“FULFILLED”

A Sermon Based Upon Isaiah 61: 1-11

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

First Sunday of Advent (B),   December 14th, 2014

“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 before all the nations. (Isa 61:11 NRS)

According to Luke’s gospel (Luke 4), today’s text from Isaiah was the Scripture Jesus used to announce his ministry.   When he finished reading this text, he declared in no uncertain terms that: “The Spirit of Lord was upon (him)” to fulfill this prophecy in his own life in that very moment.   Right after that, it was the first time, but not the last, they all wanted him dead.

Once I was preaching in a church in Cleveland County.  I encountered a nice young married fellow who was faithful each evening for the revival services. 

“How long have you been a member of this congregation?”  I asked.

“Oh, I’m not a member.”

“Well then, do you want to be?  You’ve been here every night.

“No, I can’t become a member.”

            “What makes you think that?  I’ve seen all kinds of people become a member of a Baptist church.  Of course you can.”

            “No I can’t”,  he answered firmly.  “I’m a Jew.   I’m a Jew who happened to marry a Baptist girl.   I come to church with her.

            “Wow, really?   You’ve been here every night.  You didn’t miss a single one.”

“Yea,” he added.  “I come so faithfully, they’ve tried to elect me a deacon a couple of times, but I keep reminding them I’m Jewish”. 

With great curiosity, I finally asked.  “Why don’t you become a Christian, since you’re y coming to church so faithfully.   Don’t you like Jesus?”

 “I can’t become a Christian because of Jesus.”

“What do you mean?”

He concluded:  “I can’t become a Christian because of the kind of Jew Jesus was.”

Do you realize that the Jesus we are about to celebrate at Christmas, the life of our party, really isn’t?   When you get to know him, really get to know him, he wasn’t and he still isn’t a very popular guy.  Try mentioning his name at a Community Meeting.   Try mentioning his name at the PTA, or at a Football game.   Even remind a “Church” person what following Jesus should mean beyond coming to church.  It could make people mad.  That’s why Jesus is still a lot more popular dead, than alive.   He was then, and he still is now. 

I wished I’d realized that when I decided to become a preacher.  My mother surely must have realized it.  She didn’t go beyond the 10^th grade in formal education, but she was smart.    She tried to talk me out of becoming a preacher.   She told me that I shouldn’t answer any call to to preach.   It wasn’t that she hated preachers.  She was trying to protect me, her only child.  She was trying to warn me what I was getting into.   I was too naive to listen.  She was right.  Since then, not a few people have hated me, when I have tried to bring the truth of Jesus to life.  

You see, to most people, Jesus is still a lot better, if he just stays dead!  Jesus is much better remembered, celebrated, discussed, or maybe someone to sing about, than he is to follow.   You can have “Jesus” if that’s your personal religion, but leave it at church.  Don’t get too serious.  Keep it personal, quiet and private.   It’s OK if we want to put up a cross on our church steeple or maybe even have an outdoor nativity scene on our property, but if you put it out there in a public space, someone will want you to take it down.  

We’re talking about Christmas.  Christmas is nice if it stays on a Card.   Christmas is nice if it’s about the food, the gifts, and the decorations.  Christmas might even be fine as a few nostalgic moments around ‘an open fire’.   It is good to have as a holiday, but what would happen if we really made it ‘holy’ day?   Who would come!   Would you interrupt your Christmas  for Christ?   If  we weren’t just praying to a ‘baby Jesus’ like “Ricky Bobby” in Talladega Nights, but coming to worship, serve, and to follow an all grown-up, commanding, LORD Jesus who could spell trouble.   It certainly would mean trouble, if even ‘some’ of us became serious about fulfilling today’s Scripture in our politics, in our churches, or in our personal lives.  

Let’s look for a few moments at what’s so troubling about this text. 

LET YOURSELF BE “ANOINTED”

This first word, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me” is already asking for it.   

A Lutheran Church even fired their pastor for simply using the word “Holy Spirit” in his sermon. 

If you or I suggested that the “Spirit” is ‘upon us’, we could be asking for it too.  

Spiritual stuff is dangerous stuff.  You can say, do, believe, and profess, almost anything and call it ‘religion’.  Religion changes minds.  It chains minds too.   It divides families.  It gets into politics.  It gets dirty and messy.   Instead of being part of a church, most people choose to stay home.  

Spiritual religious stuff is dangerous because you just can’t control it.   When we watched the twin towers in New York falling on 9/11, we had a frightening example etched in our minds of just how ‘bad’ and “dangerous’ religion can become.   Since 9/11 a whole new crop of atheists have popped up trying to tell us that all religion is bad for and we’d better stop.   I heard that Mitt Romney might run for president again, and we all know he’s also a Mormon.   Religion complicates things really fast.

Why don’t we just band religion?   What don’t we just stop believing all together?   But what are we going say, when we also realize that spiritual matters are also real matters that do matter and must matter, if anything matters at all?  

Of course, religion, like people, can be trouble, so most people keep their distance from taking it too serious.   But when we read at text like this, where it speaks about bringing good news to the poor, to the oppressed, and to the prisoner, and we realize that God might want to ‘anoint’ us to join helping in this task, it might mean doing something risky for someone.  But what if you’re the one who’s up against it financially?  What if you’re the one who’s bearing too heavy of a load?  What if you’re the one who’s been wrongly accused?   What if you’re a person who never had a chance?  This difficult, but this “spiritual stuff” might be the only hope you have?

Our church in Lenoir had a prison ministry, and the Baptist Men’s group held a cookout and worship service twice a year.  Our praise team would go.  Our Baptist men cook.  A couple of deacons would lead the service and share their witness.   I would preach.  It was one of spiritual highlights of the year; for them and for us.  It’s one thing to preach to people who could be somewhere else, but it’s quite another to preach to a ‘captive’ audience.   The good news we shared was the only hope of good news they had in that moment.   It was also the hope of a better life than they had before.   We saw it as our duty, our calling, our work, and our witness as God’s anointed, to take that ‘good news’ to them, and not expect them to come to us.   That’s the way people who are ‘anointed’ with God’s spirit think.   

What if we got that spiritually ‘anointed’ around here?   What if we couldn’t have Christmas until we shared our own faith with someone who was poor, who was oppressed, or who was in prison?    When George Clooney got married recently, a few things about his upbringing was shared in the news.  Raised as a strict Catholic, Clooney said that on Christmas morning, before they could open presents, his Father would lead the family to a stranger’s house, where they would take presents and would help them clean up the house and put up a tree.  His father believed before you could celebrate what you had, you had a responsibility to help someone else.”  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_clooney.html).

I realize some of us aren’t too fond of this word “anointed” and it can be for good reasons.  People who claim to have an ‘anointing’ from God can sometimes seem ‘strange’ and ‘frightening’.   When I was living in Winston-Salem, the house where we were staying needed a plumber.  The house belonged to the church, and they called him for us.  When he came to the house, we started talking.  I found out he was a member of a church of another denomination and they had a lady interim pastor there. 

I knew exactly who she was, but I didn’t tell him, at first.   I had gone to school with her and she was the first student mentor I had.  She had also been a chaplain at Baptist hospital.  Without telling him that I knew her and respected her highly, I thought I’d play a game with him.  At that time, some churches, especially Baptist ones, were still skeptical about having a woman as their pastor.   I started to play around with him, saying, “I don’t know about a woman preacher, stuff.  What do you really think about that? “

With that he stopped his work, shook his tool in my face and said,

“Don’t you talk negative about the Lord’s anointed.”  

            “I’m just playing with you.  I’m just playing,”   I’m glad I WAS just playing.

We all would like to say who can be ‘anointed’ and who can’t.  We’d like to make certain people ‘anointable’ and others not so much.  But what if anyone and everyone could be anointed?  Or what if anyone and everyone should have some anointing?     Did you know that last year, every denomination in the United States posted losses?   All of them are losing members.  The “Nones” are the fastest growing religious group in the US.  The only religious group that ‘posted’ gains last year, in 2013, was the Assemblies of God.   They are one of those denominations who believes everybody should have an “anointing’ from God?  Harvard Professor, Harvey Cox, takes it one step further.  He says that the only churches who have any kind of future in the US and in the world, are “spiritual churches who believe and are alive in the Spirit.”  That’s kind of strange coming from “Harvard” don’t you think?  But it’s true.

More frightening than the word “spiritual” or the word “anointed” is what it really means:  It means that faith IN Jesus has to be real FOR Jesus before you can say it is really FROM Jesus.    How does faith become ‘real’ in you?   If this is from not from God, Gamaliel said, it will wash out.  But if this stuff is really from God, you’d better watch out (Acts 5.34-39).  It could mean trouble.  If you don’t want to become who God wants you to be, your “fighting against God!” (Acts 5.39).   Will you not at least consider what it might mean for you to be anointed?

TAKE GOOD NEWS TO “THEM”

But you must let ‘anointed’ mean what Isaiah meant by it and what Jesus meant with it.   God’s good news isn’t really good until it also becomes ‘good news’ you take to ‘them’.  

I don’t care how hard you try, you can’t privatize the Christian faith.   The Christian faith, which is the Christmas faith, is either a faith for everybody or it can’t be faith for anybody.  It’s not even rightly a faith for you, unless you are willing to also to take it to them.  This does not mean you have something you must force on someone, but it’s something you must find a way to offer to them.  From the very first time, people started to encounter who really Jesus was, they had to tell somebody.   “Come see a man who told me everything I ever done” (Jn. 4.29).  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  Come and See”, Philip told Nathaniel (Jn 1.46).  After the man at the pool was healed, “he went and told the Jews it was Jesus who made him well “ (Jn. 5.15).  When a large crowd followed Jesus everywhere he went, the disciples wanted to send the away, but Jesus said,  “You give them something to eat?”  Do you see the pattern, here?    The gospel is something you share. It’s something you show.  It’s something you can’t keep for yourself, until you give it someone else. 

Several years ago, a ‘national’ or ‘native’ missionary came to the church where I was pastor and told us about a church he was building in Africa.   He told us how hungry people were for the gospel.  He told how hungry people are hungry for anything.   He also told us how serious his church was about sharing the gospel.  He told us how they had finally gotten enough supplies to build a permanent building, and had recently had their first worship services.  There was not enough room to hold all the people.  People were waiting in line.  People were breaking in line.  Someone people were staying for a second service, when other people had not yet come in for the first time.  They had to turn their ushers into policemen.  Before the church service began, they would go up and down the aisle to check and even catch people trying to stay for the next service.   If they found someone, they would face them head on, and scold them, saying  “How dare you try to hear the gospel twice, when there are those still waiting to hear the gospel for very first time!”

How can we hear the gospel over and over, when the church is not just to be about us, but it’s also about ‘them’?   The question of a living, breathing, caring, sacrificing, thriving church is not a question of how can we have ‘church’ for us, but how can we build a church for ‘them’?

Would it get me, and others, in a lot of trouble if we pressed this issue?  What if we built our ministry based on what they need, not based on what we want?   What if we build our worship around what they need to hear, not what we want to hear?   What if the calling of our teachers, our leaders, our deacons, and our pastors, was not about doing things for us, but it was about doing what THEY need?   Could we build a church like that?  Could we celebrate Christmas like that?

I had just turned 16, and needed a job.   The first job was in the Textile mill.   It, or I lasted two weeks.  Then I went to work for a paving company.  It was an outside job  I liked that job better.  I worked the rest of the summer for that company, but then I had to go back to school.   I needed a job that I could also work part-time and during the next summer, and perhaps beyond.  I landed a job working in a hospital, as an orderly and a nursing assistant.  In those days, you didn’t have to have credentials.  They taught you on the job. 

I loved that job.  I even thought about going into some area of the medical field.   What inspired me most, as a youth, was that this job was not about ‘me’, but it was about ‘them.’   It was might first chance to really practice ministering to other people.  The moment that moved me in this direction was Christmas morning.   I was an only child.  I loved my parents, but I was getting bored at staying home at Christmas.   When the head nurse came around planning the Christmas holiday work schedule, to be she sounded like some Isaiah figure, shouting out, “O.K.  Who is going to work on Christmas day?  Who will go for us?  Who will I send?  And I said,  “Here am I, send me?”  I wanted to be somewhere.  I wanted to be someone.  I wanted to know something new about Christmas.

Then came Christmas morning.   I had gotten up early as a child, but during my teenage years, we often slept late on Christmas.  The excitement had gone.  But in my work in the hospital, on this particular Christmas I had to get up.  I had to be there shortly after 6.   I’ll never forget the feelings I had driving through the streets early on Christmas morning, seeing the light of the decorations, observing the few lights on in the homes.   It was quiet.  It was different.  It was serene.    You would think I would be missing Christmas, but I wasn’t.  This was one of the most wonderful Christmas mornings I’d ever experienced.  I was working, but it wasn’t just for myself.   The great present that year was not the present I was receiving, but it was in the person I was becoming.   This Christmas was not about me, but it was about ‘them’.   That who experienced changed me.   I think it is the greatest Christmas I had ever had, up to that moment.   What made it so special?   I think it was something Isaiah had said; “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has 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;   ² to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor….. to comfort all who mourn;   (Isa 61:1-2 NRS)

Christmas came that year, and I didn’t need a single present under the tree.  I didn’t need anything, because I realized that Christmas, was not just about me, but it was about them.

SALVATION IN THS WORLD

There’s a lot more that could be said from this text about good news being ‘fulfilled’ in our time and in our lives.   I’ve already said enough to get myself, and us, into trouble.   But then again, this kind of ‘trouble’ is the kind that could ‘save’ your soul’.   If we would be very ‘anointed-like’ to bring someone who feels like a ‘nobody’ something from a ‘somebody’ like you.   But the great surprise, is not just what it would do for them in their situation, but what it might do for you in yours---it might just save you from yourself.   Living lives of ‘fulfillment’ could save us all from the emptiness of a selfish, self-centered, and self-seeking generation that has lost it bearings.  When someone cares, when someone loves, and when someone stands ready to help, something’s gotta give, and someone’s going to live.

What we are talking about here---what Isaiah was talking about, and what got Jesus into so much trouble----, is not only a Christmas message of Jesus coming down to earth so that we could all go to heaven, but it it’s about Jesus coming down so that heaven would come down and get into us, right now, while we are here on earth.  “You must be born again”, Nicodemus said.   “You must take up your cross, and follow me”, now, Jesus said.   That’s what Isaiah was saying.  That’s why Jesus still spells trouble, but it can be some very good trouble.

Fred Craddock told about a woman, who attended a service where he was a guest preacher, who informed him, that if she anticipated that a message might lay a claim on her life, she brought her three children with her for a distraction.  The distraction, usually worked.  Even the angry stares she got from other people who wanted to hear what the preacher said, was a small price to pay for going home scot-free, she said.

“Have you never been in a church before?”  the preacher asked a young person in their 20’s.

“I’m sure this is my very first time.”

“Well, how was it?”

“A bit scary.”

“Scary?”

“Yes, I found it a big frightening.”

“How so?”

“Everything seemed so important.  I try to avoid events that are important; they get inside your head and stay with you and won’t go away.  I don’t like that.  To be honest, I prefer parties.”

“Then will you come back?”

After a long pause, the answer was, “Yes.”

I hope we are all somewhat disturbed by the truth of Christ, and what should be true about Christmas.  Shouldn’t we feel a need for some kind of ‘anointing’ to take the gospel to them, and not just keep us ‘for us?’    Should we be disturbed to celebrate Christmas just to pleasure ourselves, when 10,000 children are killed or injured by guns every year?  Shouldn’t we be disturbed when 16 million children live in food-starved households so they go to be hungry each night?  Shouldn’t we be disturbed when there are children, and families, right around us who don’t know where to turn, or who to turn to, who feel oppressed by the system,  brokenhearted by their situation, or imprisoned in their own lives. 

Who wants our ‘nice’ Christmas disturbed by a bad ole prophet?   So, if you have two coats, keep the both.  If you need to go the second mile, just stop at one.   If you find love in your family, why should you love a stranger, or maybe even an enemy?  I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me.  I was a stranger, you didn’t visit.  I was in prison, but you didn’t come.  I was naked, and I still am.  You’ve got all your stuff, so it doesn’t really matter about them.  Or does it?  Fool, what will you do with all that stuff?    

When I decided to work in the hospital on Christmas day in December of 1974,  I didn’t have to work.  I was new.  I was young. 

“You need to be home with your family,” the head nurse told me. 

Then I said, “Ma’am, I can’t stay home.” 

It’s not Christmas, unless I’m here, helping someone else.”  

It was then that I knew that  ‘the Spirit of the LORD was upon me….”  It was then, that day, ‘the Scripture was fulfilled’ in me.   What about you, this year would you let Christmas happen, not just for you, but in you?   It could get you in trouble, but then again, it could save your soul.    Merry Christmas!      Amen.