The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. "In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!"
(Isaiah 2:1-5)
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It’s Advent. Four weeks to go. We can all probably remember the buildup of excitement we felt as children in the weeks before Christmas - the “I’m so excited I can barely wait until Christmas Day” kind of feeling. But as we grow older and wiser, we also lose that wonderful childlike innocence and wonder that Jesus found so precious. I suppose it’s a sign of maturity when the excitement of the weeks before Christmas starts to fade and we begin to temper our expectations in the hard, cold light of reality but while it may be mature and grounded in reality, sometimes tempering expectations with reality does nothing more than shatter our dreams - and our dreams are the expressions of our hopes.
God’s people were on the precipice of losing their hopes and dreams. Isaiah’s prophecy, which we read earlier, was offered in the midst of a great war being fought between Babylon and God’s people of Israel and Judah. Even as Isaiah wrote, the Babylonian armies were advancing battle by battle and kilometre by kilometre. The situation was desperate, and there truly seemed to be no hope. And yet, in this vision, God does offer hope to his people - not hope that the Babylonians would be stopped, but hope of what lay beyond the immediate future of defeat and exile. In this vision, God promised his people that one day God’s temple would be exalted as the highest mountain of the earth; that it would become a gathering place for all nations; that all the people of the world would come to know God and to live in God’s way; that the weapons of war would be replaced by the tools of peace. It was a vision of the future - and it’s still a vision of the future. The First Sunday of Advent is set aside for a consideration of hope - but sometimes the temptation is there to ask: what hope? As Christians, we proclaim that our hope is found in Jesus Christ; our hope is that Jesus is Lord; our hope is that he will rule as Lord for eternity. In other words, our hope transcends the generations of history that have been known or that will be known, and rests in a Kingdom beyond time - the eternal Kingdom of God, which has not yet come but which surely will come, and the anticipation of which is what Advent is all about. How do we properly await that coming Kingdom? I want to offer this advice today: Advent isn’t so much about preparing, as it’s about preparing to be prepared. Jesus once warned that people would have to be constantly ready for his coming, because there’s no way for us to know the day and hour. Not even he knew such things, he said. It’s hard to be prepared for something you’ve never experienced before, so what we’re really doing is preparing to be prepared for Christ’s coming. And yet, even as we do that, Christ shows up in our midst now, and he does so at the oddest times.
Think about it. An everyday conversation turns suddenly serious - and Christ shows up; an ordinary worship service led by ordinary people with ordinary talents - and Christ shows up; a time of prayer not unlike thousands of other times of prayer - and Christ shows up; in the middle of mundane and often tedious chores - and Christ shows up. Even now, Christ shows up when we least expect him, and while we’re grateful for his appearance, we’re not necessarily prepared for it. Can we truly be prepared for the coming of the Kingdom? Probably not, because its timing is unknown and its glory will be too spectacular for us to imagine right now. But we can be preparing to be prepared - and that’s what Advent is about. How do we do that? We learn to ask simple but deep questions at the right time, and we avoid the temptation to give shallow answers to them. Let me suggest a few questions you might want to contemplate as the season of Advent progresses: where is Christ in your life right now, and in the events (good and bad) taking place around you? Where is Christ in the lives of your family and friends - both those who are devout and those who seem to have no interest in the faith? Is your life truly open to God’s presence and to the power of God’s Spirit, or do you close enough of yourself off from God so that God can’t really change anything about you? Would you be able to recognize Christ if he chose to appear to you? If you’re serious about using Advent as a time to prepare to be prepared, those are good starting point questions to be asking.
And prepare to be prepared for answers that aren’t comfortable. Early on in Jesus’ ministry, the disciples of John the Baptist came to him and asked, “Are you the one who is to come …?” It’s a good question. You might say that it’s THE question. If Jesus isn’t the One, then we’ve all been duped. But if he is, then everything about life and death and eternity changed the moment he appeared, and we have to make some changes - and change is never comfortable. The Christmas tree is in a different spot in the sanctuary this year. I’ll bet that a few people here are uncomfortable about it! And then there are the things that matter. Because of Jesus, we may have to change our priorities to bring ours into harmony with his; we may have to give up some of the things we like to do because they’re not consistent with what he would do; we may have to give up cherished political or social or economic ideologies because they’re not consistent with how he taught his disciples to live. If Jesus is the One who is to come, then I might have to live my life in a radically different way. If Jesus is the One who is to come, then the church takes on a whole new meaning: no longer a religious club (which is, unfortunately, too often how it’s perceived, even by its own members) but instead a community of real and radical hope held together by its Lord, Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the One who is to come, then, as Phillips Brooks wrote in a memorable Christmas carol, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
During Advent we are preparing to be prepared to meet a revolutionary figure who will turn the world upside down - and we don’t always want that. Over the centuries, the church has tried to domesticate Jesus so that we could be more comfortable with him; the church has tried to tame Jesus so that he would be less threatening to our preferred way of life; the church has tried to change Jesus so that we ourselves wouldn’t have to be changed by him. But the Jesus of the New Testament is not the domesticated, tamed and changed Jesus the church too often portrays. Actually, the Jesus of the New Testament is often quite disturbing in the obedience he demands and the places and times in which he appears. But it is this Jesus who demands both radical obedience and radical faith who transforms our existence into a vibrant and abundant life. The Jesus of the New Testament fills us with the hope that whatever may happen now, God will somehow see us safely into eternity. It’s time for us to prepare to be prepared.
Although she wasn’t talking about Advent, I thought Emily Dickinson summed up the Advent hope quite well: “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tunes without the words and never stops at all.” I don’t understand exactly what she’s describing - and maybe that’s the point! Hope in a world filled with apparent hopelessness is hard to grasp sometimes; difficult to catch and almost impossible to hold on to. But it’s there. And today, as the season of Advent begins, we celebrate the hope God holds out to us. Friends – prepare to be prepared!
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