“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. These are the words that define Advent. These are the words that define the Christmas season. These are the words that represent to us the very characteristics of God: God is hope; God is peace; God is joy; and, of course, God is love. And if these words tell us who God is and how God is toward us, then these words should be fundamentally definitive for humanity who wis made in the image of God. These words should describe us and define our activity in the world; we should not only have hope but bring hope, not only have peace but perform peace, not only have joy but be joy, and not only experience love but share love in the way it is so desperate to be shared from one human being to another no matter sex, class, race, age, identity in the world.

Sadly, these four words don’t often define humanity…especially now in this moment and at this time. We’re more hopeless than ever, we are downright peaceless, our joy is suffocated by grief and fatigue, and love seems too risky, so we bury it under resentment, anger, and fear as we divide and pull apart from each other. How do we have hope when every other time we’ve had hope it’s been thrown to the ground and smashed into thousands of pieces? I can’t have hope because I’m submerged in the waters of hopelessness and I’m tired of being let down again and again and again by this fickle friend. And to be honest, I don’t want hope; I’m too fatigued to have hope.

But, yet: Advent.

Advent slips in through the back door and dares to suggest Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. The first Sunday in Advent is an interruption to our normal, day-to-day decent into chaos and tumult, where hopelessness reigns. And I think this is why the first Sunday of Advent carries hope with it; the first Sunday in Advent is the manger of Hope and thus we must come face to face and contend with it as it speaks to us and illuminates our hopelessness.

Isaiah 2:1-5

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. (v2)

Isaiah declares to all of God’s people God is on God’s way and among them God will build God’s house. God’s house will be built in such a way it will be visible and accessible to all and not reserved for a privileged few. It is in and through this divine house that all will be one, the unity of humanity made known by the dwelling of divinity.[ii]

Isaiah continues,

Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Abba God,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that [Abba God] may teach us [Abba God’s] ways
and that we may walk in [God’s] paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of [Abba God] from Jerusalem. (v3)

As Isaiah paints a vision of God’ house dwelling among God’s people instigating unity within humanity, he exposes God’s desire for all of God’s people to be with God, to learn from God directly, and walk (humbly) with God. God’s house and God’s presence among the people will draw the people unto God and by being drawn unto God the people inwardly digest God’s love, God’s life, and God’s liberation becoming one with God and with each other—on the whole earth[iii] as it is in the entire heavens.

Then Isaiah says,

[Abba God] shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (v4)

The instruction and guidance mentioned before turns toward judging and arbitration. God’s judgment and arbitration will be that which brings tangible and material peace among the people. By God’s presence, God’s righteousness will expose the people and illuminate their crooked pathways and straighten them, guiding them into what is true and right.[iv] God’s righteousness will be their righteousness; God’s justice will be their justice for they have learned the ways of God, the ways of divine justice informed by mercy. [v] Human ingenuity will transform by the exposure of God’s righteousness and justice; it will turn away from making weapons for war out of the metal forged from the earth and the greediness from the heart. Rather, they will make tools of love, life, and liberation out of those instruments meant to reinforce indifference and bring death and captivity. No longer will humanity worship its power in terms of arsenals and treasuries; [vi] God will be their all in all.[vii] God will be theirs and they will be God’s, and they will walk in God’s ways all their days knowing nothing any longer of the horrors and carnage and absurdity[viii] of war[ix] and obscene violence[x] knowing only the love of God and the love that binds them to each other. Power and might beaten into mercy and peace. [xi]

Isaiah finishes,

O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of [Abba God]! (v5)

Isaiah exhorts the people of God to walk in the light of Abba God, they are to grow and rejoice in this light, becoming more and more, day by day, like their Abba God. This light is God’s light; this light is God in God’s self; this light is divine hope given to the entire earth and all the people. And it is good.

Conclusion

Hope isn’t something we cause ourselves to have or something we drum up from the depths of our souls. It’s a gift. It’s the light. It’s God. Hope comes to us. Hope comes low to us, to seek us as we are, wherever we are even when we are absolutely hopeless. Hope takes our hand to guide us into its light. Hope will even come down so low that it will be born into fleshy vulnerability, among dirty animals and unclean people, in straw and hay, wrapped in meager swaddling clothes, laying in the lap of an unwed, woman of color without a proper place to lay her head. He, Jesus the Christ, Immanuel—God with us—is our hope, is our hope for right now, in the darkness of late fall, in the tumult of our lives, in the fatigue of our bodies and minds, and dwells with us transforming our hopelessness—part by part—into hope. Incarnated hope knowing God is with us and God is faithful.

God comes, Beloved, bringing hope to the hopeless.

---

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 169. “The prophet may be regarded as the first universal man in history; he is concerned with, and addresses himself to, all men. It was not an emperor, but a prophet, who first conceived of the unity of all men.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 169. “Isaiah proclaimed God’s purpose and design ‘concerning the whole earth’ (14:26), and actually addressed himself to ‘all you inhabitants of the world, you who dwell on the earth’ (Isa. 18:3…) delivering special prophecies concerning Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Tyre, and others…”

[iv] Heschel, Prophets, 169. “It is the God of Israel Who summons the mighty men to execute His designs (Isa. 13:3, 5), Who calls the nations of the world into judgment, and it is He Whom one day all nations shall worship in Zion (Isa. 2:2 ff….”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 96. “Zion is where at the end of days all the nations shall go to learn the ways of God.”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 183. “The sword is the pride of man; arsenals, forts, and chariots lend supremacy to nations. War is the climax of human ingenuity, the object of supreme efforts: men slaughtering each other, cities battered into ruins. What is left behind is agony, death, and desolation. At the same time, men think very highly of themselves….Idols of silver and gold are what they worship.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 183. “Into a world fascinated with idolatry, drunk with power, bloated with arrogance, enters Isaiah’s word that the swords will be beaten into plowshares, that nations will search, not for gold, power or harlotries, but for God’s word.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 160. “The prophets, questioning man’s infatuation with might, insisted not only on the immortality but also on the futility and absurdity of war.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “…Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4). War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces…Israel’s security lies int eh covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt of other nations.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 160. “When the prophets appeared, they proclaimed that might is not supreme, that the sword is an abomination, that violence is obscene. The sword, they said, shall be destroyed.”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 207-208. “God not only asks for justice; He demands of man ‘to regard the deeds of the Lord, to see the work of His hands’… ‘to walk in His paths…”