Third Sunday in Advent
13 December 2020
In times like this
[ Luke 1:46b-55; Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28 ]
I’m writing this in the lead up to the American Presidential election. Manifestos are being promoted by the main candidates. Sound bites on ‘law and order’ and ‘uniting the country’ feature as the two nominees vie for votes. Hopefully, when you read this, the outcome will be known and settled.
Jesus is in Nazareth when makes his ‘manifesto’ statement (Luke 4:14-30). He quotes today’s text, Isaiah 61:1-4, ending with the words, ‘today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’. To say that the year of the Lord’s favour is being fulfilled (the Jubilee Year), was a bold and profound statement. But, furthermore, Jesus’ claim to identify with Isaiah’s prophecy, as the promised Messiah, would be seen as scandalous by his hearers.
Right now, we live in the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’. It may not feel like that. In fact, quite the opposite.
Jesus was proclaiming liberation from sin in its widest sense, fulfilling the Jubilee Year expectations of freedom and restoration (Leviticus 25). However, Jesus omitted part of the Isaiah text; ‘and proclaim the vengeance of our God’. Why? Because, although the time of deliverance and rest had now come, as the prophets foretold, the ‘vengeance of God’ had yet to come. Right now, we live in the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’. It may not feel like that. In fact, quite the opposite.
In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo says to Gandalf; ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time’. ‘So do I’, says Gandalf ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’
Covid-19 and Advent 2020 has arrived within the timespan of Jesus’ manifesto statement. How should that affect our response?
David McCulloch
Senior Research Fellow in Pastoral and Social Theology
