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In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying* with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with* the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’

So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1:1-11).

Meditation

Today is Ascension Sunday! Seven weeks ago we celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday! Next week we will be celebrating the sending of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. In his commentary on Acts 1, John Calvin states he wants readers to know “what profit we reap by the Ascension of Christ. Notwithstanding, because it is one of the chief points of our faith.” Wow! One of the chief points of our faith!

Well, I don’t know about you, but in the church I grew up in we did not talk a lot about the Christ’s Ascension. I had passed over this story many times in scripture and heard a lot about the charge to be witnesses for Jesus to the very ends of the earth. But I don’t think we did anything to mark or celebrate Ascension. In fact in the church I grew up in even on Easter it sometimes felt like our focus was still more on Good Friday. At any rate the hope of resurrection sometimes felt like an afterthought. Perhaps even more of an afterthought for us was Christ’s Ascension to Heaven to reign at God’s right hand to use the Apostle Paul’s language.

I mean what does all of this talk of reign and rule and Kingdom even mean anyway? Do those categories even make sense to 21 century Christians living in a democratic society? Jesus is with God in Heaven, that part we at least understand…. right? Heaven is where God is. Heaven is where our loved ones who have gone before are. Heaven is a place we go when we die. Heaven is somewhere up there…. Right? We just read from our lesson in Acts that at the Ascension Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. Is there any wonder that the disciples stood looking up? And yet these two men in white robes – this is Luke’s language for Angels – come and have the nerve to ask “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” I can imagine my response if I was one of the disciples: Well hello!?!?! Didn’t you just see that guy disappear? That doesn’t just happen everyday! In this hypothetical conversation I imagine the angels would probably ask again “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Hmm… Why did they stand looking up toward Heaven? Well can I just ask: How far is heaven anyway? A couple of years ago there was a very popular song by a group called Los Lonely Boys that asked this very question with its catchy and repetitive chorus: “How far is Heaven? Lord can you tell me? How far is Heaven?” If we were to hear the Los Lonely Boys tell it, it would seem the answer would be “Quite Far” A quick look at the lyrics reveals this conviction:

Cause I’ve been locked up way too long
In this crazy world, how far is heaven
I just keep on prayin’ Lord
Just keep on livin’, how far is heaven…
Cause I know there’s a better place
Than this place I’m livin’, how far is heaven

I don’t think that Los Lonely Boys stand alone. You know, if we survey the lyrics to a lot of popular songs it seems this conviction that Heaven is quite far away seems fairly strong. According to Led Zeppelin the Stairway to Heaven lies on the whispering wind. Ok that seems fairly abstract. So how about this 60’s singer/song writer Norman Greenbaum sings in another quite popular song:

Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky
That’s where I’m gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best

Up, Up and away to the Spirit in the Sky. And then there is one of – if not theeee – most popular rock songs ever written, by one of the most prolific song writers to ever pick up a guitar Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door. It has become one of the most covered rock & roll songs of all time. Artists as diverse as Eric Clapton, U2, The Grateful Dead, Guns N Roses, teen pop singer Avril Lavigne, R&B Singer Baby Face, Hip Hop/rap artist Wyclef Jean have all performed and recorded this song. While Dylan wrote the song to describes the feelings and impressions of a dying man in the film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, I believe the song has become so wildly popular because it has come to sum up the way many of us feel not so much just about death, but about the whole of our lives: We are knocking on Heaven’s Door. We are searching for Heaven. Perhaps we are often like Jesus’ first disciples, stand with our eyes turned to the sky in our search.

And it is not just popular music. In fact a survey of a lot of Christian Hymnody would also have it that Heaven is as Los Lonely boys and Norman Greenbaum would have it far away and out there, up in the sky: We sing “I’ll Fly Away Oh Glory, I’ll Fly Away” We sing about a day or place “When the Roll is called up Yonder” Or as my personal favorite hymn declares “When we’ve been there 10, 000 years Bright shining as the sun, We’ll have no less days to sing his praise than when we first begun.”

Indeed such images whether in popular or explicitly Christian music do have their rooting in our Old and New Testament Scriptures: In Isaiah we hear: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). And Heaven as with our passage today is often described as up. Friends these songs and such passages are emphasizing something very important: God is transcendent, that is God is above and beyond our full comprehension. But it seems we sometimes more easily forget that God has also always also been immanent, that is up close and ever present, at times we even say the Spirit of God is within us. So again I ask How far is Heaven?

I think if we want answers to this question, we would do well to spend some time lingering over the two closely related questions in our passage today: The disciple ask Jesus at this time are you going to restore the Kingdom to Israel to which Jesus tells them basically it is none of your business and I will send you my Spirit. Then after Jesus disappears from their sight The Angels ask “Why do you stand looking up toward Heaven?”

Well this passage tells us that after his resurrection Jesus spent forty days appearing to his disciples and speaking about the kingdom of God. Whatever this Kingdom of God is it seems to have been pretty important to Jesus. He spent most of his earthbound ministry talking about it: Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom is like a farmer who went out to plant seed or a Lord who went out to hire workers.

In Luke’s gospel Jesus says “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” and another time in Luke when questioned by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

But then after his death and Resurrection, Luke – the author of the gospel that bears that name as well as the book of Acts – tells us in here in Acts that Jesus hung around for another 40 days talking about the kingdom.

So here they are, the disciples are gathered around a risen Jesus and they ask him: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” To understand their question, to understand this passage, really to understand Jesus we need to remember a little about Israel’s history and their Kingdom hope. We need to remember that God called Abraham and said I will bless you and you will be a blessing and through you all of the families of the earth will be blessed. We would do well to remember the Exodus 19 declaration that God will make Abraham’s descendents a priestly nation. The clear implication of this is that like a Jewish priest is a liaison between God and the people at the temple, the nation of Israel was to be a liaison between God and the rest of the nations. 2 Samuel 7 reports that after God appointed the people a king, it was declared that God would establish the throne of David forever. And we would also do well to remember that in times of political strife, even in captivity to other nations, lest the people forget that the promise and charge that they were to be a priestly nation for the sake of all the earth, God sent prophets. The prophet Isaiah envisioned a day when:

Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

As the history of Israel unfolded and their religious hope developed, a belief emerged that God would rise up a leader, a messiah, an anointed one as part of God’s plan to establish peace amongst the nations. Some looked for a prophet, others held tight to the temple and the priestly system as their hope and many hoped for a king. Isaiah also had said “A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him” Jesse being of course the father of David their expectations should make some sense to us.

Indeed if the Christian claims about Jesus of Nazareth are true then Jesus does meet messianic expectations. But he also radically reshapes them! Most agree he was a strange and peculiar prophet. But his message got him killed. Christians claim Jesus’ final act at the crucifixion was a priestly one that fulfilled the sacrificial rights of Israel once and for all. But that certainly did not preserve the temple, Israel’s center for religious life that would be torn down a few short years later by the hands of the same government that tore down Jesus. And what of his Kingdom? According to his followers Jesus was heir to the house of David via his earthly father Joseph. But that throne had long been disestablished by Roman power by the time of Jesus’ arrival on the scene. Jesus did declare over and over again that a Kingdom – the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven – was at hand. Again it was his central message! But from his humble beginnings to his humiliating death, Jesus did anything but meet the notions of what a royal or militant or leader should do. And as he hung on a Roman cross it seemed he had done anything but establish the lasting peace proclaimed by the Prophet Isaiah, the day when all nations would stream to Israel.

Umm… so why again did his first followers claim him to be the Messiah, the fulfillment of Israel’s hope for a restored Kingdom on earth? Well that gets intertwined with their most audacious claims about Jesus. The community that bears his name has been wrestling for 2,000 years now with the mysteries revealed in him. Much the same way Jacob wrestled with God in the form of an angel. And as we have wrestled with the words he said, the things he did, the way he died and the reports that he rose again from the grave, we as a people have time and time again come to this conclusion: this man, this Jesus is in some tangible sense the very presence of God with us. The God who spoke into the darkness to matter which was once formless and void differentiating the waters from the dry land somehow is also present with us in this man who walks on water, commanding the forces of nature like God did in Genesis. And so we venerate him. When we pray we say his name. And when bad things happen we call out his name. And when we do, he has promised to be there.

And this is why we need desperately to recapture a holistic notion of what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth, yes the Christ!: His incarnation, ministry and message, death and resurrection and yes his Ascension all matter! His incarnation matters because in him Heaven and earth have come together. The Kingdom of heaven and our world has become inextricably intertwined. With his healing ministry, teaching and message he lets us know that the God of Heaven comes close and still comes to set captives like us free. He turns the shame and pain of the cross into glory by showing us that God suffers not only for but with us. His resurrection matters because it is God’s vindication of the strange and peculiar ways God has chosen to work in Jesus, setting aside power, might and prerogative in order to serve the creation God deserves service from.

And what of the Ascension? Well I agree with Calvin that it is “one of the chiefest points of our faith.” In Jesus and his incarnation, Heaven and earth come together. In his Ascension they stay together! This is why the Apostle Paul can say in Ephesians that God has place Christ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come and also talk about the God revealed in Christ as that which fills all in all. Sometimes in our upward gazing towards “the Heavens” and all of our knocking on Heaven’s door we forget that the King of Heaven and earth is knocking at our hearts.

What changes this? What can cause the disciple and presumably Peter among them to go from asking the same question as the Pharisees: Are you now going to restore the Kingdom to a chapter later in Acts 2 declaring Jesus’ status over all heaven and earth and even over King David? It is the very thing Jesus promised in this passage: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you! But they learned and we have come to know we do not just receive Power, we receive presence. The Holy Spirit Opens our eyes to the presence of the one who stands at our heart’s door and knocks. The Spirit opens our eyes to see that in God – the same God revealed decisively in Christ – in him we live and move and have our being as Paul declares in Acts. With this sort of mutual indwelling, us living and moving and having our very being in God, God penetrating and changing our hearts indeed God has come close, very, very close indeed! So close we can clothe ourselves in Christ, so close we can put on the mind of Christ. So close Paul says it is no longer I live but Christ. So close.

And so it is fitting we sing about this too! In the knowledge that in him we move and live and have our being, in the hope that his Kingdom is not some out of reach place but is renewing this place we sing World without end Amen, Amen! We sing draw me nearer, nearer Precious Lord! We sing I once was lost but now I am found. Indeed we are rooted. We are home!

Near the end of Luke’s gospel Angels ask the women who came to the tomb to find it empty Why do you look for the living among the dead? Then at the beginning of his second volume in Acts the angels ask why do you look up toward heaven. I think this provides more than just nice symmetry for Luke’s 2 volume project! You don’t need to go digging in holes in the ground and looking down. And you don’t really need to look up. The God revealed in Jesus is ever present with us by virtue of the Spirit he has sent. Breathe him in. For in him we live, we move we have our being. In him we are at home. And though he is King he has made his home and his dwelling in us and with it has brought his kingdom. Let’s sing of that to the very ends of the earth!!!!!!!

Lectionary Readings:
Isiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9

Sermon:

The 23rd Psalm. It is perhaps the most instantly recognizable Bible passage in all of scripture. In the early church catechumens were asked to memorize this Psalm by heart before their baptism. Saint Gregory of Nyssa has a famous prayer based off of this Psalm that begins:

Where are you pasturing your flock, O good Shepherd, who carry the whole flock on your shoulders? (for the whole of human nature is one sheep and you have lifted it onto your shoulders).

This image of Shepherd has brought comfort and delight the people of God for centuries upon centuries. In John’s gospel this image for God is applied to our Lord where it finds new and ultimate meaning as Jesus declares, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This is an image that covers stained glass windows in Catholic cathedrals, in Baptist chapels and in churches everywhere in between across the globe.

Ubiquitously we read this Psalm at funerals. If you are like me you may have a collection somewhere of programs from funerals of those close to you. I have several of these: my friend Tim from childhood who died in his early 20’s of liver cancer; my friend Ryan from seminary who died in his early 30’s after a battle with alcoholism and my mother who also died far too early at the age of 50 from a rare neurological disease. They all have Psalm 23 on them somewhere. In our times of mourning there is great respite in the image of green pastures and the reminder that it is God who restores the soul. Even in the darkest valley we can find comfort in God.

Before I learned to read, like most children, I memorized. Parents and teachers often use picture books because before we learn our ABC’s or all of the rules of grammar, pictures can prompt us to remember a story. I remember well the first two stories that I memorized. The first was curious George rides a bike! I read this with my own children the other day. As I read the words and matched them with the pictures memories flooded over me.

The second thing I memorized was the 23 Psalm, not from a picture book but from my mother reading it to me out of her King James Bible. I think the reason I was able to memorize it was because of association with the sorts of powerful and evocative imagery we have been discussing: shepherd, green pastures, still waters, valley of the shadow of death, rod and your staff, a table surrounded by enemies, an overflowing cup! Like the catechumens in the early church, I was committing this Psalm to memory. I want the tradition to continue on past me and I want these same types of experiences for my own children.

But sometimes the words and the images they are associated with become so cemented in our minds that it can be difficult to hear them any other way. We might misunderstand important details or pass over them all together. It is good and important for us as a people to find ways to hear the words of the book that we love anew so that we do not grow stagnant in our faith. And so that our children will continue to live it and commit their minds, hearts and imaginations to it as we have sought to do ourselves.

The notes in my Spiritual Formation study Bible ask what can we say of this Psalm that is so beloved and at once so familiar? The notes encourage the reader to write a paraphrase of the Psalm for an Urban setting. Illustrator Tim Ladwig has done something like this. Only he has kept the English translation we are familiar with intact and offers fresh visuals from a child’s point of view in a modern urban neighborhood. The Lord is my shepherd: the children wake in a joyful, loving home. He guides me in paths of righteousness: the children are seen having fun with friends on the playground and receiving attention from their teachers. The still waters are become a pool for a child to play on the street. It is a powerful and beautiful retelling.

But sometimes even our very best attempts to hear something anew and fresh are hindered by our old misconceptions. I would like to draw your attention to one picture here. It is the picture for: “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.” The children are seen eating at a warmly lit and inviting table full of good food while outside the window in darkness the menacing figures “the enemies” are seen looking on with envy and empty bellies. If you are like me perhaps you have had a similar mental picture for this part of the passage as well. After all David was a mighty warrior, a man of battle. If we look at commentaries for this passage some of them note that there was a custom in the Ancient Near East that during war if a soldier touched a house of a civilian they would be invited in for a meal and a place of respite. Enemies if they honored the tradition could look but not touch. Commenting on this image of a table set in the midst of one’s enemies one commentator says:

As David’s enemies head out for battle, a lone figure walks to the top of a small hill in plain sight of the entire army. Calmly he spreads a mat on the ground and arranges a meal upon it. Just in case anyone fails to recognize him, he smiles and waves to the crowd on one arm before reclining and enjoying his meal… He refuses to run he knows victory is at hand.

This is a strong mental picture. It is admittedly similar to the one I had in mind as a child. It seems to be what Tim Ladwig has in mind in his re-imaging. And it is an image that is not without some validation in the Psalms and the rest of the biblical witness. We know David was a man of battle. We know in other places there are cries to be delivered from the enemy and please for enemies to be destroyed. So why shouldn’t we interpret this as assurance that – if not today then one day – our enemies will surly look upon us with envy as we wave smugly from afar and find our vindication? I think we know why. Even if we have trouble at first expressing it. It has to do with the way this Psalm is different than many other Psalms. It is the same thing that compels us to read this Psalm at funerals. It has to do with the eschatological nature of this Psalm.

Most commentators are agreed on this: this Psalm is different. While there are many other individual Psalms most of them begin with serious complaint. Like Psalm 3: “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me.” This one begins and ends with Thanksgiving. It is thanksgiving through and through for what God has done as a shepherd and as a host at the table. While there are other individual and communal Psalms of thanksgiving many of them are still saturated with battle imagery and enemies being violently overthrown. Like Psalm 27: “When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh my adversaries and foes they shall stumble and fall.”

But Psalm 23 is not only a Psalm of thanksgiving and trust; it is an eschatological Psalm. That is, it is a Psalm of the good work God has done and will do as the God who directs and gently calls forth good from creation, a God who will establish peace once in for all in a world once full of evil and violence. And if we pay close attention, one of the places this becomes most clear is in the image of the table.

Food is tremendously important in the Bible. The scriptures envision food at the beginning and at the end of the human drama. In Genesis 1:29 we find that every plant yielding seed and every tree bearing fruit has been given to human beings for food. In Revelation we find ourselves caught up in the wedding feast of the lamb. And in between food is often a foretaste of what God is doing and will do in the world.

• In the wilderness God fed the children of Israel with manna
• In the Passover feast deliverance out of the hands of Egypt is remembered
• At the Festival of Weeks or Pentecost and Feast of Booths first fruits or portions of harvest we offered to God and then the people feasted.
• Priest would eat in designated places the meat of sacrifices offered to God
• And one we sometimes forget: feast were had when peace or a treaty was made with enemies

In Genesis 26 Isaac made a covenant the an Enemy, the Philistine King Abimelech. Isaac had lied. Like his father Abraham before him he tried to pass his wife off as his sister in an act of self protection. Eventually he is found out and banished by King Abimelech. But when they reconcile we are told Isaac “made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths; and Isaac set them on their way, and they departed from him in peace” (Genesis 26:30-31). Isaac now knew what it meant to have the Lord prepare a table for him in the presence of his enemies.

We see something quite similar between Jacob and Laban a few chapter later in Genesis 31. Laban was Jacob’s uncle/father-in law. Jacob had worked tending Laban’s land and flock for 7 years to win the hand of his daughter Rachel. But after the wedding feast, the wine and the darkness had set Laban switched his older daughter Leah for Rachel. This begins a 20 some year game of back and forth deception between Jacob and Laban. When finally they reconcile we find these words:

Jacob took a stone, and set it up as a pillar. 46And Jacob said to his kinsfolk, ‘Gather stones,’ and they took stones, and made a heap; and they ate there by the heap. 47Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. 48Laban said, ‘This heap is a witness between you and me today.’ Therefore he called it Galeed, 49and the pillar Mizpah, for he said, ‘The Lord watch between you and me, when we are absent one from the other (Genesis 31:45-49)

After feasting in the presence of God Jacob and Laban are now bound to each other in a way neither blood nor marriage could bind them. Jacob now knew what it meant to have the Lord prepare a table for him in the presence of his enemies.

So too David – who is traditionally seen as the author of Psalm 23 – knew this type of reconciling meal in the presence of his enemies. After being many years of being perused by Saul, and after the death of Saul and war between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner Saul’s cousin and commander of Saul’s army comes to David, makes peace and defects Saul’s kingdom to David. 2 Samuel 3 reads:

When Abner came with twenty men to David at Hebron, David made a feast for Abner and the men who were with him. 21Abner said to David, ‘Let me go and rally all Israel to my lord the king, in order that they may make a covenant with you, and that you may reign over all that your heart desires.’ So David dismissed Abner, and he went away in peace (2 Samuel 3:20-21).

And David knew what it meant to have the Lord prepare a table for him in the presence of his enemies!!!

Our Old Testament passage today is from Isaiah 25. The book of Isaiah is pregnant with expectation for the peace that only God can bring. This is where we find the prophesy about the day that people from all tribes and nations stream to the mountain of the Lord. The day that swords are beaten into plowshares and war is no more. And in Isaiah 25, again food is a sign of the peace God will establish: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.” This is a feast for all people. All tribes. All tongues. All nations. People who once were enemies. It is a feast God is preparing.

While it is a feast for all peoples, a feast that reconciles enemies, this feast is served on the mountain of the Lord, the God of Jacob. While inclusive of all peoples there is only one God who can establish such peace. This we believe is the God that has been revealed in Jesus Christ: the true manna in our wilderness, the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover feast, the Lord of Pentecost and the giver of all good and perfect gifts, the priest who offers the ultimate sacrifice. Yes he is our good shepherd! But he is also our host and our food as we approach The Table of our Lord together.

His table is a foretaste of the feast that is to come. This is not a table from which we wave with a coy smile or disdain at our enemies. Rather it is a table at which we are called to be reconciled to our enemies. As was the case with Jacob and Laban often our enemies are those closest to us, maybe even family. At the table of our Lord we are called to be reconciled to the brother or sister in Christ who has offended us. It is this table that has the power to call us to the type of unity and reconciliation Paul is calling Euodia and Syntyche to in our reading this morning from Philippians. Last week on worldwide communion Sunday you approached the table here as I did in Grand Rapids MI, as did Baptists and Pentecostals and Catholics around the globe. This table calls us to put aside divisiveness and bad attitudes towards these brothers and sisters even though we may have important disagreements. If that meal we had last week still reigns in our heart this week it calls us to make peace with those whom we have offended throughout this week in between: at home, in our churches, at our work place or wherever else we have gone. If that feast we had last week still reigns in our hearts this week it calls us to go out and invite others to this table of fellowship we have found, even – and especially! – our enemies. While we wait with expectation for the feast Isaiah declares God will establish on the mountain, we have a foretaste of the table even in our darkest valley. If anything is noble, right, pure, or lovely for us to think about it – to meditate and commit to our memories – well, surely it is this, this picture of God’s table. The table at which we feast. Right here – somewhere between the Valley and the mountain!

Isaiah 9:1-4

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

Matthew 4:12-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles – the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’ From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake – for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Sermon

I am going to take a gamble that most of us here are familiar with the story the Wizard of OZ.  Probably most of us have seen the movie and maybe even some of us have read L. Frank Baum’s original book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  I myself have seen the movie many times, when I was a child it seems it was on television at least once a year. I have a lovely illustrated copy of the book but seminary has not permitted me with enough time to read it yet J

But let me ask you something.  If I asked you to give me a brief summary of the story and its meaning what might you say? Just think about it for a minute. I suspect that many of us might start in the words of Dorthy with “There’s no place like home.”  You might expand upon this with things like “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” Or perhaps, “We can never outrun our troubles or no place we go – even over the rainbow – will be carefree and perfect.”

Now maybe some of you have heard this but what if I told you that the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard, and the ruby slippers which were actually silver slippers in the book represent the sixteen to one silver ratio and the whole thing is rooted in economic and political debates that were happening in our country in the late 19^th century?  What if I told you the wicked Witch of the West was a symbol for American Westward expansion.  What if I suggested to you that we re-read Frank Baum’s original story in light of the plight of Native Americans? Would that make any difference in how we read these words from the Flying Monkeys who were the Witch’s indentured servants: “Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. […] This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land?”

Well, political interpretations of the Wizard of Oz have been around for many years, and many current evaluations have discredited earlier interpretations.   But there are problems.  For one there is no record of Baum himself confirming these were intended meanings of his original story.  There is evidence from other writings of his that he was not so sympathetic to the cause of native Americans. On the other hand a 1901 musical version of “Oz”, written by Baum, was for an adult audience and had numerous explicit references to contemporary politics.  Others have argued that details of the story are rooted more in Baum’s personal life.  The Emerald City is said to be inspired by a prominent castle-like house near Castle Park in Holland, Michigan where Baum took summer vacations.  Baum himself did confirm the influence of Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen on the choice of using illustrations by W. W. Denslow as well as the influence of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland on his use of a young female protagonist in the story.  And others have noted that Baum certainly combined the conventional features of a fairy tale – witches and wizards – with the well-known things in his readers’ lives scarecrows and cornfields, ornery neighbors and family tensions. We can probably say two things for sure: the deepest truest meaning of the story is and will always be there is no place like home.  However, we can also be sure that whatever the various influences may have been that Baum drew from his context, his time and place in history for the details of this story, this definitely included nature, family and could have also included his political views.

Well I would like to suggest that there is an analogy between The Wizard of Oz and our two passages for today.  In our context as Christians that benefit from the perspective of the New Testament, the wonderful good news of the gospel and 2000 years of Christian scholarship, it is not uncommon to read words in the prophets, especially in Isaiah as being straightforwardly about Jesus.  And please make no mistake in what you hear me saying today, these passages do find their deepest truest meaning in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  But they also were birthed in the world of the prophet Isaiah.  They had a meaning and provided both rebuke and comfort and hope for Isaiah’s original audience.

The book of the prophet Isaiah is pregnant with messianic expectations.  Roughly the first third of the book deals with the wickedness of Isaiah’s people and the hope that God will raise God will bring judgment and restoration for God’s people.  The middle section deals with the destruction of the temple and the people of Israel’s captivity and exile.  There is a long for justice to be dealt to their captors and hope of release from exile.  The latter section of the book is about picking up the pieces after release from exile, rebuilding and hope for a better tomorrow.

But the prophet’s words are also timeless.  Since the earliest days of the church, the people of God have recognized that the prophet’s words also have a deeper timeless meaning for all times and all places that points us to the work redemption and reconciliation that God is doing in Christ.  Luke tells us in the fourth chapter of his gospel that our Lord Jesus himself did this.  After his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, Luke tells us that Jesus returned to Nazareth and there at the synagogue on the Sabbath day he read from the 61^st chapter of the book of Isaiah:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

When Jesus was done he told the people “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!”  Since early times, during Lent and Easter the church has often looked to the Prophet Isaiah’s words in the 53^rd chapter and found the deepest and most profound fulfillment in Jesus:

He was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,

and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

During Advent and Christmas the church has often recited those familiar words from Isaiah’s 9^th chapter, the ones that directly follow our passage today:

Isaiah 9:6-7

⁶For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

I want to reiterate that it is good and right for us to see the ultimate fulfillment of all of these passages in Christ.  Jesus applied the prophesies of Isaiah to himself.  We do well to follow him in doing likewise.  The opening to the gospel of John, as well as the first chapters of Ephesians or Colossians all do a similar thing. They all provide a re-reading of the creation story from the understanding that Jesus was with God from the beginning. And if we open up any number of ancient commentaries on Isaiah 9 from the church Fathers we will find that their interpretations are almost exclusively about how these words point to Christ.

But at least since John Calvin scholars have recognized that these words are also rooted in the historical reality of Isaiah and the Israelites.  Calvin himself argued that the words at the end of chapter 8 about distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish probably meant that this particular prophesy was spoken during the time of Tiglath-Pileser III.  This makes much sense.  Isaiah warned Ahaz to seek the protection of God rather than the Assyrian king. The Tiglath-Pileser family made the Assyrian nation the dominate world power during their reign by introducing the practice  of displacing the nations of people they took over, dragging them off into exile. We know that this is a central concern in Isaiah.

This is important because the words of the prophets never fell flat. They had a meaning that spoke powerfully about the way God was working powerfully amongst the people in their time.  For Isaiah the message was that there is light in the darkness. The yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, God has broken as on the day of Midian.  Throughout Isaiah the prophet tells of a time of peace that is coming established by God himself.  “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,    neither shall they learn war any more” the prophet declares in chapter 2.  While certainly we believe and hope that these words find fulfillment in Christ  and ultimately in his return to establish peace once and for all they also are rooted in the concrete realities of Israel. In a time when the Northern and Southern kingdoms were divided and their allies made them enemies of each other while kings tried to hang on to power, God’s people yearned for peace.

It can be difficult to discern what all of the political realities of Israel were. To do so sometimes I feel like I need to read the prophets alongside the history books of first and second kings, and a commentary and say my prayers to understand it all.  Scholars disagree about who was ruling when and where and to what kingships different times of light and darkness should be applied to.  They even disagree about whether Isaiah’s audience would have originally understood this prophesy about a son to be about Ahaz’s son Hezekiah or one of the prophets own sons.  They disagree about whether these words about a child would have pointed to a child just being born or a young man just ready to take the throne.

It can be almost as confusing as trying to discern what if anything was the original political inspiration for the Wizard of Oz.  Well there are a few reasons why I think it matters very much and why trying to discern this is much more rewarding.  Firstly, it is our story.  As believers in Jesus we are also intimately connected to the people he came from. We are part of the family of Abraham.  We profess to believe the Father of Jesus to be the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.  Yet often we spend a considerably little amount of time reading our Old Testament in comparison to reading the New Testament. Sure we love the Psalms and proverbs.  And our Sunday school classes are full of stories from Genesis.  But many of us if we are honest sit down less often with Isaiah or 2 Kings  than we do with our favorite gospel or letter of Paul.  But these books are so important. They are part of our history.  And they tell us a great deal about why we need God to act in history in the person of Christ.

Secondly, there are many ways in which the times of ancient Israel are not so unlike our own.  If I sit down and try to map out what political and economic forces are truly ruling our world today it can be almost as confusing as trying to reconstruct from various biblical and historical accounts just exactly what was going on in Isaiah.  But the Messianic hope is still the same.  We still wait for God to finish the work began in Christ and for the day that darkness is permanently lifted and all can see the light that has dawned.   A day when They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,    neither shall they learn war any more.

But finally when we read the Old Testament like Mathew did in light of Jesus we find its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. It points to the wonderful, miraculous and mysterious way God works in history. These words of Isaiah were not merely futuristic predictions but declarations about how God was working amongst his people even then.  When Jesus came and went out in Galilee among Gentiles, spreading the good News of God’s Kingdom, calling his disciples to follow him and be fishers of men, Matthew saw the ultimate, timeless and truest meaning of the prophets words “¹the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”

If you keep track of the church calendar you might be mindful that we are now in the season of Epiphany that follows Christmas.  In Epiphany we celebrate Jesus being revealed to the world as central to Gods plan of salvation. Our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Orthodox church celebrate Jesus being revealed as favored by the Father at his baptism and the sending of the Spirit in the form of a dove.  Historically in the West in both the Catholic and protestant churches it is a time to remember Jesus being revealed to the Magi, the wise men from the east – distinguished foreigners who visited Jesus after his birth, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  It is a time to remember that a light has been revealed not only to the people of Israel but now even to the gentiles, even to you and I.

If you look up Epiphany in most dictionaries the first entry will be capitalized and the definition given will be about the Christian holiday or liturgical season.  The 2^nd definition is usually something like “the appearance of a deity on earth.”  This would be akin to Jesus baptism when Heaven opened up and the voice of God rang out and the Spirit descended.  The third definition is this:

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience

I wonder if this is the kind of epiphany that the gospel writer had as he meditated on the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus with the Hebrew Prophets in his hands and heart.  Oh I see what that really means. It may have meant for his time that Hezekiah or some other leader would serve God better than the ruler before him and would be a light to the people. But this Jesus who has appeared and spread the knew of the kingdom of God even to the gentiles he is the true light for all people.  Unlike trying to discern an original context for the Wizard of Oz you and I know these kind of epiphanies. We say things like ‘I didn’t know it during when I was going through that rough time but God was preparing me for…’ or ‘I would have never believed God used  my parents’ divorce, my battle with alcoholism or my struggle with cancer to deepen my spiritual walk, help me love my neighbor, better respect myself, etc’ But is not always that ‘what was intended for evil was used for good.’ Often there is a greater good in God’s timing for what we thought we had understood or done well.

I had one of these kinds of epiphanies recently. A few years back – the night of my mother’s funeral  – I went music shopping. Music is one of the most important and intimate ways I have connected with God, other people and discovered myself throughout my life. I remember that contemplating buying something moody and dark to listen to while I processed my feelings about my mom’s death. But it just didn’t fit. I put a pretty sweet best of Elvis collection back on the shelf. Elvis was my mom’s favorite. It was too soon. I opted for what I thought in the moment was something that would be lighthearted and fun, something to help me relax and take my mind off of things: The Best of Randy Travis. Some of you are probably like ‘who?’ Others are probably laughing. But when I was a boy this is the music I listened to with my dad the most. I remember one Christmas I actually borrowed every Randy Travis album available from a friend’s father and recorded them all on to cassette tape for my dad for Christmas.These memories are precious in part because music is one of the only areas where my father and I have ever been able to connect.

See I was not cognizant of it that night when I put the Randy Travis album in my cart at Meijer but what I was actually doing, and what God was preparing me to do is to reach out to the parent that I still had with me. Moved my the Holy Spirit I have since been able to re-examine my own motives as well as the quiet workings of the Holy Spirit in a new light. The night and my actions took on new and deeper meaning.

Similarly, when we spend time in the Old Testament, in its history, poetry and prophets we realize these people are my people, this God revealed here is my God, the Father of our Lord Jesus and their hope for peace and restoration for light to dawn once and for all and drive out the darkness – that is our hope as well.