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First Sunday of Advent Year A

  • Isaiah 2: 1-5

The North had already fallen to Assyria and the South had bought time by arranging a tributary agreement with the superpower.  Isaiah was a realist.  He understood and described starkly the dire situation in which God’s people were living.  With no obvious evidence to support his claim, however, Isaiah made a bold assertion.  His audacity is surprising and exaggerated against the stark assessment of current events.  He announces that God will establish Jerusalem as an international center where God’s ways will be studied, learned and loved.  The result will be justice and peace.

  • Psalm 122

Composed to be sung on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the psalmist alludes to the action of walking up the steep hillsides that surround the city, capturing the first glimpse of the skyline and then entering through the city gates.  But it also, of course, depicts a journey for the heart and the imagination.  The destination in both senses is that place where God’s ways are sought and revered.

  • Romans 13: 11-14

Writing to the church in Rome, Paul goads his readers with a sense of urgency, because the one thing that we can rely on is that God always does the unexpected– at the least likely time, using the least likely people, arriving at the least likely place, against impossible odds  and in the most surprising ways.

  • Matthew 24: 36-44

Matthew echoes the same  peculiar sense of urgency that was a trait shared by the earliest followers of Jesus.  But Matthew intensifies the emphasis on God’s unpredictability compared to human expectations.  So how does one prepare for the unexpected?  That is the point; we cannot.  However, there is a certian attitude or stance we must take: if we are already engaged in seeking and doing God’s work, we can be sure that we will be thrilled no matter when, how, where or through whom God acts!

Biblical hope is unique.  It can be invoked even in the direst circumstances.  It also surpasses our grandest dreams for peace and justice.  Yet, the specific details of where, when, how and through whom God will act are withheld.  We long for it, pray for it and eagerly work for it, although we never fully understand it and are certain it never arrives according to human expectations.  If this peculiar biblical hope is not based on conventional evidence, yet is proclaimed with such certainty, then how is it accessible to us?  

This peculiar biblical hope is accessible to us by a decision!

Ludwig Wtiigenstein asked: is not ” knowledge related to a decision?” (On Certainity, entry #362)  There are some things about life that are so profound, so basic, so fundamental that are within the grasp of our imaginations and our hearts, but are beyond our understanding.  If we do not make some decisions about those most basic things, we remain trapped in a never-ending maze of uncertainty, indifference, lack of commitment and even despair.  Friedrich Nietzche described the existential ennui that sets in and takes hold of a person, calling it “madness.”  In The Gay Science Nietzche wrote:

“The greatest danger that has always hovered over humanity and still hovers over it is the eruption of madness– which means the eruption of arbitrariness in feeling, seeing, and hearing, the enjoyment of the mind’s lack of discipline, the joy of human unreason.  Not truth and certainty are the opposite of the world of the madman, but the universality and the universal binding force of a faith….” 

The Bible proclaims an implausible– by normal human expectations– hope.  It is declared in the most inappropriate and unreasonable times and places, (as the prophet Isaiah dared in his day).  So we must make a decision: Is it worth believing or not?  The promise is that if we trust in the peculiar kind of hope the biblical texts holdout we will have richer purpose, more enthusiasm, higher motivation, greater focus and more intense urgency for how we use whatever time we have and exactly what it is we ought to be doing.  If we make the decision to believe in biblical hope, we will be focused on justice, God’s justice.  To begin and stay on this journey will not always be easy.  In fact, it will thrust us into the hurts and needs of others.  And it will not always be clear exactly where the road in this pilgrimage is going.  But its destination is so bold, so radical, it could only come from God.  Paradoxically, the promise is that it leads to abundant life, no matter how much time we have. 

The alternative is a moral, spiritual, psychological, social ennui, or as Nietzche knew a “madness.”

(This Sunday, we begin the four Sunday journey to the unlikeliest of places and circumstance with a humble girl and young man to the arrival of the most absurd announcement: God is with us in the flesh!  This an announcement that does not persuade with reason, but does require a decision which has behind it “the force of hope.”)

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