Isaiah 2: 1-5 This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: 2 In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 3 Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. 5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
Matthew 24: 36-44 36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. 42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
- Can You believe it? We are at the first Sunday in Advent? Christmas is four Sunday’s from now. Unbelievable how quickly the calendar has moved. We thank Steve has provided us with many 2023 calendars, and we are at the last page of the 2022 calendar.
- Isn’t it remarkable how Christmas seems to “sneak up on us?” Christmas Day is on December 25th every year, right? How do we miss it? I mean, it’s not like the advertisers haven’t been reminding us about it since October, right?
- And if that weren’t enough, we even have calendars that are specifically designed to count down the days to Christmas Day!
- How many of you have Advent Calendars in your house? Each day has a little flap or door you can open (sometimes with a piece of candy inside) to count down the days until Christmas.
- The word “advent” comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning waiting for the arrival.
- So, an Advent calendar is a calendar that counts down to the “arrival” of Jesus Christ into the world, which we celebrate on December 25th.
- In some ways, I think having a date on the calendar to count down to might work against us in terms of being ready for Christmas. “Oh, Christmas is two months away, we’ve got plenty of time…”
- And then, “Oh, it’s not until the end of the month—we can get our shopping done later…”
- And then, “It’s NEXT WEEK!” And then we rush around in a mad dash for the last 72 hours.
- In my early years, married to Ann, I would wait until several days before Christmas. I would go to a department store. See a dress being displayed – then hope that it was available in Ann’s size. I quickly learned that that was not the way to pick out a gift for my wife. Ask first was my motto!
- Everywhere I go, people are busy with their cell phones: scrolling through emails, muttering messages, playing games or watching some video snippet. Filling time with our cell phones is now possible, and so we do it because others are doing it. In line at the grocery store, or sitting in a doctor’s office, people no longer stare into the distance, resting in space. Simply waiting.
- At Holy Cross Abbey last week, I did a lot of waiting – quietly waiting!
- Not until Ann and I came to Holy Cross Abbey, did I have words for waiting as a spiritual practice.
- The inward journey of being quiet was a mystery to me.
- I had thought of doing nothing as wasted time. I had thought of prayer as “talking with God” – and I did most of the talking.
- Spending time in silence was filled with planning or reading. Then I was introduced to silent retreat, followed by Advent as a whole season of waiting.
- But every year, the return of Advent has invited me into the darkness of winter and hibernation with a sense of expectation.
- All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings, and I read Biblical stories of how waiting is woven into the web of creation.
- For each day, there is another gem: there is the deer, the pileated woodpecker, finches, the downy woodpecker, hawks, and wild turkeys filling my vision in the morning.
- I suspect this Advent season of waiting is an extension of practicing sabbath, of resting in God, trusting that new life will come again.
- And I’m beginning to believe that such waiting is, in fact, the seedbed of hope—especially as I planted a new wildflower meadow for next spring.
- I am waiting for the multitude of flowers to burst from the ground when spring beckons us.
- I plan to do something new and different this Advent as we wait for the dawning of the new light that will chase away the dreariness of the darkness.
- Waiting as we celebrate the birth of the Christ Child — who came to give us hope – that life is good – that life is a blessing to us, despite the difficulties and sadness and violence that seems to be everywhere in our lives.
- Each Sunday in Advent, I will select an Old Testament prophetic statement and a New Testament verse of hope, and the calendar continues to move toward the longest night in the year. – December 21st. And on Christmas — the new light of longer days is beginning, and the light of the World has emerged from the darkness of hate and evil.
- Our first reading is from Isaiah 2:1-5
- The prophet Isaiah was getting ready for the coming of the Messiah eight hundred years before Christ’s arrival. In the Bible book that bears his name, Isaiah has provided help for us to get ready for the Advent—for the waiting.
- In some ways, Isaiah’s prophecies were fulfilled in the first advent of the birth of Jesus. On the other hand, the complete fulfillment of God’s promises concerning the last days will not come to pass until the second advent of Jesus.
- We live between the “already” and the “not yet.”
- Nevertheless, we can be assured that God will keep all of God’s promises.
- The coming of the Messiah on that first Christmas night was in fulfillment of God’s promises, and that event is our surety that the last days will occur according to his Word.
- During the lifetime of Isaiah, the worship of God and the teaching of God’s Word were confined to the Jewish people.
- However, God made it clear through the prophet Isaiah that God’s plan for the future included all the nations. God’s good news–the gospel — is universal.
- When Jesus was born, an angel announced to shepherds outside Bethlehem, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10).
- God’s priority is to love every human being to himself.
- Is that your priority? Are you satisfied that the good news is confined to you and your family and not to others that you disagree with?
- Are you so caught up in the trappings of the season that God’s missionary purpose is no longer a priority for you? If so, then you are not ready for Christmas.
- 2 In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 3 Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. 5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
- Both Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) prophesied a time when the nations would reshape their implements of war into implements of peace.
- This prophetic statement is prominently displayed in front of the United Nations building. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
- The word of the prophets is that the nations will be at peace with one another when they are at peace with God.
- We have a long way to go to follow the Isaiah prophecy.
- The peace of which the prophet wrote began to be realized when Jesus was born. On the night he was born the angelic host announced, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors” (Luke 2:14) .
- The whole world is not yet at peace. In fact, the Messiah himself promised that until the end there would be “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 24:6). However, those who know him know his peace.
- Our reading today from Mathew is disturbing to us — we have to keep ready for the Son of God is returning – the second coming – when Jesus will return.[1]
- No one knows neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Keep awake you don’t know on what day the Lord is coming. Be ready: the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. No one knows. Keep awake. Be ready.
- Matthew—of all the New Testament writers, the one most concerned to connect the story of Jesus to its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures—tells us again the story of Noah… by his lights, a story of inattention, carelessness, misplaced priorities. We can almost see Matthew shaking his head. We can almost hear him murmuring, “They should have been ready.”
- In a season where we have just finished with Black Friday and now, we are anxiously preparing for Christmas, we can be reasonably sure Matthew isn’t worried about our decorations, our baking, our gift purchasing or wrapping. Christmas paraphernalia having been evident in retail establishments for upwards of two months, we can’t say we weren’t warned. We are comfortably sure: this can’t be what Matthew is warning us about.
- Despite the classic explanation of Advent as a time to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, we can also be reasonably sure that Matthew is probably not referring to that observance, either.
- Matthew is not one for the picture-postcard view of Christmas; he’s not the angels and shepherds and the little baby type.
- Matthew’s the one whose Christmas story includes Joseph giving serious consideration to the idea of bailing out before it’s too late.
- He’s the gospel writer who caps the whole thing off with a dreadful mass killing, and the Holy Family turned into undocumented immigrants in Egypt. We can be comfortably sure: this can’t be what Matthew is warning us about.
- “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left…”
- No one knows. Keep awake. Be ready. But for what? What vigilance is Matthew summoning us to?
- So, we look forward, with Matthew, to the coming of Christ. We look forward, with the entire church, the cloud of witnesses past, present and future, to his reign of justice and peace. And we are back with those ancients, gazing anxiously at the darkening skies and wondering, worrying, asking: Has peace gone for good? Is justice a thing of the past, or a thing of the imagination? We kindle our wheels of fire and find ourselves longing for an Advent unlike any other. We wonder when the Lord will be coming to set things right. We wonder how we can be ready, what exactly we need to be ready for. We wonder if we dare to hope.
- What we might not even dare to hope in the silence of our hearts rings out loudly in Isaiah’s passage. In his description of the coming of God to judge the nations, God speaks of the time when people, at last, lay down their arms. He speaks of people doing outlandish things, such as the squeeze boys get educations that allow them to turn their guns into laptops computers. God will speak to the evil that killed the three University of Virginia football players so that open and honest conversation will slowly erase the evil and jealousy that consumed the shooter. Hopefully God will speak for the IGBTQ+ people that God sees All people as loving children. O God when will speak?
- In the unexpected hour all manner of men and women and children have the capacity to envision the reign of Christ in ways that that kinder real hope for the return of the departed Son. In the unexpected hour, we meet Christ in all this creativity and radical, unreasonable hopefulness.
- No one knows. Keep awake. Be ready. Christ may just turn up in a church like ours, on a morning like this. Christ may turn up on Pennsylvania Avenue in Westminster with the drug dealers and users.
- No one knows, this may be the time when our great Judge and Redeemer decides to pull up a chair to this, our table, to roll up his sleeves and dine with us at The Gathering Table.
- No one knows. Keep awake. No dulling our senses with our addictive substances, no numbing ourselves through shopping, no sleepwalking by staying busy. Keep awake.
- We need to be ready. We need to be ready to see Christ in the least of our sisters and brothers… in the homeless person asking for change,
- We need to be ready to see the face of Jesus in the one person in the world who drives us the craziest, makes us the angriest, has hurt us the most deeply.
- We need to be ready to greet Jesus in a tense committee meeting or at the bedside of a beloved friend or peering at us over the morning paper. We need to be ready. This is the unexpected hour.
- Christ is coming!
- Thanks be to God.
Dick
[1] http://magdalenesmusings.blogspot.com/