Tuesday, December 19, 2023 | Trey Comstock
In normal life, the toothpaste does not go back in the tube. One cannot always put Humpty Dumpty back together again, even with all the King’s horses and all the King’s men. In the US alone, we crush between 12 and 15 million cars that could not be repaired or that weren’t worth fixing. When fire or storm or flood or neglect hit a building, they can end up beyond the pale and get knocked over to make way for something new.
Union United Methodist Church sat tucked into a corner of a family farm deep in the piney woods of East Texas. In a time of circuit riding pastors on horseback, the placement made sense. Three other, small Methodist churches also inhabited that community, each a half day’s horse ride apart. Union’s attendance dwindled to just a couple of families. The real challenge came from the main beam supporting the roof. Over the decades, it began to bow. By 2019, the extent of the damage verged on the danger point, and the amount of money required to fix the issue exceeded the capacity of the small congregation. They held an emotional final Hymn Sing and closed their doors.
In normal human relationships, they too cannot always go back to what once existed. Even when forgiveness does happen, things still can end up permanently altered. Some trauma takes a lifetime to work through. Some people refuse to change. A breach of trust can forever fragment a relationship.
I had a friend in high school. We both like the same girl. She ended up choosing me, which in retrospect was not a healthy of good thing . Some of that stemmed from the fact that said girl and I turned out to be incapable of having a healthy relationship. However, my friend always seemed connected to particular moments of trouble. A couple of years later, when we all came home after our first year in college, this friend told me that he’d deliberately tried to disrupt my relationship with the girl because she had chosen me. The ups and downs of that relationship hurt me a lot at the time, and to know that someone who claimed to be my friend orchestrated some of that hit me hard. I only spoke to him one more time after that. I did eventually forgive him. We were both mixed up and mildly weird teenagers. Hating him only began to poison what fond memories of High School that I do have. Still, that friendship died from the amount of harm done.
Normal life works one way. God works another way. God’s people ended up in exile for a reason. They had a lot of time to avoid it, but at some point, they chose to not follow God’s way, to not take care of the poor and struggling among them, and to not see the blessings of what they had. The generations of harm in the divine-human relationship built up until the exile became unavoidable. Yet, by the grace of God, the story doesn’t end there. Out of love, commitment, and righteous, God moved, and the people get to return. Isaiah 61 comes from heart of the third section of Isaiah, where the prophet gets to announce the coming restoration of Zion. Not only do the people get set free from Babylon, but all that got broken will go back together.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
to spring up before all the nations.
(Isaiah 61:10-11 NRSV)
Zion itself sings of its own restoration. God has reclothed it beautifully, and like a garden bursting forth with life, the people can again live righteously with God. Sure, they should have done that from the beginning, but the grace and righteousness of God means that this is one relationship that can always go back completely.
Isaiah 61 gets an interesting New Testament coda as well. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus returns from his temptation in the wilderness and goes to his hometown synagogue to read scripture to the assembled worshippers. He chooses the first two verses of Isaiah 61.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’
(Luke 4:16-22 NRSV)
As will become a common theme in the life and ministry of Christ, they assembled crowd tries to kill him soon after this declaration. However, even if the crowd missed the point, we shouldn’t. Christ gives us a clear signpost of what his own ministry is. That thing that happened, when the people returned from exile and Zion and righteousness got restored, it’s happening again. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are the amplification of what Isaiah declared. Now, for all people and all time, the harm, the weight of sin, the consequences of our own failures and frailties need not separate us from our perfect and righteous creator. In Christ, we have the opportunity to again be God’s beautifully arrayed bride and the fruit of a garden of righteousness. In human world, things seldomly go back together. In God’s grace, we can always be restored to who God meant for us to be. This is the gift of grace. That’s what begins with Christ’s coming into the world.