Surrendering Our Wish Lists--Devotion for December 18, 2023

Surrendering Our Wish Lists--Devotion for December 18, 2023

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me;
 he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the broken-hearted,
 to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners;
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn…” [Isaiah 61:1-2]

Lest there be any confusion on the subject, I'll just say it: for all the overlap of the holidays, Jesus is vitally different from Santa Claus.  

The trouble is, we often blur them together and confuse the logic of one for the logic of the other, and we end up missing out on what makes Jesus both distinctive and so deeply good.

And what I would argue is the critical difference between the gospel of Jesus and the myth we tell about Santa is that Jesus brings his own agenda... while Santa has basically become a genie to whom we make our Yuletide wishes.  In other words, we teach children to tell Santa what they want (and, in the transactional thinking of trading good behavior for presents, Santa is obliged to bring them the things they have asked for), but Jesus insists on coming with his own mission statement, whether or not it is what you or I would have asked for from our own personal wish-lists.  In the relationship between me and Santa, I'm basically calling the shots--I only have to believe firmly enough in Santa's existence and do an adequate job of staying on the "nice list," and then I am entitled (in our culture's thinking) to the things I have petitioned Santa for.  Jesus, on the other hand, crashes into our world with his own clear purpose that is tied to God's big-picture vision of cosmic restoration and reclamation.  Jesus hasn't come to grant wishes, but it turns out that his agenda is vastly bigger, wider, deeper, and fuller than anything we could have come up with for ourselves.

I mention Jesus, even though today's verses come from a Hebrew prophet centuries before Jesus' lifetime, because Jesus himself takes these words to be a sort of inaugural address or mission statement.  You probably know the story, retold in Luke 4, when Jesus goes to his hometown to speak at the synagogue on the sabbath, and he reads these words from what we call Isaiah 61.   After getting through, "...the year of the Lord's favor," Jesus rolls up the scroll and tells the listening congregation, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  In other words, Jesus takes on for himself the job description of God's "anointed one" (that is, "messiah" in the Hebrew, in case that wasn't clear).  Jesus says he has come to be the embodiment of these words, spoken long before his own time, and that comes with a divine agenda.  Jesus has come to bring good news to the oppressed and poor.  Jesus has come to bind up the brokenhearted.  Jesus has come to declare release to people held captive and the start of God's jubilee year of debt-forgiveness, land restoration, and cancellation of indentured servitude.  Jesus says this is his mission, precisely as God's "anointed"/"messiah."

Now, to be sure, there's a LOT of good news in there--in fact, it's good news for all people and all creation.  Jesus' borrowed mission statement from this passage in Isaiah 61 is about lifting up the people who have been stepped on in life, tending the wounds of people who have been hurt, and freeing people from whatever constraints, whether physical, financial, or figurative, have been holding them captive. That sounds pretty all-encompassing to me. My guess is that you find yourself somewhere in that listing, at least in some way. So this is unquestionably good news, and seeing all this happen would be good, not just for any one of us individually, but for a whole world full of us who know what it's like to feel pressed down, heartbroken, or stuck.

But notice how different this messianic mission statement is from the kinds of wish-lists and wants we often bring to God (as though God is simply a grown-up version of Santa Claus for church folk).  How often do we take our own ambitions for success in our careers or desire for a bigger house and assume that this is what Jesus has come for--to help us attain "the American dream" regardless of what it means for anybody else?  How often do we treat Jesus like our genie whose job is to make our team win, our company post higher sales, our kids get on the honor roll, and our shopping trips find good parking places?  In other words, how often do we approach Jesus to endorse our agendas and grant our wishes, rather than meeting him on his own terms and letting him do what he himself says he has come to do?

I actually suspect this is part of why we fawn over the baby in the manger at Christmas time far more than we focus on the words, life, and actions of the adult Jesus.  Like Will Ferrell's character Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, praying to "Little Baby Jesus" because he prefers to picture Jesus as a baby rather than acknowledging that Jesus grew up, we have a way of focusing on the child in the manger who doesn't challenge us, surprise us, overturn our expectations, or call us out on our hypocrisy.  But the gospels don't give us the option of keeping Jesus as just "so cuddly, but still omnipotent," to do our bidding or grant our wishes.  The Scriptures give us Jesus as the One who comes anointed by God to fulfill this particular divine mission--to bind the wounds of all that is broken and to lift up of all who are bowed down, not to prod the Dow Jones to a higher close or improve your end-of-the-year sales numbers.

If we are going to meet the real and living Jesus (which, I would hope, is what both the celebration of Christmas and the whole Christian life are really all about), then we should be prepared to abandon our agendas and lists of demands, and instead to encounter Jesus on his own terms, including the mission he has claimed for himself.  That will always make Jesus different from mythical figures like the Santa of pop culture or genies and wish-granting elves from fairy tales.  But that is also what makes Jesus' presence actually good news: his work is always more than just granting my typically narrow-minded personal wishes to include a world in need of mending.

Let's prepare this week to encounter this Jesus--the real one--even if it means surrendering our wishlists to do it.

Lord Jesus, come as you will among us, for your own good purpose to make all things new.  Mend and set free all that is broken and held captive in this world.