Epiphany 3A, January 22, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of light, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning we hear scripture readings and a cantata text that invite us to ponder a new start – a new year — an inauguration. The timing could not be better, because we just had an inauguration on Friday, and then we had another one yesterday, one that took place in more than 600 cities around the world as more than a million, maybe more than two million people used their bodies to testify to the values of respecting human dignity and caring for our creation.

Our lesson from Isaiah sounds like it is teeing up the Gospel lesson. To Christian ears, it may even sound like Isaiah was anticipating Jesus. But Isaiah wasn’t anticipating Jesus any more than Isaiah was anticipating George Frederic Handel and what he might do with Isaiah’s beautiful poetry. Actually, it is exactly the other way around. Matthew was living and growing in the teachings and stories of Jesus, at least two generations after Jesus’ death, probably in Antioch of Syria. Matthew’s audience was living with the political, economic, legal, religious and cultural consequences of Roman imperialism. [1] Matthew was retelling those teachings and stories about Jesus in a written Gospel toward the end of the first century of the common era and thinking, “these stories sound so much like the stories that Isaiah told eight hundred years ago!” Matthew wanted to make sure that his community heard and understood the connections. I want to make sure that my community hears and understands the connections.

When Isaiah was writing, he was most likely writing about Gideon, who, when the angel of the Lord visited him to say that “The Lord is with you,” replied, “but sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this [calamity] happened to us?” Then God’s very self turned to Gideon and said, “Go in your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” And Gideon replied, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” (In other words, “I am the weakest of the weak! I have no strength! What on earth can I do to stop the imperial oppression of the Midianites?”) The Lord said to him, “But I will be with you… .” [2] And so the story goes in the Book of Judges, that Gideon freed his people from the oppressive rule of the Midianites.

When the prophet Isaiah was recalling in his poetry the surprising defeat of Midianite oppression, he was offering assurance that Assyrian oppression would be overcome as well. Right after the verses before us, Isaiah declared that a child had already been born who would carry the authority of God on his shoulders, a child who would be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. When this child comes of age, Isaiah writes, he will use his authority to establish peace through justice and righteousness. Peace, according to Isaiah, is less than one generation away, so don’t lose hope.

By the time that Matthew was writing his Gospel account of Jesus, some eight hundred years later, the oppression of the Assyrians, and later of the Babylonians, had, in fact, long been overcome. But by the time Matthew was writing, the people of God were living under the oppressive authority of the Roman Empire. Matthew wanted his community to know that Jesus was a child born into the family of the Holy One; Matthew listed Jesus’ ancestors all the way back to Abraham. So in the Gospel of Matthew’s beginning, he quotes the beginning of Isaiah two times. The first is in his birth narrative about Jesus, when Matthew writes that Jesus will be called Emmanuel. (This is a direct challenge to Caesar’s claim to be the divine presence.) The second quote of Isaiah comes in Matthew’s description of the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry. Biblical scholar, Warren Carter, makes a convincing case for why Matthew was reminding them of Isaiah: Matthew wanted to make sure that everyone was looking backward and forward to understand how Jesus was going to carry out his mission to make manifest the presence of the Holy One under a harsh imperial reality. [3]

Matthew wanted to make sure everyone understood that God opposes imperial power; and that imperial power is a direct consequence of people turning away from God (Who is Love); and that the dreadful consequence will not last forever, [4] because Love will take the initiative. Love is trying again, for Matthew, because Jesus had offered freedom for his people from the oppressive rule of the Romans. Of course the Romans were still in authority, but Jesus’ followers had been liberated from the fear of death. Once (or whenever) you stop fearing death, you can start living and loving so much more fully, and imperialism has no power over you.

Isaiah’s defiant poetry becomes Matthew’s defiant poetry. Matthew’s defiant poetry becomes our defiant poetry. What follows almost immediately in Matthew is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, starting with the Beatitudes. (Those of you who were in this sanctuary before the Boston Women’s March yesterday, have those beatitudes ringing in your ears. If you’re here next Sunday, you’ll hear them again!) Jesus’ inauguration began with laying out an alternative to imperial oppression that emphasizes strengthening relationships, that emphasizes communal economic practices, and that advocates non-violent resistance to imperial violence and personal misery. [5]
This past week I re-read something that poet Adrienne Rich had to say about the role of the poet in an essay she entitled, “Defy the Space that Separates.” She wrote: “We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kindship where all is represented as separation.” [6]

When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been arrested – handed over to Herod Antipas, Jesus picked up where John left off, indeed, quoting John directly. He headed to the Galilee – which was a part of Herod Antipas’ domain, so it wasn’t that he was getting safe. He was getting to work. He began by recruiting two pairs of brothers from the fishing village of Capernaum. The idea that they left “immediately” often stirs up anxious conversation in Bible study groups and maybe you feel it too. It might help you to know that the word translated “immediately,” can refer to a very short amount of time – as in “instantly,” or “right away.” Or it can mean, “the very next event which is relevant to the total context.” [7] It might be like looking back on a sequence of events and saying, “the next thing you know, they put down their fishing nets and left their boats and started traveling with Jesus.” It might have been a matter of minutes or a matter of days or months. Jesus and those first followers might have been total strangers to each other or they might have known each other for a while – we don’t know. We do know that they didn’t leave fishing completely, because of the Gospel stories that happen on or near the sea throughout Jesus’ ministry and after his death. What they heard and saw from Jesus was evidently some kind of wake up call, and it was compelling enough to stop everything and go with Jesus.

We have had our own kind of wake up call, our own inauguration. We have inherited three key messages for our inauguration from these ancient texts: 1. Darkness does not overcome light. Don’t hide your light. Let it shine. 2. You are not more precious or less precious in the eyes of God than anyone else. And 3. Our journey as Christians, goes by way of the cross – the message about which is foolishness to those who are not Jesus followers, but which represents the power of God to redeem whatever is most hurtful, most shameful, to those who are being saved by the life and love of Jesus Christ. We heard no inaugural poem on Friday, so I offer this poem by David Whyte, called “Everything is Waiting for You,” and I encourage you to hear the “you” as plural.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you. [8]

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