The Impossibility of Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44;

The house lights have gone down. There is the whirr of the curtain being drawn back. A spotlight grows in intensity at center stage revealing a prophet. He begins to sing of a mountain, and of nations streaming to it willing to hear holy instruction and be judged by it, willing also to make peace with each other. These are the first words of Advent. As the song ends another sound rises. It is the first sound of Advent --- that of a blacksmith working at the forge hammering swords into plow blades and spears in to pruning tools.

How exhilarating, how noble, how hopeful, how dream-like, how improbable, how impossible.

If only it were to be. What world does the prophet live in? What hallucinogenic drug is he tripping on? 

As the spotlight fades out on the prophet and he leaves the stage, an image is projected on the scrim at stage rear. The animation shows a barren level plain. Then the center of the plain begins to rise toward the sky and before you know it, there are hordes of people moving in mass towards the top of the now looming mountain. They are people of all ethnicities and races, the murmurs are in a multitude of languages. Except for the mountain, the crowd could have been Chicagoans celebrating the Cubs' long-awaited World Series victory. No one is pushing or shoving. Everyone is moving in an orderly fashion, ready to receive the instruction that will soon emanate from the holy place at the top of the mountain. Oh, how they long for this teaching. Some encourage others to get closer. Some help those for whom the travel is difficult. The excitement is building the closer to the mountain top the people get.

The people receive more than instruction, more than soft words meant to soothe, more than honeyed words meant lull long-deferred hopes. There are times of listening. Arguments are settled, disputes are ironed out, wrongs are adjudicated, and righteousness is displayed for all to see. All this will happen between individuals and nations - the extended tribal families with long histories of debilitating disputes. These are the only verbs with God as the subject. "God will judge" and God will "settle." All the other activity is seen with the people hearing and answering the call to come to the mountain and then what they do after hearing God's words and seeing God's word in action.

What are the people doing? They are making peace. How can this be? The only way they can make peace is because God has given the people justice. There can be no peace without justice. True justice can only come from God. Only when inequity is done away with can violence be taken out of the life equation. 

Our world - near and far - teems with violence. A truck runs into a camper in Cynthiana. Two policemen are separately ambushed and killed in a Des Moines, Iowa, suburb. The long, unsolved disappearance of Jon Benet Ramsey is brought up in a docudrama. A football player is suspended for domestic violence.

All this justice and peace that the prophet proclaims just isn't going to happen. It will take more than the Cubs winning the World Series.

The prophet doesn't back down. He proclaims one result from the activity of the nations - peoples - accepting God's instruction and arbitrating judgment. That result is out and out disarmament. This new reality leads the a significantly greater capacity for all peoples to care for the land and care for each other. Since the reasons for envy, greed, resentment, retribution, and fear have been abolished, weapons are irrelevant. Since aggressions have been rendered absurd, resources once consumed for battle are available now for the provision of health, life, and communal growth. The image which the prophet presents text proposes a literal, material conversion of armaments. Instruments of taking life are converted to implements for sustaining life. The economy is converted. The world's curriculum is converted from learning war to learning the ways of God.

Some years ago, when Liberia was wracked with warfare, Christian youth gathered spent shell casings and fashioned them into crosses to remind them and the world that Christ turns death into life.

The indigenous culture of our geographical area tends to focus on this future horizon experience. Many African American spirituals also look to that day when the believer would be removed from the trials and tribulations of the present world. There is a depressing feeling that suffering cannot be avoided, that it must be lived through in order to receive the ultimate benefits of Christ, which cannot be participated in until people cross over into the realm of God's rule.

Isaiah doesn't go down that road. He is quite clear that the future does not begin next week, next month, next year, next decade, next century. God's future begins right now.

Come, house of Jacob, 
let's walk by the Lord's light.

Whatever peaceable future there is to be, those who hear the promise are tasked with one responsibility: to walk toward the future, to walk "in the light of God," to walk "by" the light of God, to walk to "the light of God."

I know that you are all well-behaved. I didn't hear any titters, I didn't see any smirks. But didn't you want to do something like that when I read Isaiah's words - improbably words, impossible words? Given that we have been around a while and have experienced a lot in our years, and given all that we have had to put up with for the last number of months, we are hard-pressed not to break out in a full-throated guffaw at what the prophet envisions. Peace! Extinction of weapons! That's more far-fetched than the pie-in-the-sky promises of politicians: free college tuition, universal, single-payer health care, deportation of the illegal aliens who willingly accept a minimum wage pittance to do the jobs our neighbors are not willing to do, or a chicken in every pot or a Cadillac in every garage. 

There's a new word coinage which has come on the scene lately - "alt-right." Depending on your viewpoint it denotes either a natural evolution in conservative politics or a particularly vile re-emergence of fascist white supremacy and all the evils and fears associated with it. We Christians need to deal with that. Unfortunately, faithful, followers of Christ, who carefully read scripture and who genuinely understand what they read, align themselves across the entire secular political spectrum. Each of us will need to stop talking with and listening to those who think like we do and start talking with and listening to those who think differently from us so that our conversations can be meaningful in contributing to the common weal of creation and to the greater glory of God.

These times are tense, because we are living smack dab in the middle of them. But they are not unique. Israel and Judah in the time of Isaiah and Judah in the time of Jesus were caught in a similar anxiety-ridden clash of philosophies and theologies. What Isaiah proposes, what Isaiah prophesies is another form of alt-worldview. For us as Christians today, Advent offers an alternative view of the reality in which we seem to live.  

Advent is an alternative that says that power as we know it has no lasting strength; that the voices of politicians will be silenced by the songs of the angels; that our true Savior is a baby born in a smelly stable; that our brokenness will be healed by God's tender grace.

Advent is the time for alt-hope. Not hope that is based on power and threats, not hope which relies on how many weapons one has stockpiled or how many boots one can put on the ground; but hope which takes the hands of little children who fear their parents will be deported; hope which says we will be the safe places for people who are different in any way from us.

Advent is the time for alt-faith. Not faith that is grounded in some sort of 'Golden Age' romantically misremembered from the past, but faith which looks over the heads of the fearmongers to see God's grace erupting in our midst.

Advent is the time for alt-joy. Not joy that our side has won, not joy that is grounded in skin tone or wealth; but joy which is found in the confession that our God is doing something new in our midst. Advent is the time to journey into poverty, not our personal poverty as we overspend on extravagant gifts, but the poverty, the brokenness, the doubts of our world to find the places where God's joy is being birthed.

Advent is the time for alt-peace. Not the gritted teeth, pasted-on, pinched smile of "I'll tolerate you in public but I'll hate your guts and denounce you in private." Alt-peace is the humble recognition that whoever you are, wherever you came from, however old you are, whatever you have or haven't achieved in your life, 99% of our genes and chromosomes are the same and we are sisters and brothers.

Advent is time for alt-trust. Not trust in those who would bully us into doing things their way; but trust that is grounded in the promises made so long ago to prophets and psalmists, to teenage girls and grizzled shepherds, to children who were ignored by their society and to power-brokers who were weaker than their spreadsheets ever indicated.

Advent is about to break open our lives with its skewed way of looking at the future. That's God's vision, the true alternative vision. That's the impossibility of Advent. And it happens in us starting now.

Come, Advent, come!

The discussion of Advent as an alternative to present reality is based on "alt-Advent," posted by Thom M. Shuman, Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 3:38 PM to midrash@joinhands.com. 

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.