Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Advent 3 - Year B

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

It’s time to play the game, Which of These Doesn’t Belong.

good news to the oppressed
liberty to captives
healing the heartbroken
release of prisoners
a year of grace
destruction of enemies
comfort for mourners

If, as in verse 9, our enemies will know us as blessed, why their destruction before their enlightenment?

Is there a breaking down of a wall of enmity through an expansion of blessing rather than running a tank through it? How might that look in your life? I know it will take some work in mine and would say this is Advent work on the ground before we can recognize what we have been looking for.

So, having been given a garland of flowers, we respond by following a bespangled E.E. Cummings and passing them on:

One winter afternoon
(at the magical hour
when is becomes if)
a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.
Nobody,it’s safe
to say,observed him but
myself;and why?because
without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)
mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i’ve
no word except alive
—that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole;
with not merely a mind and a heart
but unquestionably a soul-
by no means funereally hilarious
(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or etherally serious:
a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob, but a person)
and while never saying a word
who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him
self sang like a bird.
Most people have been heard
screaming for international
measures that render hell rational
—i thank heaven somebody’s crazy
enough to give me a daisy