Sermon Title: "A Prophet's Hope"
Date: November 28, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Susan Bjork

Lesson:  Isaiah 2:1-5

Loving God, your faithfulness is unending and your steadfast love endures forever.  In this season of anticipation, guide us, teach us, and awaken in us a new appreciation of life in your Light.  I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight.  Amen.

Advent is one of those times in the life of the church that the liturgical calendar goes against the grain of the secular world. 

It is the end of November and we, in our work lives and even in the business dealings of our church, are working to wrap up another calendar year, preparing to close out the books on 2010 and put a budget in place for 2011, and most businesses are hoping to finally get out of the red and into the black.

But as we are doing all this year-end business, the liturgical calendar beckons us to put our attention elsewhere.  You see, quietly and without too much pomp and circumstance, we have officially begun a new liturgical year today with this first Sunday of Advent.

And so today we begin this new Advent season which invites us into a time of waiting and expectation, of preparation and reflection.  And today, we turn our attention toward Bethlehem and we begin the four-week journey in which we recognize and celebrate the Advent (literally, the Coming) of the Christ Child, who will be born into our hearts once more on Christmas.

Now, Advent is a paradox of sorts.  Advent is when we yearn for God’s incarnate presence with us even though we know God is already here.  We recognize that God is with us and yet we know that the full reality of God’s reign on earth is not yet present.  War and violence, poverty and suffering, are still quite real and the peaceful and just world we long for is not our reality and yet we recognize that this does not mean that God is absent. 

The season of Advent possesses a somewhat uncomfortable tension as it invites us to reflect on these seemingly opposite realities.

And Advent also invites us to both remember the past as well as imagine the future as we reflect on both the stories and experiences leading up to Jesus’ birth as well as imagine the possibilities of the reign of God on earth.

And that, my friends, is why this text from Isaiah that we just heard has made its way into the Revised Common Lectionary readings for today.

First and foremost, this passage from Isaiah is an ancient prophet’s vision of hope for a new future, characterized by the just and peaceful reign of God.

Hebrew Bible scholar, Walter Brueggemann compares this passage from Isaiah to Martin Luther King Jr.’s, I have a dream… speech.  It’s a fair comparison because both Isaiah and Martin Luther King Jr. imagined, envisioned, and spoke prophetically about how life could look very different from the way it did in their respective historical realities. 

And though Isaiah and Martin Luther King Jr. lived in an imperfect world, they dared to dream big and dared to hope that God would guide humanity towards a more just and peaceful existence.  Though they lived in an imperfect world, they also dared to hope that humanity would orient itself toward God’s guiding presence and recognize that peaceful coexistence and just collaboration are possible in the reign of God.

For the ancient Israelites, this hope that Isaiah articulates was a hope that God’s kingdom would ultimately outshine the kingdoms of the world which had held so much power over the centuries and that God’s wisdom would be the guiding principle of human existence rather than mere human political powers.

For Isaiah, this vision of peace with justice is not simply a fluffy, pie-in-the-sky utopia, nor is it an invitation to world domination and forced suppression of people.  Rather, Isaiah imagines, with the deepest hope of a prophet living in an imperfect world that God’s reign could be and should be one of peace and cooperation, very different from the world he saw around him.

Isaiah’s hopeful vision imagines what the world would look like if God’s dwelling was on the “highest hill” (or place of honor) and that human political and social organization received its guidance and wisdom from God. 

Isaiah dares to imagine what the world would look like if the “nations” (or human structures of organization) went up to the “house of God” to receive instruction and guidance, rather than expecting that God would sanction what they were already doing.  And that is an important distinction, I think.

Isaiah’s deep hope is that in God’s reign, God teaches and guides and God administers justice fairly.

And Isaiah dares to imagine that people could respond to God’s invitation and instruction by choosing to transform weapons intended to divide and destroy (swords and spears) into tools intended to cultivate crops and nourish the people (plowshares and pruning hooks). 

After all, in Isaiah’s vision, if a lasting peace is possible, it is not up to God to be the Divine blacksmith who bends all of humanity’s weapons into tools; it is at least partially up to us to do the work of bending and reshaping, to choose creation over destruction, to seek peace over power, and to value sustainable community over unjust isolation. 

In Isaiah’s vision of God’s reign, human beings are not exempt from difficult moral choices or the challenge of collective discernment of God’s will.  But instead, humanity is invited to seek out God’s instruction and organize itself in light of God’s revelation.  Humanity is invited into intentional listening for the voice and call of God.

I’m sure that by now you realize this is no small thing that Isaiah envisions.

But the bottom line is this:  We humans need visionaries.  We need someone to cast a vision and encourage us to dream big and broaden our imagination of what life could be like in God’s reign.  This is a message of much-needed hope, ripe for this new season and new year in the Christian church.  Advent is a time to dare to hope and dream, to dare to imagine how life could be if we, in our world, were to “walk in the light of the Lord” as Isaiah would have us.

We may think that this vision is far-fetched, unrealistic, idealistic, and beyond our grasp, but Advent is a time to “take the long-view of things” to quote UCC minister, Kate Huey’s words.  I’ll say it again: Advent is a time to “take the long-view of things.”  Advent is not a time to only focus on the here and now, but to hope and envision new horizons for the future as we rekindle and reconnect with the hope of the prophets of old.

After all, as we look towards Bethlehem this Advent season, we ought to reflect upon the One whose birth we await once more, the One in whom our hope lives, the One we call the Prince of Peace, the One who taught us to love God and our neighbor throughout his life and ministry in word and deed.

The mystery of Divine Incarnation is what we celebrate on Christmas, the reality of Emmanuel, God with us.  We recognize God’s in-breaking into human history, reaching out in love to all creation… God who sought to understand human existence from the inside out… God en-fleshed, not as a conquering hero demanding that we bow down in fearfulness, but rather God incarnate in the gentle vulnerability of a baby, born to poor unexpected and unprepared parents who were chosen to help carry on God’s work in the world, not because they possessed any particular power or influence, but because they were willing to accept God’s call.

In James W. Moore’s study, Christmas Gifts That Won’t Break, which a group of us is discussing over these weeks of Advent, the author speaks of Jesus Christ as the one who breaks down the walls that divide us from each other and from God…the walls of prejudice, social status, and misunderstandings that still afflict us in our culture today.

We are invited in this season of waiting and anticipation to remember that wall-breaking capability of Christ and respond to God’s invitation to wholeness and peaceful collaboration, to imagine and envision along with the prophet Isaiah a very old hope that holds for us a new hope in this season in which we imagine the possibilities of our collective life together as the Body of Christ in the world when we (in the words of Walter Brueggemann) shall more fully “delight in God” and “engage in God’s purpose.”

May this gift of hope in Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ the breaker of walls and divisions, be yours individually, ours in this community, and be a light to a world in need this Advent season and always.  Amen.