Biblical Words [690]
Those who mourn shall be
comforted—by the coming of the Anointed One.
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 .
In the Prophetic reading God’s Anointed One
speaks.
This amazing announcement is the most compelling
expression in the Old Covenant of the mission taken up by Jesus the Christ, the mission of the One Anointed by the Holy Spirit.
For early Jesus followers who heard this prophetic passage, the speaker
can only be Jesus himself, and so it is affirmed in
The Anointed One (in Hebrew “the Messiah”; in Greek
“the Christ”), empowered by God’s Spirit, proclaims to the oppressed poor a
time of great change, a healing, a “release” (with echoes of Jubilee), most of
all a comforting to the mourners. (The
beatitudes in
Our reading is the central portion of a block of
prophecy, chapters 60-62, that ecstatically proclaims the restoration of
The NRSV translation includes “the day of vengeance
of our God” (verse 2). “Vengeance” has
the wrong associations. (The TANAK version is, “a day of vindication
by our God.”) God is not getting even;
God is setting things right! This is a
time when the falsely or unjustly accused are vindicated by God’s judgment! The Anointed One comes as God’s vindication
of the wrongfully oppressed, of those suffering unjustly from the ways of the
world.
The vindicated people, however, are not only comforted, they will become
active. The recovered people will
restore the devastated places: “they
shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (verse
4).
The newly liberated and comforted people are the
means of transforming the habitations of humankind.
And as the passage moves toward its conclusion, the
Anointed One anticipates a time of his own glorification as a blessing to the nations:
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
Into the dark world in which so many people were
mourning came the proclamation of the Anointed One who would bring comfort –
and rejoicing.
Psalm 126.
The Psalm reading takes us ahead, to the time when
in vision the prophecy was
fulfilled:
When the Lord restored the fortunes of
The liberated and comforted people exult in their
new blessing:
The Lord has done great things for us,
However, the restored world still exists in the cycle of the seasons, the alternations between anxiety and joy. In the dry time of the year, anxiety sets in
about whether the grain crops will be sufficient for the coming year.
A prayer for abundant grain harvests parallels the
great change of fortunes for
The dry land of late autumn, when the sowing time
approaches, is like
The emotional tension of the harvest expressed in
the Hebrew poetry is caught particularly well by the New Jerusalem Bible
translation of verse 6:
He went off, went off weeping,
I Thessalonians 5:16-24.
The selection from the Epistle also regards the time
of mourning as past. The new believers
now live in a condition in which there is only the imperative,
“Rejoice always …”
This is one of a chain of short commands, given as a pastoral closing to the epistle,
calling on the new believers in Thessalonica to show in their lives the effects
of the great change brought about by faith in Jesus the Christ.
These people have just recently experienced the
beginning of the Great Transformation that the prophetic and psalm passages
describe, for the gospel came to them “in power and in the Holy Spirit and with
full conviction” (I Thessalonians 1:5,
As a consequence they should be empowered to
·
live
joyfully,
all of which things the apostle urges upon them in
quasi-commands (verses16-22).
Paul then pronounces a benediction on them,
emphasizing that the sanctification from God transforms the whole person
(spirit, soul, and body) and prepares for the coming (parousia) of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But the mini-series of commandments begins
with: Rejoice always!
John 1:6-8, 19-28 .
The Old Covenant declared that the mourners would be
comforted by the coming of the Anointed One.
The Gospel reading speaks about who that Anointed One is—and is
not!
Mark is the shortest of the Gospels, and in year B
the lectionary uses John’s Gospel to supplement and complement the readings
from Mark. Thus here the Gospel
selection re-tells the witness of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the
Anointed One, now as given in the Fourth Gospel.
A man named John was sent
from God. He came as a witness to
testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the
light. He himself wasn’t the light, but
his mission was to testify concerning the light. (Verses 6-8, Common English
Bible translation.)
John the Baptist is here introduced in a larger theological context
than in Mark (last week’s reading): his
mission here is “to testify concerning the light,” that aspect of the divine
being which was the first word and act of creation (Genesis 1:3). That first-creation-light will assume a
bodily form and become the light of the world.
(That is, of course, simply another way of expressing the Incarnation –
God became human, the Logos became flesh.)
John’s mission is to “testify” to that
light. Here John testifies to the
religious authorities who are sanctioned from the holy city itself.
In the long dialog with the authorities
(verses 19-28) a certain delight is taken in drawing out the questions about just
who this John is. A series of possible
identities is posed and each one denied.
The most important identity is addressed first: “He confessed... ‘I am not the Christ
[Anointed One]’.” Not only is he not the
Anointed One, he is not Elijah returned, nor is he “the prophet” (the prophet
like Moses in
This increasing suspense about John’s
identity leads to his testimony that he is a voice in the wilderness
proclaiming the imminent coming of the Lord.
John affirms that he is that “voice.”
In this version of John’s testimony, there is
great emphasis on the imminence of the Coming One: “Someone greater stands among you, whom you
don’t recognize” (verse 26, CEB). The
bearer of the divine light is still unrecognized, still secret, but very close
at hand.
In their midst! The light of the world, the comforter of
those who mourn, was present but not yet disclosed so peoples’ lives could be
turned around.