Sermon for Advent Sunday

Rage and Hope

Isaiah 2:1-5


Today is the beginning of the church’s new year. Advent Sunday begins the new year, and the beginning of the season of Advent. It also means that we change the pattern of scriptures we read each Sunday at the Eucharist. For the past year, we’ve been hearing from Luke because it was Year C in the three year cycle. For the next year, we’ll be hearing gospel readings mostly from Matthew because it is Year A. Year A also gives us a heavy dose of Isaiah during Advent and Epiphany, so this year, throughout December and January I will be preaching a sermon series on the book of Isaiah. What with one thing and another, it will work out at six sermons. I’ve had to resist the urge to drop too much information in the first sermon, and instead I’m going to try to give you one useful fact about Isaiah in each one. By the end you will have six useful facts, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a good number of useful facts to have about anything.

Here is today’s useful fact.

The book of Isaiah is in three sections.They are before the exile, during the exile and after the exile. We have creatively named the three sections first, second and third Isaiah, which I’m sure you will agree are very clever names for them. Equally cleverly, first Isaiah was written first, second Isaiah was written second, and third Isaiah was written last.

Now, that you know the useful fact that Isaiah was written in three parts, we need to refresh our memories about the exile. At the time of Isaiah, the Jews were separated into two kingdoms, we’ll call them the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. In 721, the Assyrians knocked out the northern kingdom and took it over. They didn’t destroy the southern kingdom, which included Jerusalem, but it did become a vassal state. It had to pay tribute to the Assyrians, until Nebucchednezzar and the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem, stripped the temple and exiled thousands of people, mainly the political and religious elites, to Babylon. They were in exile for about 75 years, until they returned home and began to rebuild the temple.

So to summarise, there were two kingdoms, then there was one kingdom, then there was no kingdom, then a new kingdom began to emerge. The historic Isaiah, the original prophet, lived during the time when there were two kingdoms, then one kingdom.

So, let’s turn to today’s reading to see what’s going on there. It’s in the second chapter of Isaiah, so we know that is part of first Isaiah. The northern kingdom has been crushed, and the southern kingdom is under threat, and Isaiah is offering a vision of Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom.

The vision is of Jerusalem established as God’s dwelling place, and all the nations of the world looking to Jerusalem as their capital. In that famous phrase, in this picture of Jerusalem, the nations of the world ‘shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks… and they shall study war no more’.

This phrase has been adopted and repeated countless times throughout history as a vision of peace. At the United Nations there is a huge statue called Let us beat our swords into Ploughshares which was presented to the UN by the USSR no less. In 2017, some Christian activists in Brisbane were charged with wilful damage when they went to a cemetery, removed a sword which was affixed to a cross, and then used a mallet and anvil to literally beat it into a plough-shape. It is a compelling image – weapons being turned from something harmful to something useful and life-giving. It’s also a little bit comical, one can imagine some powerful military leader with a fancy sword watching on in horror as it’s turned into a farm implement, and while their spear is turned into a device for lopping tree branches. 

It needs to said, though, that this vision of Jerusalem as a centre for wisdom and peace, while attractive, is not all sweetness and light. You see, we tend to read the nice bits of Isaiah in church, not the nasty bits. So today we hear Nice Friendly Isaiah for 5 verses, and stop before we get to Angry Aggressive Isaiah who rants for about five more chapters. After outlining his vision, Isaiah goes on to slag off the southern kingdom because they have embraced superstitious religious practices, and they are worshipping idols. Here’s a few choice quotes that Isaiah has to say to the southern kingdom, particularly its leaders:

Enter into the rock, and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord… Enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. On that day people will throw away to the moles and to the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to enter the caverns of the rocks and the clefts in the crags, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. 

He’s a chirpy little fellow, our Isaiah. The vision of Jerusalem as the dwelling place of God is the curtain raiser for a diatribe against the southern kingdom who have abandoned the right worship of God. The picture Isaiah is painting is not just an image of a preferable future, but an indictment against the present. ‘Here’s how it should be’ Isaiah is saying ‘and here’s how you pack of swine are messing it up’.

This claim that Jerusalem would be a centre of authority, and that the God of the Judean people would be the God of the whole world, was an audacious claim. It was also geopolitically absurd. Jerusalem at the time was perfectly lovely in its own way, but certainly not a major city in the great scheme of things. Yet Isaiah is prophesying that it is to be central in the unfolding of God’s vision for the world.

Now Christians have a particular perspective on this. And Jews have another. And Muslims have yet another. And Druze and Baha’i people see it differently again. For Christians, we take this vision of the New Jerusalem, along with Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly temple in chapter six, and that beautiful poetry about the lion lying down with the lamb that we’ll hear next week, as a picture of the new creation, the world after the great clean up of the world when Jesus returns. We see that in Jerusalem, Jesus was executed by a corrupt political and religious elite, but in the New Jerusalem, he will rule as a just and righteous king. We have, over many centuries, appropriated Isaiah’s vision, viewed it through a Christological lens, and integrated it into a Christian worldview.

But for the historical Isaiah, the overwhelming focus was on the right and proper worship of God in the temple. This had to be done with integrity, and it had to be accompanied by purity of heart and compassionate motivation. Isaiah was calling the Judeans in the Southern Kingdom to practice their faith with their whole lives and their whole beings, and to imagine that their fidelity to God was to be a blessing to the whole world.

I don’t know what sort of person the historical Isaiah was, but I tend to imagine him as amazingly creative and slightly bonkers. A poet and storyteller, who would lure listeners in with intoxicating language and images, then scared the living shizzle out of them with dire warnings and diatribes. These days, he would be told to see a therapist for anger management, and encouraged to reduce his message to soundbites for easier consumption. He would probably be told to be more positive and upbeat, and to stop being so relentlessly negative if he wanted to get anywhere.

But I like Isaiah, because when everything was turning to slop around him, he was able to expound rage and hope in equal measure. As we prepare to come close to another Christmas where the swords are not yet beaten into ploughshares, where the spears are not yet refashioned into pruning hooks, and where nations study war more ardently than ever before, may we too hold rage and hope in our hearts. Rage at the way the world is, and hope for how the world can and will be in the age to come.

 

The Lord Be With You