Isaiah 61, 1-3

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von Ulrich Nembach und Johannes Neukirch

Isaiah 61, 1-3:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek;
he
hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the
captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
and the day of vengeance of our
God;
to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in
Zion,
to give unto them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for
mourning,
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they
might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord,
that he might be glorified.

Now the year 2000 has come. What did change –
except the figure? The same world, the same people, the same politics, the same
business, the same games…, last not least the same wars and the same hunger
in the world. Indeed, “there is no new thing under the sun,” as the
Ecclesiastes puts it. There are the meek – as before; there are the
brokenhearted – as before; the captives – as before; the bound, those
who are mourning and who suffer from the spirit of heaviness – as ever
before. The new millenium as such does not grant us a new time. The big
problems, as well as our personal needs and longings, still remain unsolved and
unsettled.

Sometimes, in fairy tales, there are good fairies
who fulfill wishes or, in an instant, change the lot of the poor so that they
become wealthy and happy. Sometimes, even adults with common sense long for
such a good fairy to – well, at least to stop misery and misfortune. And
sometimes, I guess, we ourselves dream of finding such a good fairy on our
ways, but, alas, this will never happen. There is nobody to lighten our burden.
It is up to us to do it, to do the whole thing. And those who are unable to
improve their situation – well, one really ought to support them, but
primarily it is their own duty to find their way. After all, “the pursuit
of happiness” is not only our chance and our right but our task as well.

I have no right to be suspicious of those who
dream of the good fairy; I must confess that, as a matter of fact, I personally
know this dream… Nevertheless I cannot help wondering whether the dream of
the good fairy turning all into better isn’t but the reverse side of our
fancy that we were able “to go it”. Of our fancy that, by virtue of
our possibilities and strength and power, we were enabled to afford the big
change, to establish a good new world or, to put it in one word, to make
it. If, if only at least the majority cooperated in struggling for
justice and in fighting against hunger and in keeping the ecologic balance and
in… What makes me hesitate to continue at this point is the fact that I might
continue here in that I recite the program of any political party. Even if I
declared it Christian I would have problems in giving evidence that this
matches our faith, let alone the Bible. There is a fundamental difference.

What is the difference? What is the difference
between Almighty God in His goodness and the good fairy we dream of? What is
the difference between our “faith active in love” (G.W. Forell) and
our activity in faithfully working for a better world, a world of love instead
of hatred and ill will? The difference between the fairy doing it on our behalf
and God vouchsafing us His help?

Good Christians, of course, are in the know of the
answer. And since we all are good Christians… – Maybe. There is insight
enough. There are thousands of theologians preaching and explaining genuin
Christianity. There are millions of learned and helpful books telling us the
difference and showing us the right way. And our brains are filled up with
Christian thoughts – or at least thoughts that derive from the Gospel. But
our hearts – ? Do our hearts know the difference? This is
the crucial question here.

Once a man read our text to the congregation,
gave the book again to the minister, and sat down. Then he opened his mouth and
told them, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” This
was at Nazareth, and the speaker was Jesus Christ.

Here is the discord between our brains and our
hearts. Our brains are asking what is meant by these words and how he brought
this into reality (if at all) and, last not least, whether he was authorized to
say so. And our hearts? Unless they are deafened by our brains they hear –
no fairy remaining remote from us and helping from far off, but a man who
himself does the steps to go himself to the meek, to the brokenhearted, to the
bound… He does not simply shift the switches so that we can go on as before
but now on the good, on the safe track. He comes to us. He comes to us in order
to bring us good tidings. He comes to us in the power and in the authority of
God’s Spirit. He comes to us so to help us.

How do our hearts respond to somebody visiting us
– visiting us in this manner? I mean, if they realize the visit. Unless
they feel annoyed (which does happen, to be sure), they will beat quicker, they
will grow wider, thy will open up. Thus they will get filled with expectancy,
with hope, with gratitude. They will feel warm with joy and faith. They will
sense God’s good hand gently touching us and graciously comforting us.
Thus we ourselves will get stopped on our ways. We will interrupt our
current business. We will grant ouselves a break in order to assess what is
happening to us and to let it linger on in ourselves. We will – not
give descriptions (as I am doing here!) but just dive into it and enjoy being
carried by the Lord Himself and enwrapped by His love. We will breathe freely.

It is not the nasty guy from around the corner, it
is a grim voice in myself asking me warily when and where this ever happened?
whether I myself did experience this? and, after all, what change this has
brought into reality? “Answer me,” the voice urges, “but answer
honestly!” What am I to say? This it is what I reply: I do not intend, not
the least, to argue at this point and thus to get trapped in the network of
argument and counterargument, of evidence and counterevidence, of demonstration
and defeat. But once you are asking me, and because you are urging me to be
honest, exactly therefore I am decided to refuse to answer your suggestive
question. Instead, I tell you:

Throughout the world and the centuries, people
have been asking questions of this sort thus keeping their hearts off this
vital event and allowing themselves to make it a matter of argumentation.
Throughout the world and the centuries, we all have experienced our lack either
of willingness or of confidence to open our hearts, i.e. ourselves, our souls,
our lives, to God’s good tidings and particularly to whom who brings it as
the Anointed of God. And throughout the world and the centuries, it did happen
nevertheless that people were touched in their hearts by God’s
Anointed and His good tidings and thus were enabled, were given the power, were
granted the energy, to receive the light of His good tidings and to carry it on
into our world. So, throughout the world and the centuries, He did move hearts
and opened them and filled them with joy and restored them and thus did give
evidence of His power as well as of the truth of what is said of Him: that the
Spirit of God is upon Him and that He does bring good tidings. Tidings, to be
sure, which are not “mere words,” but indeed “matter from the
heart” or rather words that change our world.

They change the world in the same way as does He
who spoke them, i.e. not as the fairy in the tale nor as we ourselves when we
achieve something new, a housing project e.g. or the “pacification”
of a troubled country. They change the world, instead, in that they affect the
hearts and inspire them and fill them with joy and hope. This is the way the
“brokenhearted” are “bound up” and those who
“mourn” are “comforted”. The “acceptable year of the
Lord” is not the year of big events or political upheaval. It is the year
of His presence in our world so that he keeps our hearts. Likewise, “the
day of vengeance of our God” is not the day of severe discipline or of
bloodshed. It is the day of His way to te Cross there to bear God’s wrath
and to carry God’s punishment on behalf of the wicked and the unjust.
Thus, the time of the Lord turns out to be a time of intimacy in a noisy world,
a time of graciousness in a sphere of business and brutality. This is hidden
from those who call the shots in our time and is ignored by those who command
armed forces or the streams of money. Indeed, it is the meek, the poor, the
troubled whose hearts are sighing for joy and for redemption, whose eyes are
open for this.

They do understand. They grasp that the gifts that
brings He upon whom the Spirit of the Lord is, that these gifts stem from a
reality different from ours – the reality of the holy God. They realize
that these gifts thus neither improve nor turn our circumstances immediately.
For they do not match them at all, rather they catch our hearts so to open them
to the Lord and to turn them to Him. History shows that this silent or even
secret revolution has proved to be the revolution absolute in our world. It not
only led a movement from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth which could not be
overcome. Moreover, it has moved hearts all over the world in all times. We all
know that nothing is as able to bring new things on the way and to afford
change and improvement as persons whose hearts are glowing with their sake
– whatever it is. So once hearts are filled by the good tidings from the
Anointed of the Lord, filled by gifts from God’s own world (different from
ours), it is unavoidable or rather normal and natural that these tidings spread
all over the world and seize other hearts and thus create a new world under the
cover of the current circumstances.

Yet this world is being noticed. There are
Christians. There are churches. There are persons who in the name of Jesus
Christ dare do things unheard of before or even forbidden by the authorities or
by sacrosanct traditions. There are persons, even parties, who under the
influence of people spreading the Gospel try to cater for the poor and the
captives and the suppressed. And every once in a while it happens that
Christians provoke the hatred of the leading class in the state or in the
society for the only reason that they “obey God rather than men.”
From all this there have arisen the institutions and organizations that are
usually named “Christian” such as: “Christian” traditions,
“Christian” ethics, “Christian” culture,
“Christian” parties, “Christian” behaviour – and what
not. We may feel awkward with this, but we should realize that these are –
very remote, indeed – ramifications of the “good tidings” of the
Anointed of God being creative in the hearts of people. Although this may have
become mere convention or even mingled with error and hypocrasy, – what a
remarkable effect of simple words having seized and filled human hearts!

Do we catch it?

Our way – as well as the way of the
good fairy in the tale – is the way of action, of projects and plans. Of
course I do not blame this. But this way, our way of acting and doing, remains
on the surface – on the surface of the world, the surface of human life, of
ourselves. So it is proper that we measure the effects, that we evaluate the
output, that we test the efficiency – and so on. But it has effects only
on the surface. And if it goes into the region beneath the surface –
history and experience tell us at least to be cautious; for what came out quite
often hurt our humanity.

God, however, does not stay on the surface.
He no less cares for the invisible world beneath too. So he takes the gentle,
the hidden way to our hearts. It is the way of the “good tidings”
announced by God’s Anointed. He, in the Spirit of the Lord, brings the
good words to the meek and the mourning and the brokenhearted and all those who
suffer. It’s only words. They hardly scratch the surface, let alone
causing ado. But these words not only prove to be mighty to seize and to affect
hearts. They turn out to be effective – mostly hidden, yet noticeably and,
in due time, obviously. And we should not forget that it is just not the mighty
and the wealthy and the powerful etc. people through whom God thus works upon
our world. It is those who have no means and no power, who suffer and are
disregarded and overlooked, those who would say they are too poor or too faint
or too minor, through whom God makes His gifts bear fruit and cause effects.
Thus they become and, consequently, are those amongst us whom God calls
“trees of righteousness” and “the planting of the Lord” so
that, indeed, “he might be glorified.”

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek;
he
hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the
captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
and the day of vengeance of our
God;
to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in
Zion,
to give unto them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for
mourning,
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they
might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord,
that he might be glorified.

What do we hear? Words saying special things,
giving information? Or words that warm our hearts and widen them and touch our
souls and inspire our lives?

May the Lord open the ears of our hearts.

Amen.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Schwarzwäller,
Göttingen
E-Mail: kschwar1@gwdg.de