Rooted in Abundant Grace

The New International Version Chapter 61

The Year of the LORD’s Favor

61 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the LORD

for the display of his splendor.

The New International Version Chapter 61

8 “For I, the LORD, love justice;

I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

In my faithfulness I will reward my people

and make an everlasting covenant with them.

9 Their descendants will be known among the nations

and their offspring among the peoples.

All who see them will acknowledge

that they are a people the LORD has blessed.”

10 I delight greatly in the LORD;

my soul rejoices in my God.

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation

and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,

as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up

and a garden causes seeds to grow,

so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness

and praise spring up before all nations.

One of the things that keeps us captive is our existential poverty, our ‘scarcity mindset’

Scientists and sociologists have spoken for some years about something they are calling a “scarcity mindset”. This is what happens when an experience of scarcity (often material poverty) actually changes the way our brains work by making us particularly focused on the objects of the scarcity that we have experienced, at the expense of other things.

The classic example of this in play, and perhaps you’ve heard such stories, is in the foster parent who discovers that the child they are fostering is squirelling away food at meal times to hide somewhere afterwards, because their experience in the home they’ve had to be removed from has trained them to expect not to have regular access to food. And in that regard the child is unable to integrate into the relationships and routines of their foster home, because out of a sense of self preservation, they are practicing a deception. This is a manifestation of a lack of trust.

I was reading a paper on this recently where some scientists basically scanned the brains of people who had a variety of experiences, in terms of relative poverty and wealth, as they did their grocery shopping (this is a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States - so obviously there were some pretty stringent control measures). And the results this experiment produced “demonstrated that a scarcity mindset affects neural mechanisms related to consumer decision making.” And specifically that those who had a “scarcity mindset” had increased activity in a region of their brain implicated in valuation processes (basically as they were shopping for food their brain was lighting up saying ‘this is really important!), and at the same time they had decreased activity in an area well known for its role in goal-directed choice (so there was less going on in their brain about how important the shopping they were doing is relative to just about anything else in their life).

Basically, (and I’ll risk oversimplifying for the sake of making this clear) when we’re afraid that we’re going to miss out our brain goes into reptile mode. Our brains become focused on the things we want, at the expense of other important things.

According to the Scientists who wrote the paper I read, this is bad news for the poor. This is why the poor often stay poor. Because whenever there’s a chance to have that thing we’ve been lacking, that we’re afraid of not getting, our brains don’t work properly. When that money hits our account, we’re not thinking about what’s best for us and others in the long term, we’re thinking about getting what we can, what we’re afraid we’re going to miss out on.

And it’s not just bad news for those who are poor and know material lack. It’s bad news for those for whom affection has been scarce, or validation has been lacking, for those who have been poor in all the ways that it’s possible to be poor.

This is an old story though. I believe that this is a story told all the way back in Genesis 3. The reptile said to the very first humans, ‘you know you’re probably missing out by not eating the fruit from that tree in the middle of the garden’:

The New International Version Chapter 3

5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

And the woman and the man, the ancestors of all humanity, took what they shouldn’t and didn’t need to take, and they practiced deception, and they hid, and trust and relationship was broken. They were decieved into a kind of poverty, into what we might think of as a kind of ‘scarcity mindset’.

I believe this has been a dimension of perhaps all sin since: of every time the reptile brain that ‘must’ take what it can get kicks in; of every deception; of every breach of trust and mutual wounding.

Just think of it; a world where every one has either had something important taken from them, or at the very least is afraid of having something taken, and so they take from others. It’s the rule of the scarcity mindset—the anti-Golden Rule: “Take from others, because they’ll most likley take from you. Do unto others, before they do unto you.”

This sounds like our world, doesn’t it. A world where, whilst millions and millions live in poverty, last years global wealth report by Credit Suisse tells us that the wealthiest 1% of humans hold 44% of the world’s wealth. And I know these issues are complex (and they don’t tell us anything about who is doing what with their wealth), and I have already suggested that poverty is about more than money. But this is indicative I think. Lets assume that the wealthiest 1% of humans on the planet are completely benevolent, and doing everything they can to eradicate poverty and all its negative effects—why then does poverty exist? It’s a sympton of human brokeness. Of our captivity.

Jesus is good news for the poor

You might know that Jesus reads this passage from Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth at the outset of his ministry. In Luke 4 we read:

The New International Version Chapter 4

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” q

Luke’s gospel says that after Jesus read this he rolled up the scroll, and then said:

The New International Version Chapter 4

Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

As he proclaims that there is good news for the poor, and freedom for the prisoners (scholars would tell us here that in Isaiah this is a specific reference to the exiles in Babylon), as he proclaims sight for the blind, as he proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour (which is the year of Jubilee for Israel when slaves are freed, debts are cancelled and ancestral lands are returned to their traditional owners in accordance with biblical law) Jesus is speaking to the abundance of God.

The abundance of God and His grace is the only antidote to our scarcity mindset

Isaiah, and then Jesus not only quoting but fulfilling these words is God throwing the kitchen sink at our scarcity problem. The abundance of God’s goodness for us, his desire to break our entrapment to poverty, to free us from our exile and imprisonment, to restore sight to our blind eyes and health to our sick bodies, to cancel our debts and to bring us home is the only thing that can disrupt our scarcity mindset. His grace, and the abundance of it, kills our scarcity mindset.

How do you stop that little child who, when she thinks that nobody is looking, drops food from the dinner table into her lap so that she can sneak it into a hiding place in her bedroom (because she can never be sure if she’ll get anything to eat tomorrow)—how do you stop her from doing that?

The only thing that has any hope of breaking that scarcity mindset is putting breakfast on the table when she wakes up, and then packing her lunch with more morning tea and lunch than she can eat. And then a snack when she gets home from school. And then more dinner than she can eat. And then letting her know that there is food in the pantry and the fridge if she’s hungry. And then you do that again the next day, and then the next day, and then the next day…until her brain is rewired not to expect scarcity, but to expect abundance.

This is what the Father (God) does for us through Jesus. There is adundance, there is freedom, there is restoration there is adoption into his family, eternal life in His home where we will lack for nothing. Why should we have any worries about what we might miss out on, what might be taken from us? Why should we ever need to be selfish, and to take from others, when God in His grace is committed to blessing us abundantly. As He has shown by sending His son.

In Jesus we see the generosity of God. Colossians 1:15 says;

The New International Version Chapter 1

The Son is the image of the invisible God

And Jesus models this generosity. As it says in Philippians 2:6-8:

The New International Version Chapter 2

6 Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

The Father is so generous, His grace is so abundant to us that he would give his son. The Son is generous, and His grace is so abundant to us that he would suffer and give His life up for us.

This is what we anticipate, what we bend our hearts towards during Advent; the coming of the Son into the world, the one who brings God’s plan towards its good, great and glorious end. The one who will declare the “year of the Lord’s favour”, that Jubilee year when things begin to be put right again.

Rooted in grace, growing in righteousness

I love the way that, after this outpouring of grace in Isaiah 61:1-2 it talks about God bestowing a crown of beauty instead of ashes, and the oil of joy instead of mourning, about a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. And then it says:

The New International Version Chapter 61

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the LORD

for the display of his splendor.

That’s “they”, the returned exiles, those who have been the recipients of God’s abundant grace, will be called “oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord”.

Commentators say that the imagery of oaks here speaks of something which takes time to come to maturation. The way I read it, this abundance of grace poured out for His people by God provides the soil for growing and maturing into righteousness. Isaiah says that, this work that God does in His people, a planting of righteous oaks is a “display of his spendour” because by His abundant grace He is breaking the power of sin and darkness in the world and establishing a people who share His nature.

This is what God does, and is doing in the world: because He is abundantly gracious, His people have abundant grace for others; because He is abundantly generous, His people are abundantly generous. The challenge for us this Advent is to prepare our lives for His abundant grace, because when we recieve it, it will change us, rewiring our brains so that we become a people of an abundance heart and mindset, living to disrupt and defeat that which holds people captive to scarcity with all that God makes available to us htrough Jesus.

Are we ready for that?

Let me pray for us:

God of hope, you call us home from the exile of selfish oppression to the freedom of justice, the balm of healing, and the joy of sharing. Make us strong to join you in your holy work, as friends of strangers and victims, companions of those whom others shun, and as the happiness of those whose hearts are broken. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.