Don Friesen
A number of years ago I attempted to start a trend. I began wearing a bow-tie on Easter Sunday. Easter being the highest holy day of the year, I thought it appropriate attire, and was hoping it would catch on. After a few years Monty began wearing a bow-tie as well, so I knew it was working. It's taking a while to gather momentum, but I trust that, in time, I will be able to move the carelessly-clothed men in this congregation to sartorial splendour.
Two weeks ago I suggested that at the beginning of Advent we see through the Advent glass darkly. "We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist." (1 Corinthians 13:12, MSG) It's difficult to catch a glimpse of hope through the fog of war, or though a smokescreen of deceit, or through the distortions of greed. The big picture is slow to emerge, much like the bow-tie trend I started.
The New Testament tells us that "in former times God spoke to (us) ...in fragmentary ...fashion...." (Hebrews 1:1, NEB) We didn't have the whole picture. Like a puzzle consisting of far too many fragments of the large picture, the overall pattern takes a while to take shape. It takes patience and judicious attention.
Escaping with only the Shirts on their Backs!
When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon they were forever looking through the fog of their captivity in order to get a glimpse of the big picture. As far as they could tell, the fragments of their lives only fitted into a puzzle from hell! The people who first heard the passage we read from the prophet Isaiah were living in dark times. Walter Brueggemann describes this passage – and others like it in Isaiah – as "buoyant literature of hope exquisitely expressed." (Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile, page 90) It is filled with promises addressed to people in exile who have saw their city fall and were forcibly removed from their homeland with no notion whatsoever of when they might return.
It would take seventy years in exile before the Persians conquered the Babylonians and released the Israelites! They returned home to a landscape of devastation, "the devastations of many generations," Isaiah calls it. (Isaiah 61:4) They began to rebuild Jerusalem, but the work was slow and labourious, and even after another seventy years little progress had been made. The enormity of the task was staggering! Then there were the neighbours who in the interim had moved in and weren't at all eager to send out a Welcome Wagon!
The Israelites weren't going to be donning formal attire anytime soon! They were lucky to get out of Babylon with the the shirts on their backs! They returned poor! They had been oppressed so long that some of them were bewildered by freedom. Isaiah heard the plaintive cries of the brokenhearted, and the dispirited talk of long-term prisoners, and must have felt overwhelmed! At one point he calls them "oaks of righteousness" (Isaiah 61:3), an inspiring image of large and mighty trees – but in truth they looked more like uncertain saplings that might not last the winter! The Israelites remained a small and weak people, their city in terrible disrepair.
The Joy of Release and Freedom!
Isaiah, however, contended that their release was cause for celebration, whatever their apparel. When the Persians told the Jewish exiles they were free to go home, I can only imagine their ecstatic joy and laughter and tears of joy. I read of a rescue mission of a prisoner of war camp in the Far East at the end of the Second World War and it described the prisoners' response this way:
These prisoners of war had about given up hope after three years of captivity in brutal conditions. Many had died of malnutrition and disease in the prison camp. Many were executed. They knew the probability of being rescued was remote. With the help of many heroic Philippinos, the sick, weak, and frail prisoners made their way back to familiar territory, the joy of their release palpable. Said one of the soldiers, "We wept openly, ...without shame" (Ghost Soldiers, page 317)
Freedom released similar profound joy and laughter in the biblical account. "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion," writes the psalmist:
Celebrate! And Get on with it!
It's time to celebrate! We may have only glimpsed a fragment of what the incarnation means for us, but it's good! It's all good! Get your garlands and fancy clothes and be joyful! Not the fa-la-la-la joy of shopping mall madness, but the joy of "O Saviour, rend the heavens wide!"
(Hymnal: A Worship Book, #175)
The Russians knew the biblical story. The story of the seventy years in exile in Babylon parallelled their own story. It was as if Isaiah was talking to them, telling them to "...build up the ancient ruins, ...raise up the former devastations; ...(and) repair the ruined cities.... For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up...." (Isaiah 61:4 and 11) "The Lord will bring about justice and praise in every nation on earth, like flowers blooming in a garden" (Isaiah 61:11, CEV), promises Isaiah.
Chaim Potok (1929-2002), a rabbi who bequeathed us The Chosen (1967), a novel about the pursuit of truth against the backdrop of the years following World War II and the revelation of Europe's holocaust, knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer. His mother, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. When he went away to college she said, "I know you want to be a writer. But I want you to think about brain surgery. You'll keep a lot of people from dying. And you'll make a lot of money." To which Chaim responded, "No, Mama, I want to be a writer."
"No," was not what Mama wanted to hear, so whenever Chaim came home over the next four years, she would remind him that he should really become a brain surgeon, and each time with the same refrain: You'll keep people from dying and you'll make a lot of money. Finally he tired of these exchanges, and when the same mantra began, he cut off his mother, and with great passion and no little exasperation, said, "Mama, I don't want to keep people from dying, I want to show them how to live." ("Show them how to live," by Ryan Ahlgrim, The Mennonite, November, October 19, 2004)
The gospel is a gospel of life! A gospel of peace and justice! A gospel of hope and praise! So let's put on our finery! Put on your most exquisite garden clothes for a garden party celebrating justice, peace, and righteousness! Don your finest and most festive attire! It's time to express our joy!
"Slowly, the awareness that this was a jailbreak was beginning to sink in ... the prisoners ... were reacting with a kind of catatonic ecstasy, numb and inarticulate. One prisoner wrapped his arms around the neck of the first (rescuer) he saw and kissed him on the forehead. All he could he say was ‘Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!'"
One of the prisoners was muttering in a darkened corner of the barracks, tears coursing down his face. "I thought we'd been forgotten," he said. (Par Hampton Sides, Ghost soldiers: the epic account of World War II's greatest rescue mission, 2002, page 278)
"...our mouth was filled with laughter.
It was as Isaiah predicted:
and our tongue with shouts of joy...." (Psalm 126:1-2)
"You will leave Babylon with joy;
The conditions you saw on your return may be appalling, but, said Isaiah, "The ...Lord has anointed me ... (and) sent 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 favour, and ...to comfort all who mourn...." (Isaiah 61:1-2) This is all good stuff! Whatever rags you were wearing when you left Babylon, chuck ‘em! Isaiah suggests. On this occasion festive apparel is required! A "garland" (61:3) or "crown of beauty!" (NIV) "Bouquets of roses" suggests another translation. Suddenly a fashion consultant, Isaiah suggests a "mantle" or "garment of praise" (NIV), "festal attire". (NJER)
... the mountains and hills will burst into singing,
and the trees will shout for joy." (Isaiah 55:12, TEV)
"Come down, come down with mighty stride.
It will be twenty years next month (January, 1992) that the red flag of the Soviet Union was lowered over Russia for the last time. For the first time in seventy years, Christmas was once again a legal holiday. For those who had suffered under a brutal regime, it was a time for celebration! After a seventy-year-long exile, the Russian Orthodox Church began to reclaim normal church life. A person (Robert L. Hart) who was there to see it says that he participated in a Christmas liturgy celebrated with a makeshift altar and icon screen in a church that the state had previously used as a produce warehouse, and as a morgue during WWII. A tank repair shop was restored to a place of worship. An incinerator for defective plastic toys was once again a church. The parishioners began restoring and rebuilding these buildings, and the seeds of Christian action and practice which had been carefully planted throughout all those years of official atheism began to bear fruit as the Church restored its ministry to the poor, the homeless, the sick and the innumerable elderly widows. Church-run soup kitchens began to appear, as did aid projects for impoverished pensioners and church-sponsored start-up businesses for women.
Unbar the gates, the doors break down; ...
O come, lead us with mighty hand from exile to our promised land."