A week and a half ago, while I was still sleeping, millions of people around the nation were up and preparing for one of the scariest, one of the craziest, and one of the most unsettling events of the year: Black Friday.
Do we have any Black Friday shoppers here? Does anyone go out and brave the cold weather, early morning, and cutthroat competition on the morning after Thanksgiving? I can’t bring myself to do it for a couple reasons. The first is that I value my sleep too much to ever desecrate it by waking up so early. The second is that I spent many a Black Fridays growing up going out with my mom and waiting in the seemingly mile-long lines while she ran around and grabbed any- and everything she could find off of her Christmas list. I’ve earned my shopping stripes. I’m retired.
This year, though, one of my classmates woke up from his turkey nap at 10 pm to try and be one of the first in line at Best Buy. He had his heart set on a new TV for his family, and he was not going to let the deal pass. Unfortunately, he did not get there early enough to be among the first inside the store. He ended up waiting out in the cold in a line that wrapped around the building for almost 4 hours and then spent another hour inside the store. While he waited, he started talking with the people on either side of him. The gentleman ahead of him was there to purchase a new computer for his mom. The one behind him was there for a game system for his kids. As they talked, my friend heard more and more testimonies around him of shoppers who were there for the purpose of buying for others.
They waited, and waited, and waited, just so that they could make someone else happy.
Now, it’s easy in a church to speak volumes of the harm of consumerism and how one of the largest problems with our culture is its ever-present need to buy more stuff. And these are truths of which we need to speak. But today I want to talk about a near-biblical side of Black Friday: the waiting.
You see, waiting is what Advent is all about! We take this time each year—the four weeks leading up to Christmas—as a chance to remember to wait and to prepare for the coming of Christ. We find ourselves remembering the stories and Scriptures of the Old Testament, and we join the oppressed Jews during the time of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires as they wait, and wait, and wait for the Messiah, the Anointed One, to liberate them from captivity.
In our Scripture readings today, we heard the words of Isaiah, the prophet, both in its original context and quoted by Jesus so many years later. These texts are meant to proclaim “good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” These texts are meant to proclaim “the year of the Lord’s favor.”
It’s interesting to look at the different contexts in which these two Scriptures located themselves. You see, Isaiah was speaking to a captive and oppressed people. The Israelites have lost their identity within the ruling empire. They have lost their land and location that gave them foundation. They have lost their hope. And yet Isaiah proclaims to them a message of hope. Isaiah is telling them that even though they are stuck in this valley of dislocation, this valley of doom, they will not be there forever. Isaiah proclaims good news to the oppressed. Isaiah proclaims freedom and comfort to those who are in such great need for it. Isaiah proclaims to them that this is the year of the Lord’s favor.
But what is that? What is the year of the Lord’s favor? I picture in my mind a Godfather-esque scene where God, dressed in a black suit and tie with a long but well-groomed white beard, is sitting behind a desk and granting any request made to him on “this, the year of the Lord’s favor.” Is this what the year of our Lord’s favor is?
Isaiah was most likely referring back to a Levitical tradition known commonly as the Year of Jubilee. Let’s listen together to the words of God to Moses from these verses of Leviticus 25:
“‘Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property.
“‘If you sell land to one of your countrymen or buy any from him, do not take advantage of each other. You are to buy from your countryman on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And he is to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what he is really selling you is the number of crops. Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God.
“‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.
“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold. But if he does not acquire the means to repay him, what he sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. It will be returned in the Jubilee, and he can then go back to his property.
“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.
“‘If an alien or a temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself to the alien living among you or to a member of the alien’s clan, he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself. He and his buyer are to count the time from the year he sold himself up to the Year of Jubilee. The price for his release is to be based on the rate paid to a hired man for that number of years.
“‘Even if he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he and his children are to be released in the Year of Jubilee, for the Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’”
The Year of Jubilee, or the year of the Lord’s favor, happened every fiftieth year in the land of the Israelites. At time, all property was returned to its original owner, all debts were forgiven, and all slaves were set free. In this way, the people of Israel and the world were reminded again and again that absolutely nothing—even men and women—were to be viewed as personal possession. Everything belonged to God, and therefore no one person or people should ever be able to oppress another person or people on account of debt, land, or possession.
I don’t know if the invading armies nor the oppressive empires that held Israel in check knew about the year of the Lord’s favor, but if I had to guess, I would say they did not. Isaiah was in essence reminding them that the year of the Lord’s favor was coming, and even if they were unable to celebrate it as they usually would, even if it was a little later, they would in fact find liberation and redemption from the slavery and oppression into which they were forced.
And then Jesus comes onto the scene. He reads the Scripture from the scroll in the synagogue. And then listen to what he does next. I absolutely love the imagery that the gospel writer gives us: “Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’”
In Jesus, good news is brought to the oppressed. In Jesus, the brokenhearted are bound up. In Jesus, the captives are liberated. In Jesus, the prisoners are released. In Jesus, the year of the Lord's favor is realized.
What Isaiah proclaimed so long ago finds its fulfillment in Christ. Everything for which the people of God have been waiting so long finds its fulfillment in Christ.
Their waiting, and waiting, and waiting… is over.
I sometimes think that we are in our state of waiting right now. Christ has come, lived a perfect human life, died a criminal’s death, and was raised from the grave all so that we might find redemption and new life in Him. That salvation is ours, and we can rejoice in it. But we also still live in a hurting and broken world. There is ugliness and pain all around us, and we have to deal with and live through this reality. We know this life is not the end, but we also have to live the life we are dealt. And we know that when Christ taught us to pray for “Thy Kingdom come”, He wanted us to see the need for it in our world around us.
We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the time when the sin that clouds and pervades the world and our lives is thoroughly eradicated by God’s presence in this world. We are waiting once again for Christ to come and set right what is wrong—not eternally, but in the here and now. We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the time when no one goes hungry while others over-indulge. We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the time when our prison systems are empty because no one needs to be rehabilitated and for the time when everyone feels free and safe to walk outside no matter the time or place. We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the time when our government is not infected with corrupt politicians, when our youth get the education and nurture they need, when we love and accept everyone around us for who they are and not who we have deemed they should be, when we don’t have to turn on the news and hear of a bomb threat on one college campus and a shooting that left two dead on another.
We are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the year of our Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee.
But friends, keep hope. It is coming. Just as Isaiah spoke of this hope so long ago, so we can hear it anew today. We know that we have a God who loves us and who is truly with us, and we know that God will not leave us waiting forever. We know that Jesus Christ is coming again, and that when He does, our lives and this world will never be the same.
My friend, after waiting for 5 hours on Black Friday, left Best Buy with a new TV in his arms. His wait is over, and even if it felt like forever, it was in fact not. The same is absolutely true with us. Our waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Christ might seem an infinite amount of time, but it is not. He is coming. Keep hope.
So may you remember this function of Advent. May you remember why it is that we observe this time of right waiting. May you remember the saving work that Christ has already done in us and for us, and may you readily engage the wait for what He will do. Amen.
there's always been something about black friday that doesn't sit right with me. that people will camp and sit for hours for a material thing at a discounted priced. but i've never thought about how that waiting is often for someone else, a sacrifice essentially. and i really like the way you tied it into advent and waiting for God. i hope this is something i remember again and again whenever i have to wait for something.
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