Waiters wanted
Commentary
Christmas, it would appear has arrived. At least by all the standards of the marketplace. The Christmas decorations have been on the store shelves since Halloween, and in many towns and cities across the country, Santa Claus has already arrived. Everyone, it seems, clamors for Christmas. But Christmas isn't here, yet. At least not on the calendar of the church. It is the season of Advent, and only a few people, it would appear, know about Advent. You might find, in fact, that the only establishment in the mall or downtown which knows about Advent is the local restaurant, the one with a sign hanging in its window, a sign reading "Waiters Wanted."
Waiting, of course, is what Advent is all about. The pericopes we study for this day and for the following Sundays will all have to do with what we are waiting for and how we wait. Throughout this Advent season the Gospel of Matthew will contribute various emphases to consider. For the most part Paul's Epistle to the Romans will provide the Second Lesson. What is most striking, however, is that every Sunday in Advent will have as its first lesson a reading from the Book of Isaiah, and every one of the readings will have to do with a vision for which people wait.
Perhaps no other season in the church is as important as Advent in understanding the difference between sight and vision. Some businesses are advertised as "vision centers," but in fact they are concerned with sight. Sight is what we see and experience day in and day out. And the sight is not always a pretty picture. Vision, on the other hand, is what God promises us: the vision of God's Kingdom which stands in stark contrast to what we see.
In the noisy din of "muzak" and clanging bells, in the rush of shopping and baking and cleaning, in the stress of racing from party to party and in the aftermath of too many late nights after too much caffeine, our eyes have grown dim. We see the sights of everyday but we miss the vision of what God has promised. We need Advent with its time of waiting in order to focus on what God has promised.
The words from Hebrews 11:1 are important to remember in this season of Advent. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The vision that God gives requires faith; faith requires trust in God and God's promises; promises require patience in waiting, and waiting is the essence of Advent.
Isaiah 2:1-5
This first Sunday in Advent points us beyond the here and now to what God has promised, what God has done and what God will yet do, namely, establish God's reign. Isaiah 2:1-5, unlike other prophecies of the Old Testament, and unlike what many people may expect to hear at this time of year, is not about a coming Messiah. It is instead a prophecy about the coming reign of God on a New Day.
The Book of Isaiah begins with the judgment of God on the people of Israel, for they have acted like the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah. They have paid no attention to the rights of the poor and the needy; they have obstructed justice in the court; they have substituted empty sacrifices for heartfelt faith. Because of their failure to be the people of God, Israel and Jerusalem will experience the judgment usually reserved for God's enemies. The final verses of Isaiah 1 make it clear what is to befall Jerusalem: "For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water."
Over against the judgment in chapter one comes the promise of salvation in chapter two. More rightly stated, Isaiah 2 is a portrayal of salvation. The pericope depicts what the kingdom of God will look like. That the passage is a kingdom passage is verified by its opening words in verse 2: "In days to come...." Such expressions as "on that day," "in that day," "in latter days," "in those days," or "in those days to come" are all expressions of the Day of the Lord. The phrases all point to the day when God would come to make all things right and establish God's new reign. The day of the Lord is without a doubt a day of judgment on all the forces that oppose the orderly reign of God. It is also the day of salvation, for it is the time when God will establish God's reign and will reign unambiguously over all creation.
What will this new kingdom look like? Perhaps most astonishing is the reference in verse 2 to the "mountain of the Lord." Otherwise known as Mount Zion, it is clearly not the tallest of all hills in Jerusalem, and yet in the "days to come" Mount Zion shall be the highest. That is vision. In sight, one can look down on Mount Zion simply by going out beyond Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives. There, looking down up on the city, one can clearly see that only in someone's imagination or through God's re-creative power could Mount Zion loom over all the other hills. But in the Days to Come Mount Zion shall be the highest and to it shall come all peoples of the earth. What is happening here?
In ancient times the people believed the universe had three layers: a firmament (or the heavens) where God lived, the earth where people lived, and the deep where demons lived. If God lived in heaven and people lived on earth, how could God communicate with people? The Old Testament is full of wonderful stories about God visiting people on mountains (see the story of Moses). Sometimes people thought they could reach God by building "a mountain" of their own (see the story of the Tower of Babel). Sometimes mountains appeared in dreams and angels moved up and down (see the story of Jacob). According to Isaiah 2, on the Day of the Lord, the house of the Lord will become a cosmic mountain where heaven and earth meet and people will come from all over to learn what is God's will. And that is one of our first clues about the Kingdom of God: it is that time when all people will worship God. All nations shall stream to Mount Zion and from there shall go forth instruction for all the world.
The positive version of the nations coming in order to hear and obey God's words stands in stark contrast to other prophecies even in the book of Isaiah. Foreigners will not be Israel's servants but along with Israel will worship the Lord. The result of their worship and their being reconciled to God is that they will live in peace with one another. This new day will be a time of healing and a day of peace. In verse 4 we have the promise of the biggest recycling event that will occur. Instruments of war will be recycled into instruments of agriculture: swords will become plowshares; spears will be made pruning hooks. And no one will learn war anymore. In short, this New Day will be a day of new community where people will live in peace with God and with one another.
But that is yet to be and this is now. "So what?" we might ask.
So what? Isaiah continues in verse 5. "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" In one simple phrase Isaiah tells the people that if you live with that expectation of God's reign, then people of God, people of vision are called to live that way now. Move beyond wishful thinking and turn vision into action. Just as the nations would learn the ways of the Lord, so the house of Jacob is now called on the basis of that vision to walk in the light of the Lord.
In Dickens' famous story A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas Past, the ghost of Christmas Present, and the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It is the visitation by the ghost of Christmas Future that helps Scrooge to live in the present.
How many times over our lives have we wished that we could know what the future holds or that we could change the past? How many pieces of property would we have bought had we known the value would increase so significantly? How many times have we said, "If only we had ..."? Unlike the film Back to the Future, we cannot go back in time to change the present. We have no crystal ball to foretell the future. We cannot change the past. But we do have a picture of what God has in mind for what is to come. And so we can live appropriately here and now, in the present. We have a vision, limited though it may be, of God's promise for the future and how things will turn out. Based on that vision, which the prophet Isaiah paints for us this day, we can begin to act and approximate what God has in mind for all creation. On the basis of the promise that God will call all people to himself and will also reconcile all peoples to one another, God calls believers NOW to walk in that future.
Romans 13:11-14
"Does anybody really know what time it is?" Saint Paul does, and so do the Christians living in Rome at the time Paul wrote his epistle. Strange thing is, this time has nothing to do with the time on the sundial, the clock, or a watch. This time is not about chronos but kairos -- the expected promised time. For Paul THE DAY has come. God's Day has arrived, and that, says Paul, ought to make a difference. On the basis of his conviction that the New Day has dawned in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul admonishes the Christians in Rome to live as though they know what time it is.
In the first two chapters of his letter to the Romans, Paul devoted his attention to the sin which grips all of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, and to the punishment which all deserve. From chapter three to chapter eleven, the apostle announces the wondrous gift of justification that God gives to everyone -- again Jew and Gentile alike. He concludes chapter 11 with the announcement: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!"
In chapter 12, Paul begins to spell out the implications of this gift of justification. He begins by indicating the roles of Christians to one another and moves on to talk about the roles of Christians to the government.
In chapter 13, Paul comes to the question: What does that gift of justification mean? When we come to our pericope, Paul indicates that along with justification comes the Day of the Lord. Having that free gift and living in God's new day means it is time to "act our age." God has brought in God's New Day, and it is time to act accordingly.
In many different ways Paul tries to indicate to the readers in Rome that they are to take seriously the fact the promised day has been inaugurated, and so he begins with the phrase "You know what time it is." The reference to time here is quite like that announcement of Jesus: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15). Paul also deals with the same issue in 2 Corinthians 5:16--6:2, concluding with that powerful note: "Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!"
Paul's announcement points out that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent gift of justification, we have entered a new time zone. And this new time, called the kingdom of God, is not time for us to be asleep but awake and alert, waiting with hopeful expectation. The night, he writes, is far gone; the day is near. The day is none other than the day of the Lord which was anticipated in Old Testament prophecy. Note the similarity between this phrase and the prophetic announcement at Zephaniah 1:7, 14.
Because of the nearness of that day, Paul begs his listeners to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. It is time to act as though they have entered the new time zone. The works of darkness belong to the previous age. People of the new time are called to put on the armor of light. The exhortation calls to mind other writings (Ephesians 6:14ff) where Paul suggests that Christians put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Such is the armor of light over against the works of darkness.
Live in a way that is appropriate for this new time, Paul urges his listeners, not living in reveling and drunkenness. Instead live a life as Christians, befitting of God's new day which began already in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Matthew 24:36-44
Jesus has a warning for his disciples: One day -- no one knows when -- the end time will come upon ordinary people doing ordinary things on what appears to be an ordinary day, and for that reason everyone needs to be on the alert at all times for the extraordinary Day.
In order to understand this passage it is best to back up to the beginning of chapter 24. Jesus and his disciples were in the city of Jerusalem adorned with its absolutely awesome buildings. Truly, one has only to walk the corridors of Jerusalem or visit the model of first century Jerusalem at the city's Holy Land Hotel to gain some sense of how the disciples must have felt. Imagine how these men from the little backwater towns of Galilee felt as they stood in the presence of buildings that were immense, even by our standards of today. Imagine how they felt surrounded by mammoth blocks of stone which weighed tons and tons. As Jesus and his disciples walked through the streets and alleyways, the disciples couldn't help but talk about these impressive structures. And Jesus' response could only have caught them off guard. "You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." Jesus prophesied destruction.
The Gospel of Matthew then places Jesus and the disciples on the Mount of Olives. What follows is more ominous than before. There will be wars, famines, death, destruction. And the disciples want to know when. "Learn from the fig tree," he tells them. "Its leaves appear and show that summer is on its way." Most surprising of all, Jesus changes the question the disciples asked of him. Jesus was more concerned with how the disciples should live their lives rather than knowing when the end would come. No one knows when the end will come, Jesus told the group. Neither the angels nor the Son knows. Only the Father knows.
That the day will come suddenly Jesus illustrates with the reference to Noah and the flood. Periodically in Scripture a writer alludes to Noah. At 2 Peter 3:20, for example, the Noah experience is cited as the time of God's waiting (a switch on the Advent theme!) for the people to respond to God in obedience, and since so few did respond only eight persons were saved. At 2 Peter 2:5-7 the Flood story of Noah's time and the narratives about Sodom and Gomorrah are used as examples of the judgment of God on sinners (see also Wisdom of Solomon 10:4, 6 for the earlier use in Judiasm of those two events to portray divine judgment). In our pericope the thrust of the flood image is not to serve as an example of judgment per se but of the suddenness of the apocalyptic judgment to come. The end will not come when all people are gathered expectantly in a particular place in Jerusalem, or in church, but on a day when people will be about their daily activity.
The question the disciples ask is not the significant one. The key issue, Jesus remarks, is the distinction between those who will be taken and those who will be left, and the difference is in their preparedness. What, Jesus wants to know, is the quality of time you have until the end comes? For Jesus, the issue is really about the quality of life: Do we live a life of expectation? Do we live a life of vigilance for the faith? Do we live a life of expectation for that day of resurrection? Do we live a life based on God's promise? Or are we all so caught up in the sights that our vision gets blurred?
Jesus concludes with the admonition to "keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." The "keep awake" exhortation sounds similar to the expression in Romans 13 where Paul noted that we need to wake from sleep. It all is a matter of lively expectation. At issue here as elsewhere is how we wait.
It is interesting to note that in the Gospel, the phrases "the day" and "the hour" are used interchangeably, as they are used so often in apocalyptic literature. The reader needs to be careful not to make distinctions between what are simply interchangeable words. Neither should we make distinctions between day or year. The fact of the matter is, this is not a matter of chronos but a matter of kairos -- that appointed time which goes beyond days and years and looks to that anticipated moment when God will make all things new.
Grabbing at one more image to stress the unexpected nature of the Day of the Lord, Matthew's Jesus cites the example of the intrusion of the burglar into a house, catching the owner completely off guard (see the same analogy at Luke 12:39-40). Nighttime entrances appear in various ways in the Gospels, always however, to emphasize the need for watchfulness. At Mark 13:32-35 the analogy for the sudden appearance of the Lord is the unknown hour of the night when the master of the house might return, catching the doorkeeper asleep on the job. The focus on the night might simply be a means of drawing attention to the surprises that the darkness can bring. On the other hand, nighttime might have become an image for such warnings on the basis of Jewish apocalyptic: on the night of the Passover "the destroyer" came through the communities to kill all the firstborn children (Exodus 12). Being prepared on that occasion meant heeding the Lord's instruction to smear blood on the entrances to the homes. Being prepared in our pericope means living each moment with the realization that the end might come.
The lessons now come together. Isaiah 2, Romans 13, Matthew 24 -- all have to do with how we live until the kingdom of God is established. We have God's promise that the kingdom will come. We even pray, "Thy kingdom come." But let this be a caution for us. The coming kingdom is not dependent upon us. The kingdom will come whether or not we pray for it. God's future vision will happen. God's new day will come. God's kingdom will be established. Our prayer is simply that we might be included in God's future, and to be included we live expectantly here and now.
On that note, let us all respond to the sign "Waiters Wanted." Perhaps the most productive kind of waiting is serving others, even those who simply eat and drink, who live by sight rather than vision. As people of the vision, we can walk from table to table even now, guided by the light of the Lord.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 2:1-5
We sometimes wonder what the world is coming to these days, and when we look at present conditions, we do not find very much that reassures us. Our nation is suffering a thorough-going breakdown of morality, with violence and wrong, selfishness and cynicism surrounding us on every side. Our world is full of poverty and hunger, wars and rumors of war, and whole populations subjected to tyranny and massacre. And try as we will to ameliorate conditions and to introduce some healing and good in society and the world, any corrections we make seem like pitiful contributions compared to the force of evil in the world. Is that force finally just going to have the last word in human life and overwhelm us all?
If we believe that the course of nations and persons is determined solely by human endeavor, then we do not have many grounds for hope. Human sin has corrupted God's good creation and turned it into the scene that we see today. But if we believe, as the prophets believed, that God is the Lord who is finally in charge of the lives and course of all of us, then there is every reason to look to the future with confidence. Isaiah puts it very clearly in our Old Testament lesson for the morning.
"In the latter days," he proclaims, that is, in that indeterminate time in the future -- in the fullness of God's purpose -- when he brings in his kingdom on earth, even as it is in heaven, all nations and people will turn to the worship and guidance of the one Lord of history. That proclamation is very much like that statement of Paul's, that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).
At that time, Mount Zion, where God dwells in the temple (cf. Psalm 76:2), will figuratively become the most important mountain in the world. Some read that as "the highest mountain," but it is Zion's importance that will be elevated. We need not take that literally, but rather as a figure of God's decisive consequence for human history.
To that mountain, to God, all nations and peoples will flow in one great pilgrimage. In other words, Isaiah is picturing the worldwide conversion of all peoples to the God of the Bible. We find the same announcement in Psalm 102:21-22; Jeremiah 3:17; Zephaniah 3:9-10, and Zechariah 8:20-22; this is a frequent announcement in the Old Testament. Moreover, not only will persons themselves turn to God, but they will also urge their friends and companions to join them in their conversion, symbolized by their trek to Zion (v. 3).
The reason why all will travel to Mount Zion is given in the second half of verse 3. They turn to God in order to receive his instruction in how to behave. To learn God's "ways" and to "walk in his paths" means to be taught by God, to have him explain how to conduct oneself, to be shown the way in which to walk. So "torah" in this verse has its basic meaning of "teaching." It concerns not just the law, but the whole of God's will about how to live one's life. And the nations, in our text, have realized that true wisdom about how to think and believe and act comes not from human beings, but from God alone. We need the revelation of God's will in order to live properly -- that will which is revealed by the Lord God alone. (Again, one is reminded of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 2:6-13.)
Not only does God teach, according to our passage, but he also acts as a judge and arbiter between nations (cf. Psalm 76:9; 96:13; 98:9), to settle the inevitable disputes that arise among peoples, all of whom are so different from one another because of their various backgrounds and languages, geography and customs. Both of the terms, "judge" and "decide," in verse 4 are legal terms. And God alone is the only one who can render righteous and just and equitable decisions. He is not subject to human prejudices and self-seeking, not influenced "by what his eyes see or what his ears hear" (Isaiah 11:3). Above all, he restores to the poor and oppressed their rightful place in society (Isaiah 11:4).
So just and fair are God's decisions among peoples, moreover, that they need not try to win their own advantage through the use of power, and they need not try to foist their will on others. Rather, they gladly accept God's judicial decisions and renounce all attempts to win their own way by the use of arms. They beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (v. 4). Those weapons that had been instruments of destruction and death are transformed into tools of production and life-giving sustenance. God's teachings and his decisions bring forth not death to human beings, but the goodness and abundance of life.
Verses 2-4 of our text are paralleled in the prophecy of Micah 4:1-3, and both Micah and Isaiah are drawing on a common tradition about the future. But they end their proclamations differently. Here in verse 5 of the Isaiah passage, Judah of the eighth century B.C. is issued a call to faith in their sovereign God, who will finally bring to earth his just and right and loving order. "Walk in the light of the Lord," Judah is admonished. That is, walk by the Word of God, which in the scriptures is always the source of true light (cf. John 1:4).
In Micah 4:4-5, however, the promise of God's good kingdom is given poignant illustration in verse 4 by the picture of every one sitting under his own vine and fig tree, without any fear. And in verse 5, Judah speaks its affirmation of faith, stating that other peoples may walk according to the will of their gods, but that Israel will walk by the will of the one true God alone.
When we read and hear these promises from the prophets, we are given the sure basis of Christian hope, namely, that our lives and our history are finally not in our own hands, but in the loving hand of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is at work in human history, slowly, continually, to restore the goodness to his creation that he intended it to have in the beginning. And these promises from the prophets of the Old Testament find their confirmation in the words and finally the death and resurrection of our Lord. "I, when I am lifted up from the earth," Jesus promises, "will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Jesus replaces the temple of Zion, in the New Testament (John 2:19-21), and it is to him that all peoples will flow for instruction, for judgment, and for salvation. That is the Word of the Lord.
Waiting, of course, is what Advent is all about. The pericopes we study for this day and for the following Sundays will all have to do with what we are waiting for and how we wait. Throughout this Advent season the Gospel of Matthew will contribute various emphases to consider. For the most part Paul's Epistle to the Romans will provide the Second Lesson. What is most striking, however, is that every Sunday in Advent will have as its first lesson a reading from the Book of Isaiah, and every one of the readings will have to do with a vision for which people wait.
Perhaps no other season in the church is as important as Advent in understanding the difference between sight and vision. Some businesses are advertised as "vision centers," but in fact they are concerned with sight. Sight is what we see and experience day in and day out. And the sight is not always a pretty picture. Vision, on the other hand, is what God promises us: the vision of God's Kingdom which stands in stark contrast to what we see.
In the noisy din of "muzak" and clanging bells, in the rush of shopping and baking and cleaning, in the stress of racing from party to party and in the aftermath of too many late nights after too much caffeine, our eyes have grown dim. We see the sights of everyday but we miss the vision of what God has promised. We need Advent with its time of waiting in order to focus on what God has promised.
The words from Hebrews 11:1 are important to remember in this season of Advent. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The vision that God gives requires faith; faith requires trust in God and God's promises; promises require patience in waiting, and waiting is the essence of Advent.
Isaiah 2:1-5
This first Sunday in Advent points us beyond the here and now to what God has promised, what God has done and what God will yet do, namely, establish God's reign. Isaiah 2:1-5, unlike other prophecies of the Old Testament, and unlike what many people may expect to hear at this time of year, is not about a coming Messiah. It is instead a prophecy about the coming reign of God on a New Day.
The Book of Isaiah begins with the judgment of God on the people of Israel, for they have acted like the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah. They have paid no attention to the rights of the poor and the needy; they have obstructed justice in the court; they have substituted empty sacrifices for heartfelt faith. Because of their failure to be the people of God, Israel and Jerusalem will experience the judgment usually reserved for God's enemies. The final verses of Isaiah 1 make it clear what is to befall Jerusalem: "For you shall be like an oak whose leaf withers, and like a garden without water."
Over against the judgment in chapter one comes the promise of salvation in chapter two. More rightly stated, Isaiah 2 is a portrayal of salvation. The pericope depicts what the kingdom of God will look like. That the passage is a kingdom passage is verified by its opening words in verse 2: "In days to come...." Such expressions as "on that day," "in that day," "in latter days," "in those days," or "in those days to come" are all expressions of the Day of the Lord. The phrases all point to the day when God would come to make all things right and establish God's new reign. The day of the Lord is without a doubt a day of judgment on all the forces that oppose the orderly reign of God. It is also the day of salvation, for it is the time when God will establish God's reign and will reign unambiguously over all creation.
What will this new kingdom look like? Perhaps most astonishing is the reference in verse 2 to the "mountain of the Lord." Otherwise known as Mount Zion, it is clearly not the tallest of all hills in Jerusalem, and yet in the "days to come" Mount Zion shall be the highest. That is vision. In sight, one can look down on Mount Zion simply by going out beyond Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives. There, looking down up on the city, one can clearly see that only in someone's imagination or through God's re-creative power could Mount Zion loom over all the other hills. But in the Days to Come Mount Zion shall be the highest and to it shall come all peoples of the earth. What is happening here?
In ancient times the people believed the universe had three layers: a firmament (or the heavens) where God lived, the earth where people lived, and the deep where demons lived. If God lived in heaven and people lived on earth, how could God communicate with people? The Old Testament is full of wonderful stories about God visiting people on mountains (see the story of Moses). Sometimes people thought they could reach God by building "a mountain" of their own (see the story of the Tower of Babel). Sometimes mountains appeared in dreams and angels moved up and down (see the story of Jacob). According to Isaiah 2, on the Day of the Lord, the house of the Lord will become a cosmic mountain where heaven and earth meet and people will come from all over to learn what is God's will. And that is one of our first clues about the Kingdom of God: it is that time when all people will worship God. All nations shall stream to Mount Zion and from there shall go forth instruction for all the world.
The positive version of the nations coming in order to hear and obey God's words stands in stark contrast to other prophecies even in the book of Isaiah. Foreigners will not be Israel's servants but along with Israel will worship the Lord. The result of their worship and their being reconciled to God is that they will live in peace with one another. This new day will be a time of healing and a day of peace. In verse 4 we have the promise of the biggest recycling event that will occur. Instruments of war will be recycled into instruments of agriculture: swords will become plowshares; spears will be made pruning hooks. And no one will learn war anymore. In short, this New Day will be a day of new community where people will live in peace with God and with one another.
But that is yet to be and this is now. "So what?" we might ask.
So what? Isaiah continues in verse 5. "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!" In one simple phrase Isaiah tells the people that if you live with that expectation of God's reign, then people of God, people of vision are called to live that way now. Move beyond wishful thinking and turn vision into action. Just as the nations would learn the ways of the Lord, so the house of Jacob is now called on the basis of that vision to walk in the light of the Lord.
In Dickens' famous story A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas Past, the ghost of Christmas Present, and the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It is the visitation by the ghost of Christmas Future that helps Scrooge to live in the present.
How many times over our lives have we wished that we could know what the future holds or that we could change the past? How many pieces of property would we have bought had we known the value would increase so significantly? How many times have we said, "If only we had ..."? Unlike the film Back to the Future, we cannot go back in time to change the present. We have no crystal ball to foretell the future. We cannot change the past. But we do have a picture of what God has in mind for what is to come. And so we can live appropriately here and now, in the present. We have a vision, limited though it may be, of God's promise for the future and how things will turn out. Based on that vision, which the prophet Isaiah paints for us this day, we can begin to act and approximate what God has in mind for all creation. On the basis of the promise that God will call all people to himself and will also reconcile all peoples to one another, God calls believers NOW to walk in that future.
Romans 13:11-14
"Does anybody really know what time it is?" Saint Paul does, and so do the Christians living in Rome at the time Paul wrote his epistle. Strange thing is, this time has nothing to do with the time on the sundial, the clock, or a watch. This time is not about chronos but kairos -- the expected promised time. For Paul THE DAY has come. God's Day has arrived, and that, says Paul, ought to make a difference. On the basis of his conviction that the New Day has dawned in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul admonishes the Christians in Rome to live as though they know what time it is.
In the first two chapters of his letter to the Romans, Paul devoted his attention to the sin which grips all of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, and to the punishment which all deserve. From chapter three to chapter eleven, the apostle announces the wondrous gift of justification that God gives to everyone -- again Jew and Gentile alike. He concludes chapter 11 with the announcement: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!"
In chapter 12, Paul begins to spell out the implications of this gift of justification. He begins by indicating the roles of Christians to one another and moves on to talk about the roles of Christians to the government.
In chapter 13, Paul comes to the question: What does that gift of justification mean? When we come to our pericope, Paul indicates that along with justification comes the Day of the Lord. Having that free gift and living in God's new day means it is time to "act our age." God has brought in God's New Day, and it is time to act accordingly.
In many different ways Paul tries to indicate to the readers in Rome that they are to take seriously the fact the promised day has been inaugurated, and so he begins with the phrase "You know what time it is." The reference to time here is quite like that announcement of Jesus: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15). Paul also deals with the same issue in 2 Corinthians 5:16--6:2, concluding with that powerful note: "Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!"
Paul's announcement points out that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent gift of justification, we have entered a new time zone. And this new time, called the kingdom of God, is not time for us to be asleep but awake and alert, waiting with hopeful expectation. The night, he writes, is far gone; the day is near. The day is none other than the day of the Lord which was anticipated in Old Testament prophecy. Note the similarity between this phrase and the prophetic announcement at Zephaniah 1:7, 14.
Because of the nearness of that day, Paul begs his listeners to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. It is time to act as though they have entered the new time zone. The works of darkness belong to the previous age. People of the new time are called to put on the armor of light. The exhortation calls to mind other writings (Ephesians 6:14ff) where Paul suggests that Christians put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Such is the armor of light over against the works of darkness.
Live in a way that is appropriate for this new time, Paul urges his listeners, not living in reveling and drunkenness. Instead live a life as Christians, befitting of God's new day which began already in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Matthew 24:36-44
Jesus has a warning for his disciples: One day -- no one knows when -- the end time will come upon ordinary people doing ordinary things on what appears to be an ordinary day, and for that reason everyone needs to be on the alert at all times for the extraordinary Day.
In order to understand this passage it is best to back up to the beginning of chapter 24. Jesus and his disciples were in the city of Jerusalem adorned with its absolutely awesome buildings. Truly, one has only to walk the corridors of Jerusalem or visit the model of first century Jerusalem at the city's Holy Land Hotel to gain some sense of how the disciples must have felt. Imagine how these men from the little backwater towns of Galilee felt as they stood in the presence of buildings that were immense, even by our standards of today. Imagine how they felt surrounded by mammoth blocks of stone which weighed tons and tons. As Jesus and his disciples walked through the streets and alleyways, the disciples couldn't help but talk about these impressive structures. And Jesus' response could only have caught them off guard. "You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." Jesus prophesied destruction.
The Gospel of Matthew then places Jesus and the disciples on the Mount of Olives. What follows is more ominous than before. There will be wars, famines, death, destruction. And the disciples want to know when. "Learn from the fig tree," he tells them. "Its leaves appear and show that summer is on its way." Most surprising of all, Jesus changes the question the disciples asked of him. Jesus was more concerned with how the disciples should live their lives rather than knowing when the end would come. No one knows when the end will come, Jesus told the group. Neither the angels nor the Son knows. Only the Father knows.
That the day will come suddenly Jesus illustrates with the reference to Noah and the flood. Periodically in Scripture a writer alludes to Noah. At 2 Peter 3:20, for example, the Noah experience is cited as the time of God's waiting (a switch on the Advent theme!) for the people to respond to God in obedience, and since so few did respond only eight persons were saved. At 2 Peter 2:5-7 the Flood story of Noah's time and the narratives about Sodom and Gomorrah are used as examples of the judgment of God on sinners (see also Wisdom of Solomon 10:4, 6 for the earlier use in Judiasm of those two events to portray divine judgment). In our pericope the thrust of the flood image is not to serve as an example of judgment per se but of the suddenness of the apocalyptic judgment to come. The end will not come when all people are gathered expectantly in a particular place in Jerusalem, or in church, but on a day when people will be about their daily activity.
The question the disciples ask is not the significant one. The key issue, Jesus remarks, is the distinction between those who will be taken and those who will be left, and the difference is in their preparedness. What, Jesus wants to know, is the quality of time you have until the end comes? For Jesus, the issue is really about the quality of life: Do we live a life of expectation? Do we live a life of vigilance for the faith? Do we live a life of expectation for that day of resurrection? Do we live a life based on God's promise? Or are we all so caught up in the sights that our vision gets blurred?
Jesus concludes with the admonition to "keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." The "keep awake" exhortation sounds similar to the expression in Romans 13 where Paul noted that we need to wake from sleep. It all is a matter of lively expectation. At issue here as elsewhere is how we wait.
It is interesting to note that in the Gospel, the phrases "the day" and "the hour" are used interchangeably, as they are used so often in apocalyptic literature. The reader needs to be careful not to make distinctions between what are simply interchangeable words. Neither should we make distinctions between day or year. The fact of the matter is, this is not a matter of chronos but a matter of kairos -- that appointed time which goes beyond days and years and looks to that anticipated moment when God will make all things new.
Grabbing at one more image to stress the unexpected nature of the Day of the Lord, Matthew's Jesus cites the example of the intrusion of the burglar into a house, catching the owner completely off guard (see the same analogy at Luke 12:39-40). Nighttime entrances appear in various ways in the Gospels, always however, to emphasize the need for watchfulness. At Mark 13:32-35 the analogy for the sudden appearance of the Lord is the unknown hour of the night when the master of the house might return, catching the doorkeeper asleep on the job. The focus on the night might simply be a means of drawing attention to the surprises that the darkness can bring. On the other hand, nighttime might have become an image for such warnings on the basis of Jewish apocalyptic: on the night of the Passover "the destroyer" came through the communities to kill all the firstborn children (Exodus 12). Being prepared on that occasion meant heeding the Lord's instruction to smear blood on the entrances to the homes. Being prepared in our pericope means living each moment with the realization that the end might come.
The lessons now come together. Isaiah 2, Romans 13, Matthew 24 -- all have to do with how we live until the kingdom of God is established. We have God's promise that the kingdom will come. We even pray, "Thy kingdom come." But let this be a caution for us. The coming kingdom is not dependent upon us. The kingdom will come whether or not we pray for it. God's future vision will happen. God's new day will come. God's kingdom will be established. Our prayer is simply that we might be included in God's future, and to be included we live expectantly here and now.
On that note, let us all respond to the sign "Waiters Wanted." Perhaps the most productive kind of waiting is serving others, even those who simply eat and drink, who live by sight rather than vision. As people of the vision, we can walk from table to table even now, guided by the light of the Lord.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 2:1-5
We sometimes wonder what the world is coming to these days, and when we look at present conditions, we do not find very much that reassures us. Our nation is suffering a thorough-going breakdown of morality, with violence and wrong, selfishness and cynicism surrounding us on every side. Our world is full of poverty and hunger, wars and rumors of war, and whole populations subjected to tyranny and massacre. And try as we will to ameliorate conditions and to introduce some healing and good in society and the world, any corrections we make seem like pitiful contributions compared to the force of evil in the world. Is that force finally just going to have the last word in human life and overwhelm us all?
If we believe that the course of nations and persons is determined solely by human endeavor, then we do not have many grounds for hope. Human sin has corrupted God's good creation and turned it into the scene that we see today. But if we believe, as the prophets believed, that God is the Lord who is finally in charge of the lives and course of all of us, then there is every reason to look to the future with confidence. Isaiah puts it very clearly in our Old Testament lesson for the morning.
"In the latter days," he proclaims, that is, in that indeterminate time in the future -- in the fullness of God's purpose -- when he brings in his kingdom on earth, even as it is in heaven, all nations and people will turn to the worship and guidance of the one Lord of history. That proclamation is very much like that statement of Paul's, that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).
At that time, Mount Zion, where God dwells in the temple (cf. Psalm 76:2), will figuratively become the most important mountain in the world. Some read that as "the highest mountain," but it is Zion's importance that will be elevated. We need not take that literally, but rather as a figure of God's decisive consequence for human history.
To that mountain, to God, all nations and peoples will flow in one great pilgrimage. In other words, Isaiah is picturing the worldwide conversion of all peoples to the God of the Bible. We find the same announcement in Psalm 102:21-22; Jeremiah 3:17; Zephaniah 3:9-10, and Zechariah 8:20-22; this is a frequent announcement in the Old Testament. Moreover, not only will persons themselves turn to God, but they will also urge their friends and companions to join them in their conversion, symbolized by their trek to Zion (v. 3).
The reason why all will travel to Mount Zion is given in the second half of verse 3. They turn to God in order to receive his instruction in how to behave. To learn God's "ways" and to "walk in his paths" means to be taught by God, to have him explain how to conduct oneself, to be shown the way in which to walk. So "torah" in this verse has its basic meaning of "teaching." It concerns not just the law, but the whole of God's will about how to live one's life. And the nations, in our text, have realized that true wisdom about how to think and believe and act comes not from human beings, but from God alone. We need the revelation of God's will in order to live properly -- that will which is revealed by the Lord God alone. (Again, one is reminded of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 2:6-13.)
Not only does God teach, according to our passage, but he also acts as a judge and arbiter between nations (cf. Psalm 76:9; 96:13; 98:9), to settle the inevitable disputes that arise among peoples, all of whom are so different from one another because of their various backgrounds and languages, geography and customs. Both of the terms, "judge" and "decide," in verse 4 are legal terms. And God alone is the only one who can render righteous and just and equitable decisions. He is not subject to human prejudices and self-seeking, not influenced "by what his eyes see or what his ears hear" (Isaiah 11:3). Above all, he restores to the poor and oppressed their rightful place in society (Isaiah 11:4).
So just and fair are God's decisions among peoples, moreover, that they need not try to win their own advantage through the use of power, and they need not try to foist their will on others. Rather, they gladly accept God's judicial decisions and renounce all attempts to win their own way by the use of arms. They beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (v. 4). Those weapons that had been instruments of destruction and death are transformed into tools of production and life-giving sustenance. God's teachings and his decisions bring forth not death to human beings, but the goodness and abundance of life.
Verses 2-4 of our text are paralleled in the prophecy of Micah 4:1-3, and both Micah and Isaiah are drawing on a common tradition about the future. But they end their proclamations differently. Here in verse 5 of the Isaiah passage, Judah of the eighth century B.C. is issued a call to faith in their sovereign God, who will finally bring to earth his just and right and loving order. "Walk in the light of the Lord," Judah is admonished. That is, walk by the Word of God, which in the scriptures is always the source of true light (cf. John 1:4).
In Micah 4:4-5, however, the promise of God's good kingdom is given poignant illustration in verse 4 by the picture of every one sitting under his own vine and fig tree, without any fear. And in verse 5, Judah speaks its affirmation of faith, stating that other peoples may walk according to the will of their gods, but that Israel will walk by the will of the one true God alone.
When we read and hear these promises from the prophets, we are given the sure basis of Christian hope, namely, that our lives and our history are finally not in our own hands, but in the loving hand of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is at work in human history, slowly, continually, to restore the goodness to his creation that he intended it to have in the beginning. And these promises from the prophets of the Old Testament find their confirmation in the words and finally the death and resurrection of our Lord. "I, when I am lifted up from the earth," Jesus promises, "will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Jesus replaces the temple of Zion, in the New Testament (John 2:19-21), and it is to him that all peoples will flow for instruction, for judgment, and for salvation. That is the Word of the Lord.
