Good News

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. (Isaiah 61:1-4)   This passage is a breath of fresh air, isn't it?  Finally everything set right.  Even more eloquently than the book of Revelation, this passage gives the future hopes of God's people: the year of jubilee comes with healing, freedom, justice, and provision enough for all.  It is the day when death and the curse of ashes to ashes and dust to dust is undone, traded in for the undying glory and beauty of our resurrection bodies in the new creation.  Then will our time of mourning end and our despair be dispersed in the dawn of a new day.  So much around us at present seems to be crumbling—institutions and memories and the ways that thing were even being torn down—deconstructed, literally in the world around us and figuratively in many of our own hearts and minds.  It is a disorienting world of much change where very little makes sense according to our sensibilities of even just a decade ago. But whatever has been lost, whatever has been torn down—by us or by others—on this day, God's day: it will be rebuilt.  Not perhaps in the way that it was.  But in a renewed way—the way of the Kingdom of God—the way of the New Creation.  As Reformed people we often look back to the Creation Order to understand the norms by which we are to live in this day.  But our faith does not lean backwards to the past—passages like this remind us that our faith leans and even longs forward, not toward the old creation, but toward the new. Now of course, Isaiah was talking to an exiled people of Israel, and the ruins they longed to rebuild were the ruins of Jerusalem and its temple.  Of course, the rebuilding of those ruins by the returning exiles only ever captured a shadow of what they had been back in Solomon's day.  So, there is more here to this passage than that.  The New Testament confirms this.  Jesus takes the opening lines of this passage up as the declaration of his own mission in Luke 4:18-19.  This is the vision of the Kingdom of God that would shape the work of Jesus through his life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension.  It is the vision that shapes the coming of the Kingdom of God still—in that future day when Jesus comes again and it's all complete, yes—but even here and now Jesus does this work through his Spirit and people like you and me.  The new creation is here, is coming, and will one day be complete.     So: how does this Isaiah vision and mission of Jesus through the Kingdom that is coming on earth as it is in heaven shape your life and living?  How are you participating in the proclamation of Good News to the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives and prisoners, those suffering from injustice, and those despairing in grief?  How are you participating in the work, not just of deconstructing, but also of reconstructing until Jesus comes again?  It's no easy work, but the "Spirit of the Sovereign Lord" is on us and we may trust—as Paul writes while reflecting on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15—that our "labor in the Lord is not in vain."  May Jesus accomplish it in and through his church—both now and finally on that day.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.