Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Advent 2008 (Year B)
at Trinity in Clanton, Alabama
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Psalm 126 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8,19-28
The Rev. Steve Shanks, Deacon

Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Joy is the cry of the Third Sunday of Advent. This Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, has historically been called Gaudete (Gaw-day-tay) Sunday. This Latin word "Gaw-day-tay" means "Rejoice!" and was taken from the first words of the Latin introit for the day "Rejoice in the Lord" "Gaw-day-tay en dominum." This is part of an ancient liturgy that we continue to use in our worship today.

During the past week, as I was spending time with our Scripture readings for this morning, I was reminded that scholars are not certain who wrote Isaiah 61, though it seems to be someone who has returned to Jerusalem and is part of the nation’s rebuilding. The powerful words are perhaps the Spirit of God calling this person, in a way reminiscent of the call of the eighth-century prophet in Isaiah 6. The substance of the call is to reclaim the Jubilee tradition of Leviticus 25. This tradition is based on the sovereignty and holiness of God and challenges God’s people to live socially and economically in a way consistent with God’s nature. The tradition’s specific platforms are radical, calling for structural change in the society and not simply charity. That means protecting the environment by letting land lie fallow, canceling debt, freeing slaves, redistributing resources, and sharing economic power in ways that avoid a permanent underclass.

Isaiah’s words are familiar because Luke 4 records Jesus’ use of them for his inaugural sermon in his hometown synagogue. Jesus reads the Isaiah text and proclaims: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). Whether he chooses the text because the passage reflects his understanding of his mission or because it is assigned him as part of the synagogue lectionary, the congregation reacts negatively. Turning from being glad to have a child of the church home, the crowd becomes a lynch mob wanting to throw the hometown kid off the cliff. Even though they aren’t rich, they have too much invested in the system to want such a radical agenda imposed on them.

The Jubilee tradition that Isaiah and Jesus reclaim is a clear call to mission for the Church today. It contains the vision for being and doing: for political liberation, economic reversal, and social revolution – a way of life that lets no one live without life’s necessities. Just as Jesus incarnates the Jubilee tradition, the same words challenge today’s Church, as Christ’s Body, to reappropriate this radical understanding of life in community. And as with Jesus, such structural change can create lynch mobs of those who, even if not wealthy, have investment in the status quo.

If Isaiah’s call to mission isn’t hard enough, God speaks later in the lesson: “For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing” (61:8). Covenant relationship evokes works of justice, emulating God’s central concern for the underdog and for justice. As Sharon Ringe writes: “The Jubilee traditions point to what happens whenever humankind encounters the factor of God’s sovereignty.”

These Jubilee traditions motivated the Episcopal Church at our 67th General Convention in New Orleans in 1982 to create what was described as a priority ministry commitment by this Church that is called “The Jubilee Ministry”. As stated in that year’s Resolution 80A, the Ministry of Jubilee in the Episcopal Church is an attempt at being “a Christian community in which the drama of the streets, and the inner silence of which God speaks, are bound together.” (The Standing Commission on The Church in Metropolitan Areas—1982)

In Jubilee Ministry we recognize that while we are called to feed the hungry, we are also equally called to address the cause of that hunger. Therefore, our goal is to know the difference and to be prepared to work for both charity and justice for the glory and honor of God.

It can be a pretty daunting call to ministry. For me, it is helpful to remember, for example, that some are called to be prophets, others teachers. We have to identify the needs, and then seek to discern those gifted or equipped to address those needs. We do not all have the temperament to contribute the same gifts, but we can all understand our work as fulfilling a common purpose to embrace the “least of these.”

So, what is the Mission of Jubilee Ministry? It is to make a direct and dynamic link between our theology and our ethics - said another way - the talk of our faith and the walk of our faith.

We do this by calling the church to live out its prophetic role of empowering local people to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God” (Micah 6:8) and by responding to the Gospel’s call to “feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned” (Matthew 25:35)

The work of a Jubilee Ministry Center, or Jubilee Parish, is connected to four primary ways in which we serve the least of those among us, which starts by meeting direct human need, and then continues by providing advocacy with poor and oppressed people to address the root causes of poverty and all its ramifications, empowerment of the population being served to support them in beginning to recover their sense of self-esteem and dignity, and evangelism by providing the opportunity for the Church to exercise the faith it proclaims in word and deed.

So, what does the work of a Jubilee Ministry look like in the Episcopal Church in 2008? It is “Feeding the Hungry” through daily meals that are prepared and delivered to people with HIV/AIDS in a lunch program provided at St. Andrea’s Church in Tucson, Arizona; it is “Clothing the Naked” at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ada, Oklahoma where The Matthew 25 Mission provides Men’s Wear and Household Items; it is “Welcoming the Stranger” at the Refugee and Immigration Jubilee Center in Valladolid, Spain that provides services for immigrants from South America, as well as it is those caring for Children and Seniors at Episcopal Social Services in Kansas City, Missouri; it is “Caring for the Sick” at Naco Wellness Center Located on the Arizona/Mexico Border that is serving people on both sides of the international Border… and it is opening the doors of this church every 1st Saturday in Clanton, Alabama to welcome and provide food and hospitality to the poor, working poor, and hungry of Chilton County.

In contrast to Mark’s understanding that we encountered in last week’s lessons, the writer of the Gospel of John presents John the Baptist, not as the one calling for repentance, but as a witness. The one who comes baptizing denies being Elijah or the Christ or a prophet; rather he comes to prepare and give testimony – to witness.

For many Christians committed to living faithfully, giving verbal testimony or witness is difficult and often feels presumptuous. Yet John becomes the voice of promise, in a sense the voice of Scripture. He calls people to see and understand differently and to acknowledge the Word’s importance.

But John also knows how important it is to live that witness, to embody one’s words, to link the talk of our faith and the walk of our faith. When John, from prison, asks Jesus if he is “the one who is to come,” Jesus suggests that John look at what he does: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the poor have Good News preached (Matt 11:2-6 – again echoes of Isaiah 61). Deeds, as well as words, are testimony and witness.

Individuals and communities today seek to live into the biblical Jubilee tradition and give testimony in word and deed…

• through Communities that embody a life together that is nonhierarchical and inclusive of all God’s children, where the words of the faith come alive through experience;
• through Partnerships in which poor and wealthy people acknowledge their need for one another and to share one another’s gifts, insights, and material goods;
• through a Life lived for “the least of our brothers and sisters,” where none go without food or housing;
• through Acknowledgement of the Christ encountered in those who are poor and hurting.

In such transformational living there is “a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning” (Isa 61:3). The cry of the Third Sunday of Advent arises: Rejoice!

Thanks be to God! Amen.