Text: Isaiah 2: 2-5
In days to
come the mountain of God’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. 3Many
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 God may teach us God’s ways and that we may walk in God’s paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4God
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. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
“Come,
let us walk in the light of God!"
Having
recently made my first pilgrimage to the UCC’s equivalent of Mecca—our humble
headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio—I was amused by yesterday’s UCC online devotional
reading (http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/pilgrimage.html). The writer,Quinn Caldwell, wondered half-seriously if maybe there should be a destination to which
members of the United Church of Christ make a pilgrimage, a sacred place where
all in our denomination journey at least once. If we could choose or create
such a place, where would it be? he asked and then added, “And
before you jump to a certain very obvious initial thought, say the following
out loud to yourself to see if you can do it with a straight face: 'Jerusalem. Mecca. The Ganges. Cleveland.'" You gotta love
a denomination with self-deprecating humor.
Most of the pilgrimages Christians make these days
are virtual ones through scripture and imaginative prayer. We begin our hopeful
Advent journey with Isaiah’s dream of the pilgrimage all humanity will one day
make. Of course, Isaiah set his hopeful
dream on top of his holy mountain, Zion.
But he was visionary enough to imagine a time when ALL people would
figuratively journey toward peace. His invitation to us is:
“Come, let us walk in
the light of God!”
Like
those in Isaiah’s vision, we make our way to the House of God that transcends
the schisms we create. Notice in today’s text that God’s house will be
established on top of the highest mountain and all kinds of folks—people from
all nations—will “stream” up to it (Isaiah 2:2). While literal streams flow down a mountain,
this stream of humanity is unusual. With great effort, it flows up, seeking
God. We, too, are the kind of people who defy the usual way of doing things, who
go against the flow. Some of us today
have traveled upstream to this particular house of God (we no longer believe
there’s one literal high holy place where God resides) and we’ve done so with
considerable effort. Some of us arrived
here after moving against the gravitational pull of more comfortable houses of
worship that uphold popular cultural values we might question. Some of us have made our way to this house of
God despite unpleasant memories of Church Past.
Some of us have resisted the urge to rest at home after a stressful
week. For some of us it has been an
uphill effort just to get dressed and find transportation to this house of God.
Isaiah
said that after we arrive at the house of the God of Jacob, God will teach us
to walk in God’s ways. The spears of
sharp words and violent theology and hurtful habits must be converted into
tools that produce sustenance (Isaiah 2:4), and we’ll unlearn war. Note that
it’s not enough to put down our spears. We also must convert them into
implements for the common good. We must
not simply dispense with violence; we must work to feed the hungry, two
mutually exclusive commitments, according to Isaiah and according to a UN
report attesting to a sharp increase in malnutrition among children in war-torn
countries. Here in the house of God I try to work for peace in my heart and my
world with you at my side.
“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"
But before we walk, we wait. Sometimes the thing to do in this place is
simply to be still, to be quiet. Waiting
doesn’t preclude action but it should precede it. Our Quaker sisters and brothers
regularly practice a kind of worshipful waiting I admire. They gather and wait, and wait, and speak
only when they have received enough light from God. What would it be like if we
gathered one Sunday and simply sat in God’s presence and waited for the coming
of the light? What dreams might we dream
together and how might our community be changed as a result? Individuals and faith communities need to hit
the pause button at times, not stalled by apathy or fear, but waiting in
expectation that new light will show us the next steps forward.
“Come,
let us walk in the light of God!"
I
am surely biased, but I suspect preachers who are mothers have a slight
advantage in the pulpit during Advent.
After all, Advent is pregnant with themes of, well, pregnancy, of
waiting expectantly, hopefully.
Unfortunately, in the personal story I’m about to share, I can’t present
myself as the exemplar of expectant waiting.
Two
months before our daughter was born, George and I traveled from West Texas,
where we then lived, to visit my parents here in Mobile. We’d arrived late one
night, tired from our long drive, and had left our suitcases sprawled open on
the floor between the foot of the bed and one wall of the guest room. When George, who was sleeping on the far side
of the bed, got up in the middle of the night, he had to crawl over me to get
out of bed. I apparently slept through
that. When he came back into the
bedroom, he was going to have to crawl over me again to get back to his
side. I did not sleep through that. I could blame what happened next on our
soon-to-be born daughter--or on a profusion of pregnancy hormones--or on the
fact that I felt disoriented in a strange and unlit room. Here’s what happened. While I slept, the baby apparently kicked,
hard, at the same time George reentered the room. Still mostly asleep, I interpreted that
internal kick as someone hitting me and at that moment noticed some man’s
shadow looming over me. I reacted,
defending myself against this presumed intruder. I kicked, flailed, and screamed. Immediately, my poor husband was covering my
screaming mouth, and in the next split second I was alert enough to know who he
was –and what he feared: my father used
to sleep with a loaded pistol in his nightstand. Immediately, George and I huddled together in
terror with the sheets up to our chins like guilty children, wondering if my
Daddy would barge into the dark room to rescue me, shooting the presumed
intruder first and asking questions later.
We waited in the dark. We waited. We whispered to one another, “Should we yell
out that everything’s OK?” We strained
to hear any approaching footsteps. After
a few minutes passed, we knew we were safe.
But we did have some explaining to do the next morning.
I
confess that, at other times instead of waiting for more light, I have reacted
with the lesser-evolved reptilian part of my brain; I have rushed in when I
should have held back or stood still or centered myself in God’s peace. In the darkness of this anxious world, I have
mistaken a loved one for an enemy. In times of change when the new world is not
fully in place but the old ways are surely ending, it’s easy to panic or
suspect evil intentions. Of course, we should not naively assume no one means
us harm. Nor should we put our emotional health at risk by absorbing
belligerence. But sometimes the best and simplest response in uncertain times
is to wait and watch, to watch and hope.
Hope
is always the starting place for the coming of God into our lives and our
world, because hoping allows us to receive the new and the good. We will never see the good if we are not
expecting it.
“Come,
let us walk in the light of God!"
I
love the story of a rabbi who once asked his students, "How can a person
tell when the night has ended and the new day is beginning?" After
thinking for a moment, one student replied, "It is when there is enough
light to see an animal in the distance and be able to tell if it is a sheep or
a goat." Another student ventured, "It is when there is enough light
to see a tree, and tell if it is a fig or an oak tree."
The
old rabbi gently said, "No. It is when you can see another person coming
towards you and recognize that person as your sister or brother. For if you
cannot recognize in another's face the face of your brother or sister, the
darkness has not yet begun to lift, and the light has not yet come.”
“Come,
let us walk in the light of God!"
While
I am hopeful about an emerging Christianity, others see the new face of
Christianity advancing ominously toward them.
Science and other world religions are already having a profound impact
on how we worship and what we believe—and these changes frighten some. Affirming attitudes toward LGBT people and
the ordination of female clergy trouble many Christians. Some church leaders
critique American capitalism and militarism and that discomforts other Christians. Some Christians
are approaching other Christians in the darkness of changing times—and hailing
one another as brothers and sisters—but are not being recognized as such.
Christianity
is complicated, but living in Christian hope is a fairly simple practice. Not
easy. But simple. Our hope is not based on creedal statements. Our hope is not contingent on proving that
every word in the Bible is historically and scientifically factual. Our hope is not determined by doctrine or
clerical authorities. Our hope is not tied
to a list of statements to which we assent or language we police. Our hope is that Ultimate Reality—call it
“God”—is good, and Christians see that goodness best in Christ Jesus—his life
and death and life again. We have hope
that love trumps hate, and that death has no ultimate hold on us. Jesus walked
this hopeful way ahead of us. We don’t have to figure it out on our own. We don’t have to figure it out at all—because
we never will. But we can glimpse what
God might be dreaming up for us—as Isaiah did in describing peoples from all
times and places converging together and streaming up a mountain as they beat
their weapons into farm equipment. We inhabit this vision without dissecting it
into literal pieces or projecting it onto some historical timeline.
Hope
is harder than we think—but simpler, too.
Hoping is not about creating a wish list and expecting the Santa God to
fulfill it. Hoping is an orientation to
the future and a willingness to move forward into that future.
And
Christian hope is long-range. Our DVD
series “Painting the Stars” says that science concurs with Christianity’s
assumption that the future bends toward hope. Evolution teaches us to take the
long view. Human history doesn’t always
show progress. Cosmological history,
however, does disclose a universe making connections and creating life. Death, deadends, and disconnections abound,
but life and love prevail.
Reinhold
Niebuhr, perhaps America’s preeminent Protestant theologian of the 20th
century and a UCC minister, emphasized the role of hope in this way: “Nothing
worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. . .
. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are
saved by love.”
If your highest hopes could be achieved in your life
time and by you alone, you might be wishing instead of hoping. The work that gives us deep hope is also the work we
must do in community. May you hope for more than
something that will fit in a Christmas stocking. Hope is simple. But hope is only realized over
time and within a loving community.
“Come,
let us walk TOGETHER in the light of God!"
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