Seek Justice! – Isaiah 61:1-‐11
Seek Justice! – Isaiah 61:1-11 | 1 During our journey through Isaiah this Advent, we’ve contemplated what God might be calling us to do as we wait to encounter Christ anew. Advent in Action, we’re calling it. Today, as we explore God’s call to “Seek Justice,” we find ourselves with the Israelites, having just returned from exile from Babylon. They’re back in their homeland after being far away from their family, their friends, their house of worship. But things aren’t just hunky-dory. Strangers have moved into the neighborhood, there are squabbles between those who were exiled and those who got to stay home. The temple is in shambles. They’re back, but they are looking for hope – for signs that life won’t always be so broken. And Isaiah offers up these words of hope. This isn’t the only place we hear these words though, years later they bubble back up. Jesus was just getting started. He’d been born and then presented in the temple. He’d had that remarkable moment of teaching the teachers, when he’d slipped away from his parents and back to church, when he was just twelve or so. And then, in Luke, there’s a time jump to adulthood – baptism, temptation in the wilderness and the start of his ministry. We get one little verse about him teaching in synagogues (Luke 4:15), and then Jesus rolls into Nazareth his childhood stomping grounds, strolls into the synagogue and preaches his very first sermon. In that moment the scroll of Isaiah was handed to him.
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