The Ancient Call of Liberation
I want to remind you of a story today. It is an ancient tale, one that you have likely learned. It's the story of a call, of God's call, in fact, to a people, to a community, to a person.
We hear this call clearly in Isaiah 61 --- “The spirit of the Living God is upon me because God has anointed me.” In other words, I've got a call, the prophet states. Then, we receive some essential details about the call – What is your vocation, O Prophet?
To bring good news to the poor. To proclaim to the captives, liberty!
To bind up the heartbroken. To comfort all who mourn.
Let me make a translation note here in the story in case you are tempted to take these phrases too spiritually – we are not just talking about the spiritually poor or those in spiritual captivity. The good news, Isaiah 61 says, is for the oppressed. The announcement of liberty is for the prisoners. These are social, economic, and political situations.
This is the prophet’s summons. Isaiah 61 can be read as a call story of Third Isaiah, this anonymous prophet in the post-exilic period, after the Babylonian exile, whose message resonates with the message of Isaiah the prophet of the 8th century and who, like Isaiah, also receives a call, a vocation.
The story I want to tell you today is about God's call, and in Isaiah 61, it is a particular call at a specific moment. The people of God find themselves returning from exile after years of being away from their home, after a catastrophic theological crisis that shook the very foundations of their theology. The crisis was: no more temple, no more king, no more Zion, no more land. They are given the chance to return to rebuild a community, to reconstitute themselves, to tell a new story about themselves and who they are. And the prophet says “I have a call!”
Good prophecy, Good preaching, Good calling is deeply contextual, speaking into the moment with clarity and wisdom. It is particular and appropriate to the situation.
However, the story I want to tell you today is about a generality we might make about God’s call. And that generality is illustrated well here in Isaiah 61.
And the call – watch this! – this call is about liberation. The call is never just about the called person. What a selfish way to understand vocation. To think that the call is all about you! The call is addressed ultimately to the poor and oppressed and broken-hearted, the captives and prisoners and mourners in the post-exilic Judean community who live under the rule of a newly empowered Persian Empire, and this prophetic figure is called to deliver good news --- Christians have a word for that --- GOSPEL. And the good news always centers on God’s liberation.
The story I'm trying to tell you today is about an ancient call. And Third Isaiah wasn’t the only one to hear this summons.
They were not the first to hear this voice of liberation calling them forward. Sarah and Abraham, Hagar too -- they hear the voice calling them to move to a new land, to have children in old age when it seemed impossible. And their call then took the form of blessing --- they were blessed so as to be a blessing for others.
The call was heard by those two Hebrew midwives in Exodus --- Shiphrah and Puah who chose to keep the Hebrew babies alive, who choose liberation over the crushing violence of empire. They heard the call.
I have to believe that Miriam heard the summoning, when she said to Pharaoh’s daughter: “Hey I happen to know a mother, a woman, who can nurse this baby you have found among the reeds.” Someone was listening for the voice of Calling.
This whisper or shout, this call, changes forms and shapes, and it takes on new particulars and different contexts, but it seems that the voice that is calling is concerned about freedom, release, and justice. Our passage today in Isaiah 61 says “For I, The Living God, love justice.”
This voice --- we might even call it the Spirit --- finds its way down through the ages to another prophet in another village who stands up in his hometown synagogue to give his first sermon. And the reading comes from Isaiah 61. He rolls out the scroll and reads these powerful words of liberation as his initial sermon, as an agenda for his life and ministry. Jesus says, “Today these words are fulfilled.” In other words, I heard the call. The voice of the Holy One is with us, with me, and it is a voice of liberation. This call for liberation incarnates in the person of Jesus who heals the sick, who tends to the broken-hearted, who feeds the hungry, multiplies loaves and fishes. Who went about doing good.
Jesus heard the call and embodied it. And the call wasn’t just about preaching and teaching. Or becoming a social media influencer, or titles at the beginning or ending of your name.
The call is about that last verse you heard read from Isaiah 61:
"For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up. So The Living God will causes righteousness to spring up before all the nations."
Friends, I’m trying to remind you of a story about a call today.
And when God plants a garden. When God sows the seeds, when God plants the bulbs, what springs up is righteousness and justice, freedom and liberation.
God doesn’t know how to plant anything else.
So, I am here today to remind you of a story about call. You have heard the call, You are prepared to respond. This summons may in fact be different for each of you.
But, listen, for God is calling, and I just wanted to remind you, to give you a clue so that you know what to listen for – when God calls, it is always about liberation.
Listen, God is calling.
A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)
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