Sunday November 27th, 2022 Worship

Sunday November 27th, 2022 Worship

I don’t know about you all, but I really need to hear the promises of God this week. As we awoke to news headlines about more death and destruction, and I received early morning phone calls from my family updating me about my grandpa in the hospital all of last week. I need to hear God’s promises. I need to hear God’s promises in the midst of death and violence because sometimes I can’t help but look around at our world and think that this can’t be what God intended. And, it feels like I have never been more at a loss for words than when I sat down to start writing this sermon this week. At one point yesterday, I got halfway through a draft before I deleted the whole thing. Yet in the lack of words and the abundance of violence, we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” “Come, Lord Jesus.”

“God will judge between the nations and render decisions for many countries. They will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation will not raise the sword against another, and never again will they train for war” (Isaiah 2: 4). The vision of Isaiah spoke to my soul this week. We long for this promise to be to true. As wars rage and people are killed because who they are and who they love, I long for the day when weapons of violence will be turned into tools that enrich and enliven whole communities. For the days when people live for and with one another, instead of against. For the days when we can be reminded of God’s promises to us throughout all of history, but also be reminded of the ways that God has been offering us guides throughout all of history too.

As we begin our time of Advent together, we await the coming promises of God. We enter into a season of waiting and watching. A season of growth and hope, even as we are surrounded by rain and lessened periods of light outside our windows. We enter into a period of intentional listening to what God is saying to us, as we prepare for the story of Christ entering our midst for the first time. We remember, as a community, the promises that God has made throughout Scripture; a reminder of who God is and who God is for us.

Our waiting is also a time of preparation. I think about the reading from Isaiah when it says, “Many people will come and say: ‘Come, let us climb YHWH’s mountain to the Temple of the God of Jacob, that we may be instructed in God’s ways and walk in God’s paths” (Isaiah 2: 3a). In the Isaiah reading, when God teaches the people God’s ways, that is when they walk in the light of YHWH. That is when they put down their weapons and turn them into tools of growth and life, instead of instruments of death. As we wait in Advent, God is preparing us for a radically different way of living in the world. God is preparing us for the known and the unknown, as the world is going to be turned upside down. Not only are we preparing a place for God, but God is preparing a place in us for the unexpected to happen. God is preparing us to follow the ways of God more fully.

And, in this, both the reading from Isaiah and the Gospel reading from Matthew remind us that God’s time is not our time. And, as much as we think we can know about God, we will still never fully understand God or what God is doing in the world. As it is written in Matthew, ‘The coming of the Promised One will be just like Noah’s time. In the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, having relationships and getting married, right up to the day Noah entered the ark. They were totally unconcerned until the flood came and destroyed them” (Matthew 24: 37-39).

Now, I know that this reading from Matthew feels very apocalyptic, especially as our culture has been fascinated with this language of rapture and trying to understand what the end times will be like. Yet, I feel like we miss the point if that is the only thing that we focus on in this Gospel reading. The reality is that we do not know what the end will look like, only God can know that. But, I think this Gospel is urging us to pay attention during this time of waiting. No, we don’t know what the end is going to look like or when it is going to come, but we do know that God isn’t going to leave us alone in any of this.

In both the Isaiah and the Gospel readings, I think God is recalling us back to the promises that were made with the Israelites when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. We humans have already been given a guide for how to relate to one another, yet we frequently get away from that, when we are guided by our ways instead of God’s ways. Yet, as we await the coming of Christ, we are called back to those promises. To the ways of living faithfully with one another. The second chapter of Isaiah is naming the hopeful ideals for a community that has turned against God and neighbor. In our continued days of war and violence, we too turn to this ideal of Isaiah, to the promises of God of how we can live among one another. To the hope that this violence will cease; that weapons of death will be turned into tools for life.

The pain of our world is not what God desires for us, yet it has been a reality throughout all of history. Even when the pain of the world surrounds us, though, we enter into this new season together. A season of waiting and watching. A season of hope and growth. A season of promise, that the world will not stay how it is. And, I have been reminded that even when the pain feels overwhelming, there is still beauty in life too. God is still working in our midst. We give thanks for the ones who accompany us on the journey. We celebrate the small moments of life, the joy filled moments, which for me this week included watching videos of my three-year-old niece make sense for the first time. We are connected with people here and now, but also those in the past, who are guiding us along the way and who asked similar questions to what we are still asking now about the way the world works.

Especially in this time, I think there is much that we can learn from the writers of Scripture. Like Matthew, we await the coming of a Savior. Like the Psalmist David, we pray for peace. And, like the prophet Isaiah, we imagine the ideal world in which we all live in a way that is life-giving for others, where war and violence cease. So, may we enter into Advent full of hope and alertness, as we await the expected and the unexpected. Trusting that God is and will continue to be in our midst, as we light a candle and pray for Emmanuel to be among us. The light that illumines the world around us, to help us take it in more fully, to be present to the unexpected in our midst. And, to be present to all that the unexpected might bring.