Isaiah 2:1-5 "God's Dream"

         The dark and cold of nearly winter has begun to seep into our very bones – into mine, at least.  But, hey, the first candle on the wreath here in church has been lit.  The manger is in place, and the magi – the wise ones – have begun their journey from the back of our sanctuary.  It is beginning – that countercultural observance that we call Advent. 

         I say “countercultural” because Advent is really all about waiting, slowing down – savoring each moment until, symbolically at least, the darkness is dispelled and the Light of the world has broken into our lives.  Just like slow food or slow medicine, Advent is slow living.  However, that is hardly the cultural message we hear these days. 

         I mean - yikes!  It’s December 1^st – only 24 more shopping days until Christmas.  As Baptist pastor Thomas McKibbens writes, “Think of all you have to do to get with it…There is all the shopping, decorating, office parties, open houses, family gatherings, gifts to wrap, greeting cards to get out, Handel’s Messiah, Rudolph, manger scenes, Santa Claus, packages to mail, and all the rest. Hurry! says the commercial. This sale will last only until the (2^nd)! We rush from place to place with sugarplums dancing in our heads. It is one of the most frenetic times of the year.”

         And yet, the Church’s message of Advent is to wait – to wait and to hope and to trust that it – the light of the world – really is coming – softly, quietly, sneaking in the back door of our lives, giving us the courage (if we let it), empowering us (if we so choose), to transform our world.

          And if the real message of Advent is to wait, then it surely is worth our while to figure out what in heaven’s name we do while we wait.  If it is not to be shopping and wrapping and all the rest, then what is it to be?  And the answer, I believe, is simple.  While we wait, we dream.  That’s right!  God asks us to dream.  And the subject of our dream is the message of the old prophet Isaiah.

         Isaiah could be called the Christmas prophet because it is during this season of slowing down and waiting and preparing for Christmas that we most often read the words of the old fellow.  Unlike other Biblical prophets such as Amos, Hosea, or Jeremiah who really lashed out at the Jewish people to whom they prophesied, Isaiah spoke words of great high hope to a people who were tired and wondering where in the mess of their lives God was – not unlike what some of us might end up feeling during these coming weeks as we await the birth of the Christ Child. 

         However, we ought not to misrepresent the old man’s speeches either.  First and foremost, we need to realize that a Biblical prophet is not a predictor.  As comforting as it might be to believe, Isaiah did not foretell the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in Judah.  He did not point fingers to a manger and shepherds and flocks of angels.  No - Isaiah spoke out within an historical context around 740 BCE to the Jewish people of his time, hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.  And, oh, what a mess those Jewish people were in!  They needed a good prophet to get them back on their feet again!

         You see, even as the Egyptians stood by menacingly to the south and west, the powerful Assyrians threatened the struggling nation of Judah to the north and east and were poised to overrun Syria and Palestine. The Northern Kingdom of Israel, in an effort to protect itself, had formed a coalition with neighboring nations and had asked the Southern Kingdom of Judah to join them.  The long and the short of it was that Judah was no more than a political pawn, used and abused for the benefit of the empires and politicos surrounding it.

         There was not much to Judah in those days either.  Its people lived in fear and poverty.  There was no temple, no sanctuary from the outside world.  There was only the desert that surrounded them on all sides and the immutable landscape feature of Zion, the “mountain of the Lord’s house.”  Zion served as the site of the nation’s moral compass, its point of orientation, and the seat of its worship.  Zion lay at the center of a country that had been ravaged by war for years, decades – a nation whose population had known nothing other than armed conflict.

         And it was into that context that the voice of Isaiah the prophet rang clear and fearless and true.  It was into that miasma of despair that Isaiah’s words of hope exploded and the light – finally the light – broke through the darkness of desperation.  Now there was a new word – and a new day.

         Seminary professor Anathea Portier-Young describes the transformation of which Isaiah spoke like this:  “Zion will be established, made secure, firm, and lasting.

It will also be lifted above every other height, visible throughout the world. (Zion would be) a reminder that God had chosen this place and this people. God has promised it protection….(More than that) the nations will see Zion and stream like water (like a flash flood in the desert) toward the place of presence and worship…Nations known for war will come…not to conquer or plunder, but to learn God's ways (which) will soon replace the knowledge of war.

         God will judge between the nations, deciding cases for the many and the mighty. Nations will bring to Jerusalem their desire and hunger, need and hurt, greed and grievance, and submit them to the authority of the One who is able to make peace, bridge division, and resolve conflict.”  Such a beautiful and hope-filed scenario!  That is Isaiah’s articulation of God’s dream – a dream of peace.

         What I find fascinating about this passage is a subtle grammatical shift – almost like a miscue – but it is no editor’s error.  It is a change in pronouns that I believe makes all the difference in the world and makes these beautiful words of Isaiah timeless, so that they can rightfully cascade down through the millennia to us – to our time.

         In the midst of Isaiah speaking of all that God will do, there is a slight shift of focus.  We read that only God can make Zion rise to new heights.  And when that happens, it will be God who will teach the nations the holy ways.  God will judge between the nations.  God will settle all disputes.

         However, interestingly enough, it will not be God who will beat swords into plowshares.  It will not be God who will fashion pruning hooks from spears.  It will not be God who will take the weapons of war and turn them into the gardening and farming implements of peace and abundance.  It will not be God who will transform MQ-9 Reaper Drones into 500 Mega Watt Solar Arrays.  (Russell Rathbun)

         It will not be God.  It will be them.  Read the text:  “They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.” It will be the Jewish people to whom Isaiah spoke.  It will be us to whom the ancient prophet still speaks.  It will be our hands that will create the world of collaboration and peace, God’s dream that Isaiah so artfully imagined – and a dream, which we must dream even still.  Blessed are the peacemakers (not the peacekeepers, not the ones who sit around and talk about peace) but the peacemakers, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

         “There is a story of a man who was walking along the dusty streets of an Arabian village. He met a tall, young, Arab boy playing a flute. He asked to see the flute and it seemed surprisingly heavy. After examining it he discovered it was made out of an old gun barrel. The boy explained that he had picked up the gun in an area where there had been fierce fighting. He filed it down and drilled holes in it. From a weapon of destruction he had created an instrument of music.” (from Ride the Wild Horses, by J. Wallace Hamilton)

         Embedded in that little anecdote is the message of Jesus, you know.  It is why we call him the Prince of Peace.  And it is at precisely that moment when we recognize that no interventionist God will magically zap into oblivion all that sows the seeds of war – injustice, danger, the disparity of wealth, but rather it will be the work of our hands that will transform this world characterized by so much conflict on so many different levels, transform it into the world of which Isaiah dreamed – a world where “nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

         Does that mean that we all need to brush up our resumes and send them to the United Nations in the hopes of becoming global conflict resolvers?  I highly doubt it.  Surely doing so would be totally unrealistic – but, even so, it does not let us as Christians off the hook. 

         Instead we are challenged – and I would say called - to look for opportunities to be peacemakers in our own ordinary places and in the events of our own daily lives.  Peace can begin small – with a word opening the door to reconciliation with someone we have battled all these years.  It can be listening – really listening – to a child with whom we are at loggerheads who never seems to rise to our expectations.  It can be looking into the eyes of pain and suffering all around us and seeing a newborn baby in a manger.  It can be recognizing that we will find God – and we will discover glimpses of God’s dream for a moment come true - in the most unlikely places.

         There was once a man who grew tired of living in a world filled with racism, war, hunger, and hopelessness. He was weary of the sharp swords and cutting words. His family and friends patiently listened to him while he passionately shared his vision of a city set on a hill, where people lived together in peace and harmony.        

         Night after night he dreamed of this holy city until it became so real that he could almost taste. One morning he woke up from his dream and announced to his family and friends that he must go and find this city. He packed a meager meal, kissed his family, and set off in search of the city on a hill.

         He walked all that day. Just before the sun set, he found a place to stop and rest and sleep. He ate his sandwich, knelt and prayed, and smoothed out the earth where he would lay his head. Just before he went to sleep he placed his shoes in the center of the path he trod, pointing them in the direction of the holy city, that sacred place of peace and harmony.

         That night, as he slept, a trickster walking that same path discovered the pilgrim's shoes. Unable to resist a practical joke, he turned the shoes around backwards, pointing them in the direction from which the man had come. Early the next morning the pilgrim arose, recited a morning prayer, ate what remained of the food he had brought, and started off on his pilgrimage toward the holy city, heading in the direction his shoes pointed.        

         He walked all day long. Just before the sun set once again, he saw the heavenly city off in the distance. It was not as large and impressive as he imagined. It looked strangely familiar. He entered a street that looked a whole lot like the street in his own village. He knocked on a door of a house that looked, oddly enough, just like his own house. The pilgrim greeted the family that lived there and the friends who were there breaking bread together. And for some reason, he decided to stay, and it was there that the pilgrim lived and worked ever after with peace in his heart and in his actions in the holy city he once dreamed of.

         UCC pastor Kate Huey posed some Advent questions that are surely worth our consideration as we enter into this season that is intent on hurtling us along with our credit cards headlong into Christmas.  She asks:  “This Advent, for the sake of peace, what steps might we take to heal division, alienation, and broken relationship in our family, our community, and the world? Beginning with just one step, one relationship, perhaps one apology or offer of peace? Do we believe that we can be part of God's dream?”

         Advent does not begin in the razzle dazzle of shopping malls.  It does not begin with baking and decorating and entertaining.  Rather, Advent begins in the quiet and in the dark.  Advent begins with a single candle to light our way.  Advent begins with slowing down and waiting, waiting for a glimpse of the light of the world – and, when we see it, fashioning it into a sacred reflection in our mind’s eye and in our hearts  - but mostly in our hands – a sacred reflection of God’s dream of peace.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church UCC