A Reminder of the Future

Scriptures for the First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

There is hope, people! Hope that cannot be defeated by war and exile, hope that cannot be overpowered by lulls in faithful living. Hope that cannot be crushed by fear of the future.

This first Sunday of Advent, Christians need to hear hope proclaimed from every pulpit. To get the congregation to feel that holy hope, the preacher only need read the words of Isaiah 2:4 aloud:

God will judge between the nations,
and settle disputes of mighty nations.
Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
they will no longer learn how to make war.

What a powerful reminder that God has always had a vision of hope, with creation restored for God's people.

And this God continues to share this hope with the people of the new covenant. Our Epistle and Gospel readings are reminders to the first followers and the early church to be purposeful and deliberate in their faith every day. There is no time for lazy Christianity or half-hearted discipleship. It is time to wake from sleep and to live intentionally loving God and loving neighbor. For God's future offered to us through the Messiah is one of salvation and redemption! It is the ultimate reason for our hope, and we wholeheartedly pursue life within the kingdom of God.

And our God who showed us the Kingdom through Jesus offers us hope in the form of warnings. God sent the prophet Isaiah to his people with a message and a warning. God sent Jesus to warn his people of how to live. And the Spirit of God sent the apostles to keep the early church on task.

God cares enough to send hope and words and direction to God's people throughout time. God still cares enough to give us hope for our tomorrow.

These words call God's people out on our behaviors and hold us accountable for our choices not to condemn us, as if we will shape up and act better out of fear. Instead, each passage this week comes from the ultimate hope that we will experience God's glorious future. For God loves us enough to warn us. We get a glimpse of the glorious future, and we are alerted to prepare ourselves in all ways to be found faithful to be a part of this future. God cares. God really cares. God cares enough to warn us, cares enough to send reminders of our future in case we have forgotten. God reminds us of who we are called to be. There is hope, no matter how wretched we think we are ... we are loved.

NEW WAYS ISAIAH 2:1-5

The first chapter of Isaiah contains some hard words. Describing a desolate state for the people of Judah and Jerusalem, the prophet depicts these as God's judgment against the nation for their sinfulness and injustice. Just look at some of Isaiah's condemnations in this chapter:

This faithful town has become a prostitute!
She was full of justice;
righteousness lived in her —
but now murderers.
Your silver has become impure;
your beer is diluted with water.
Your princes are rebels,
companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe and pursues gifts.
They don't defend the orphan,
and the widow's cause never reaches them.

Therefore, says the LORD God of heavenly forces, the mighty one of Israel:

Doom! I will vent my anger against my foes;
I will take it out on my enemies,
and I will turn my hand against you.
I will refine your impurities as with lye,
and remove all your cinders. (Isaiah 1:21-25)

In other words: You deserve all destruction and humiliation that befalls you. Ouch. What a harsh beginning.

In Isaiah Chapter 1, the prophet speaks such violent words of God's condemnation and disgust to Judah that it is hard to read. No one likes hearing what they've done wrong, having someone list their wrongdoings, or learning that they deserve exactly what has happened to them. The people of God were surely cringing and cowering after God's divine tirade, replete with such harsh language as:

Doom! Sinful nation, people weighed down with crimes,
evildoing offspring, corrupt children!
They have abandoned the Lord,
despised the holy one of Israel;
they turned their backs on God. (Isaiah 1:4)

Isaiah makes it clear that the people of God deserve any destruction, humiliation, or abandonment that might befall them, setting the scene and delivering a clear and compelling case for God's justified destruction of Judah and Jerusalem. It is with a sigh of relief, then, that we turn to Chapter 2 of Isaiah and hear about a redemptive path for Jerusalem and the people of God. They will not be destroyed or wiped out; God is gracious enough to offer them a new path, a new way forward. After a bit of God's refining, no longer will evil ways be the way of God's people. Justice and righteousness will be the way of the people of God. There is hope for a better day. There is hope for a better way.

That is the hope of Advent: the hope for a better way. It is the hope that all of our individual and collective evils are not the way life will continue to be. We can see a vision of how life can be better, and that the faithful can live into that righteousness. Isaiah 2:1 tells of what Isaiah sees regarding Judah and Jerusalem, and Isaiah's vision is glorious. He offers hope to a people undeserving of this graceful opportunity. In the days to come, the "mountain of the Lord's house" will be the highest of all, and "peoples will stream to it."

Mountains are important throughout our Old Testament history, and indeed into the New Testament, as places where people encounter God. Mount Sinai is where God appeared in the burning bush and revealed the divine name to Moses (Exodus 3:1-4, 13-15). It's where God later made a covenant with the whole people of Israel, giving them the Ten Commandments and other laws and instructions (Exodus 19:1-24:8). It's also where God gave instructions for building the Tabernacle and its instruments, so God's presence might go out from Sinai to be among the people of Israel as they traveled (Exodus 25-31).

We also recall the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gave new teaching to God's people (Matthew 5–7), or the Transfiguration, where Jesus was revealed in glory before his closest disciples (Matthew 17:1-7). In the New Testament as well as the Old, mountains often become places where people encounter God.

In our passage from Isaiah, it is the temple mount in Jerusalem, Mount Zion, that the prophet envisions. So this new vision of Isaiah, Amoz's son, is that Gentiles, foreign nations, would be streaming up to the holiest of places to meet Jacob's God!

Whoa. The new path, the new way, includes Gentiles? Foreigners? The unclean, unwanted people? This is a different vision of life after God's restoration (see 1:26). Up to now in Isaiah, the...