20231217 FF: Advent 3

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28.  From the TRNG Room:

• Armor of God 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to First Forward, the subscriber feed of First Formation, where subscribers can receive advanced insight on the revised Common Lectionary readings for Sundays.  This is Brother Logan Isaac, and our readings for year, I'm sorry, Advent 3 of year B it's a doozy. Strap on. Sit down, strap in, and hold on because there's a lot of really important shit this Sunday.

And if you're a pastor, you should really consider listening, I suppose, but also, if you're a congregant and you've had military service or a military-friendly civilian ally, you should listen to see that something is mentioned in this scripture reading because it's Incredibly important. 

Beginning with Isaiah 61. The readings come from Isaiah 61, Psalm 126, the Gospel of Luke, chapter one and first Thessalonians five, and then finally the Gospel of John chapter one. So I'm not going to go through all of these in depth, but there are some very important pieces and parts that I want to point out. 

You may notice that in Psalm 1 26 and the Magnificat in Luke one are, reflective of the Beatitudes where there's this great balancing that those who have will have not and those who have not will have and that's really important. That's great. I love the gospel readings. Psalm seems to  evoke the Beatitudes, especially in verse five.

May those who sow and reap. tears reap with shouts of joy, and those who go out weeping shall come home with shouts for joy. So there's this great balancing. But what's really standing out to me is the reading from Isaiah 61, 1 Thessalonians 5, and I don't have much to say about the reading from John where they ask about the baptizer and he says, well, I'm not the Messiah.

I'm not that person. I'm just the one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. And remember that has to do with atonement. John, the baptizer is saying, watch out because God's going to start paving the road. All this, the potholes of corruption are going to get paved over. Because I'm making this path and the one who is coming is going to baptize with fire and, and, you know, the fire in scripture is the purifying fire.

So you're gonna get burned, all your impurities are gonna get burned away. If you don't have as many impurities, good for you. But the Pharisees who had plenty of impurities, they should take as a, a word of caution. But anyway, back to  what I think is most important. So you might recognize Isaiah 61 as.

The scripture that Jesus quotes in his first sermon in his hometown, in Nazareth,  which inspires them, the people of Nazareth, to want to push him off a cliff because he gets kind of smarmy with them. He reads this thing and he says, Now you In hearing this, this prophecy has been fulfilled in you.  Meaning um, I am here to declare the day of the Lord's favor. 

And they all would have known that even though Jesus cuts himself off, or the, the writer who is putting words in Jesus mouth or remembering them, whatever, They cut them off. It usually only includes the first part of verse two. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. But, it goes on. And,  the day of vengeance of our God.

To comfort all those who mourn. Vengeance and mourning do not always feel like they go hand in hand. Unless you've been in mourning. Unless you've felt like life is unfair. Then you kind of want vengeance. And hopefully you don't take it upon yourself. But you want vengeance. You want, Vengeance is another way Or another form of justice, the great balancing act, right?

If you've struck me on the right cheek all, you should be struck on the left. But, we leave that to God. We do not do it ourselves. noW what's,  why it's important or noteworthy that vengeance is left off,  is because Not only would they have all known it. For an illiterate society, memorization comes much more naturally.

If you can't read, you can recite. They all would have known, if you're going to synagogue, you would have been vaguely familiar with this text and known that there's more to it, that vengeance is coming to comfort those who mourn.  This is important because Isaiah 61 is just two chapters after Isaiah 59. 

And so really quickly, some important things to notice, especially in verses 2 and 3 of chapter 61, before I get to 59.  Day of Vengeance of our God, right? And then in verse 3, it goes on,  Garland instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.  The mantle of praise.

instead of a faint spirit. And then they'll be called Oaks of Righteousness to display his glory. And then, scrolling down just a little bit to verse 10, the kind of uh, the conclusion or the, the, the crescendo of the speech in Isaiah, I'll greatly rejoice in the Lord who exalted my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. 

He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.  Now remember those, because all of these words, oh, the exception of the robe,  mirror Isaiah 59, verse 17. And if you know my, my proclivity for the armor of God, you'll know that 59 17 is where one of the earliest the origin, perhaps, of the armor of God and the divine warrior motif. 

 And to remind my listeners, Isaiah 59, 17, listen for those words again. There's just one verse. He put on righteousness like a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head. He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in fury as in a mantle.  And that's not nothing. That's an important piece of Isaiah.

And both Isaiah 59 and 61 fall within what scholars call treto Isaiah. There's three main sections or movements or divisions of Isaiah. Proto Isaiah, Deutero Isaiah, and Trito Isaiah. The, the language, the interest, the motivation, the theology change slightly.  Both 59 and 61 are with, are of one cloth.

And so my suggestion, or what I think we need to notice, is that Isaiah 61  follows necessarily on Isaiah 59. You cannot fully comprehend Jesus speech at Nazareth. Isaiah's proclamation in 61 without the setting, the context, the foundation in the armor of God, 5917.  What I think is happening in Jesus's speech and in Isaiah 61 is a call or a reminder that the ministry of Jesus Christ is a call to battle, not against flesh and blood.

I think Paul is right here. thEre's no There's no mistake in the hearers of the word when Jesus is preaching in Nazareth. He is borrowing from Isaiah, and Isaiah is using Isaiah's own language.  of the divine warrior and the armor of God.  Garments of vengeance. Fury is in a mantle. A day of vengeance of the Lord.

A mantle of praise. Garments of salvation. A robe of righteousness. All of these are almost like a, a tornado or a whirlpool of symbolism. All circling the divine warrior motif. Jesus is coming and has come. As a warrior to do battle against the forces of evil.  Isaiah 61, often we, we don't like vengeance.

And this is true of, of, of Paul or Saul as well. In genuine Saul in 1 Thessalonians 5. 8, verse 8, which comes right before this reading in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16,  is another one where Saul picks up the armor of God motif, but he only has the helmet of the hope of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness, I'm sorry, of faith and love.

1 Thessalonians 5, 8. Ephesians 6, which is a disputed Pauline epistle, which is like the school of Paul, but it's a little bit different. He goes further, he has the sword as the word of God the, the shield of faith,  but he keeps salvation and righteousness as the helmet and the breastplate. So you cannot understand Jesus proclamation.

His inaugural speech without understanding that Jesus is the divine warrior as God's son. so This reading for this week is, is centrally important. To understand Advent, you have to understand military service. You have to understand war because to become a Christian is to become a soldier of God who fights not with flesh, against flesh and bone with the weapons of this world, but who fights against the spirits and the forces of evil at work in the world to that keep People underneath one another.

I, I can't stress enough how important this is for Christian theology and ethics. There's a middle road that I'm trying to craft that I see Jesus accomplishing and pursuing that I'd never heard. in church, in seminary, or elsewhere, but we cannot understand the Christian faith without understanding both contemporary military service, as well as ancient military service, and how wrapped up it was in the common, everyday, mundane life of the ancient Israelites.