News You Can Rely On

Advent 3A: Scripture for the day

To state the obvious, there has been a lot of controversy across our country lately, not only in the news, but also about the news.

Real news, fake news, Facebook news, news that comes 140 characters at a time.

So much contradictory information flying around it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.

It’s becoming ever more important to cross reference stories you hear or read, and not to get stuck in one news bubble or another. The news about our world is important if increasingly confusing and at times unreliable, and so I’m here to tell you two news items that I believe are in fact reliable.

They are in considerable tension with each other, and whether each is good news or bad news depends on your perspective.

The first bit of information I want to share is relatively bad news: no matter what political system is operating at any given moment at any given time or place, wealth and power tend to increase among those who have it.

I suspect that this is probably not really news to you. More like a truism. 

The second news item: God operates over and above and independently of the first news item.

We will come back to this second point in a moment.

The first news item is probably not all that new. We in the United States just sometimes forget it or get insulated from it.

Some of you know of Krista Tippett, the host of a great radio show called On Being. A couple of weeks ago she was asked what she is reading these days. Her response was that she always keeps the book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron with her because, she said, “Things are always falling apart.” 

She continued, “That would be a thing for everyone in this country to remember – that actually the ground was never all that stable under our feet.”

“Understanding [that]” she said, “is the nature of waking up” (Time, 12/12/2016, p. 72).

Governments across the world are of course not equal, and some are objectively pretty horrible, others somewhat better.

I confess that whatever political party happens to be in charge in the US, I still generally prefer our democracy over many other options. But even in democracies, and even in relatively good ones, things keep falling apart.

Brokenness shows up everywhere, and over and over. It would be idolatry to think that political systems are, or ever will be, anything but broken and biased by those who control them. 

That has always been true, and it’s true now.

This, I think, is what John the Baptist was talking about in Matthew’s Gospel. John was a provocative preacher, announcing that a new kingdom, a new order, was coming that would sweep away political and economic injustice. There was anger in his warning, and a demand for repentance in his preaching. 

His words were a judgment against both the individuals who had come to be baptized by him, and against the existing political system that represented those individuals. Needless to say, his ministry out there by the Jordan River created quite a commotion.

News of his message was not well received by King Herod, who had him arrested and tossed into prison. And for good reason from Herod’s perspective. For Herod, John’s talk is pure insurrection.

But John stands proudly and effectively in that long line of prophets who spoke God’s word of judgment, the upending of unjust systems of power, and of a coming new order. When John says in Chapter 3, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” he is talking about this social and political brokenness. 

Not only was John’s message resonating with listeners, it also stood on solid ground with respect to the Hebrew scriptures. When Isaiah says in our passage today, “Here is your God, coming with vengeance; with divine retribution,” he is talking about this same dark judgment on a broken world.

When Mary sings, “He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations. He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” she is singing this same news.

In our passage today, Jesus says of him, “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist.” Here Jesus validates John’s message as trustworthy and reliable, if difficult news.

The rich just get richer in a broken world.

As I mentioned, however, there is a second important news flash in our scriptures today, a second reliable bit of information.

The second reliable news item is what I consider to be good news, although it can be unsettling. 

The first news item was this: no matter what political system is operating at any given time and place, wealth and power tend to increase among those who have it while everywhere else, things fall apart.

But the second news item is this: God operates over and above and independently of the first news item. In other words, God is not bound or restricted by any political system, good or bad.

God’s work does not stop and God’s call is not less meaningful and fulfilling just because any particular country’s politics get better or worse.

Brokenness is brokenness, and God’s call is to heal.

This contrasting message is best read in other sections of the Isaiah passage today, and in other lines of Mary’s song of praise. 

Isaiah writes, “The desert and the dry land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom like the crocus. They will burst into bloom, and rejoice with joy…”

And Mary sings of that joy in other verses: “He shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next…. He has come to the aid of his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, just as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.”

Jesus goes even further. For where Isaiah and John and even Mary sing of a present judgment in preparation for a coming new reality, Jesus embodies their hope and makes real, gives it flesh and blood, makes it visceral and tangible, and brings it to life now, here, in our world.

This Jesus reminds us that God is not captive to the political realities of the day, and neither are we. In a real and tangible sense Jesus absorbed all the brokenness about which the prophets sing into his body so that we don’t have to carry quite so much of it in ours.

Thus, the second news item can be put even more succinctly: Jesus is coming.

In three short years of ministry and then three short days of majesty he jumped through the captive embrace of death and darkness and guilt and judgment and brought forth the light of a new day, the light of undeserved mercy and incomprehensible freedom and grace.

Jesus enacted in his very body the story of a God who reaches into the graves we dig for ourselves and pulls us out, no matter what we’ve done or deserve (from Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix). 

Jesus points John to the the blind who receive their sight, the lame who walk, the lepers who are cleansed, the deaf who hear, the dead who are raised, and the poor who have good news brought to them. 

Not because they deserve these acts of mercy, but because God freely gives them. Because God is acting in the world.

Because Jesus is coming.

And if through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus can free us from some of our self-absorbed guilt and shame, maybe, then, we too can participate more fully in God’s works of justice and life giving grace, concretely, like Jesus does, through our broken bodies, and in our broken world today.

Because if God is not bound up and controlled by the rich and powerful, and if God is not intimidated to act in a broken world, then maybe we need not be captive either.

Jesus is coming.

If God is working every day to nurture systems of justice, maybe we can do that too. Thus, although we must not ignore our personal foibles and failures, we also, and perhaps even more so in our day, need to put our focus, energy and support on those groups, clubs, organizations, and institutions that stand firmly and unflinchingly for the weak and vulnerable.

That, I think, is where we will see most clearly God at work today. Not on FaceBook, not in social media messages, not in the ups and downs of every news cycle, but in local groups of people who gather to work for justice.

Systems of oppression and racism and violence are increasingly well organized and are on the rise across our broken world today.

That’s the bad news, and it’s always been the bad news.

That just means that organizations that work for justice and equality and peace must respond in equal measure.

Jesus comes into our lives again and again to remind us that we know how to do works of justice.

God does not forget the poor and vulnerable, and neither can we.

God does not abandon the discouraged and frightened, and neither can we.

God does not bend to systems of power; 

God does not despair because political leaders come or go; 

God does not weaken in the face of some new challenge, and neither shall we.

We announce that Jesus is coming.

We do so with the full and certain knowledge that Jesus is already here, already working, already organizing us around him.

Isaiah and John and Mary lay the groundwork. 

But Jesus makes the transformation real, and makes it happen, and offers the first taste of it now.

The fullness of God’s grace means simply this: do what you need to do, and what the world needs you to do, freed from the latest news cycle;

Freed from the ups and downs of political distractions; 

Freed from the fear that others are more powerful or have a bigger microphone or budget, or might oppose you.

Continue to act for the vulnerable because it’s just, because it’s moral, because it increases the goodness of the world.

Because on that day in Palestine, captured by these few verses in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus called John to look from his prison at what God is doing. 

Jesus calls us from our prisons as well. 

Every day regular people, people like you and me, embody compassion and courage, and act on behalf of a world in need.

Look in those places and you will glimpse, even if dimly, God’s new creation, full of grace and truth, coming to birth, moment by moment, step by step.

Glimpsing what God is doing, and knowing that because of it, even we are a forgiven and reconciled people, then we too are freed to do whatever God needs of us, here and now.

God’s call is good news; news you can rely on.

God’s message is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow:

Long expected, Jesus is coming into the world.