of the day to the people in the Nazareth synagogue. 

The Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son are all blended into this opening passage. 

Jesus is saying, The Spirit is on him and the Father, the Lord, has anointed him. The noun form of word for anoint is the same word that we translate as Messiah or Christ – the anointed one. Jesus is the anointed one of God, our Messiah or Christ to do this work. The Spirit of God is on him to do this work. He is both chosen and empowered to do this work. 

And what is the work? 

The work is to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and to release prisoners from the darkness. It is to proclaim God’s favor that is here now and to assure us that God’s justice is right at hand. The work is to comfort those who mourn and to provide for those who grieve. 

We do need to stop and note that grieving for someone when you don’t have insurance or social security or other family members is different than grieving when you have all those things. When these people were grieving for what they lost in someone – it was not only their love but also the reality that the world was going to crash in on them. When Jesus says that he is called to provide for these people it is people who lost their own likelihood of surviving. 

This is the work of Christmas. The work of Christmas is to save us within reality.

Now there’s two things to recognize in this. First, this is the work that Jesus did through his birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection. This is what Jesus did. The second is that the church of Jesus is called the Body, the Body of Christ. This is our mission as well. The work of Christmas didn’t end on Christmas, it didn’t end with the death of Jesus, and it didn’t end with his resurrection, right? The work of Christmas didn’t end. We’re called as the people of God to continue the work of Christmas in our own lives, through our own words, through the Holy Spirit empowering us. Remember, the Holy Spirit was given to us? We were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Remember? I’m just repeating to you the words of the Bible. I’m just telling you what you already know. But it’s always good to be reminded. 

That’s what my wife tells me. I ask her, why are you always reminding me of things. And she says, It’s always good to be reminded. I’m trying to believe that’s true and to learn to accept that. But she’s always reminding me of things I have to get done and I can never think far enough ahead to remind her back. I don’t know if other guys have this kind of issue but I’d love to just once be able to say something like, “hey, and don’t forget to bring those shirts to the cleaners,” or “you know you need to do the grocery shopping on Saturday. Are you going to be able to fit that in with all this other stuff you’re doing.” I never get that chance. 

And that’s not far off from the way we can feel about God and the work he calls us to do. It can feel sort of like it’s a competition. Like God is so good and we’re just “futzing” around. It can feel like we’re never going to measure up, so why even try. It can feel like the work of Christmas is just too big, too much for us to fit it into our regular lives, let alone once a year, that it should just be enough that we’re trying to be nice. We’re just trying to be nice because it’s Christmas and we believe in Christmas. Can’t we get some points just for getting the kids dressed and making them come with us?

It can feel like that, but it isn’t like that. It can feel like God is telling us to measure up to Jesus in order for him to consider anything we do to have any worth at all in his eyes. It can feel like God is not satisfied, is embarrassed, is even put off by any of our efforts – like all our righteous acts are like filthy rags to him. 

But the truth is that Jesus needed to be anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit in order to accomplish his mission and so do we. The truth is that our righteous acts can actually be on the level of mud-pies to God. They can be things like letting someone into line ahead of us, not cutting someone off when they just cut us off, or sending a get well card. But you know, God loves those things if we’re doing them for him. If we’re making mud pies and we’re lifting them up to God, God is kneeling down to us and enjoying our mud pies, telling us those are the best mud pies he’s ever seen. But we need to realize that they are only mud pies, that there is something better. We can be making real pies with the help of God and God’s power. We can be actually feeding other, bringing delight and joy into their lives. God is going to enjoy us so deeply, but as we come alongside God, follow him, go with him into his kitchen, we are going to be led into doing the real work, the real work of Christmas.

When the things we might lift up as righteous acts are shown to God they are what they are. They’re mud pies. They’re at the level of filthy rags. But when we are part of the Body of Christ, when we are empowered by the Spirit of God we are proclaiming good news, we’re binding up the brokenhearted, we’re releasing the captives and freedom to prisoners of darkness – and we can do those things in reality, through the power of God.

A long time ago I was told that our righteous acts were like filthy rags to God and that just isn’t true. But they certainly aren’t like the righteous acts of God. Still God uses and enjoys our righteous acts. He lifts them up and rejoices in them. God’s enjoyment of us is so deep and rich that he takes our acts of righteousness and makes them more than they are. He changes them, he lifts them up, and he makes them real.
You see that’s what God did in Christmas. Have you ever wondered why Jesus got wrapped up in strips of cloth? Remember the word to the shepherds? “You will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth…” In the older versions we hear “in swaddling clothes…” But it is strips of cloth. Most likely Mary had strips of cloth prepared, rolled up, maybe sent along by her mother, to absorb the blood after the birth. These are the strips of cloths mentioned in Isaiah 64 – the filthy rags are bloody cloths used by women. These are the cloths that God uses and that Mary uses to wrap up Jesus, to warm him, comfort him. 

God uses the filthy rags of humanity and turns them from one purpose to a new and greater one. 

Let us not step past this too quickly though. Let us hang onto the truth that Jesus came into a family that was so poor that it didn’t even have a room. It didn’t even have a blanket. We are called to move into the work of Christmas – to bring good news to the poor and to all the rest because he tells us that he is each one of them.

That’s why we sing Christmas Carols. That’s why we decorate our homes. That’s why we rejoice. It is also how we rejoice and how we decorate.