Isaiah 2:1-5Advent is the season of apocalyptic. It is the one time the Church puts the end front and center of the season. Fortunately, it's a short season; only four weeks long. Oddly, it's at the beginning of the year, and it's about the beginning of the Church, the raison d'etre for the entire edifice. And it is introduced, almost every year, with the warning of disaster, with the need to be prepared for what will come: the birth of a child, to peasants, in a manger; visited by shepherds, heralded by angels, unnnoticed by almost everyone; the cause of a massacre. What fresh hell is this?
2:1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2:2 In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
2:3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
2:5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
Psalm 122
122:1 I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
122:2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
122:3 Jerusalem built as a city that is bound firmly together.
122:4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
122:5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.
122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May they prosper who love you.
122:7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers."
122:8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, "Peace be within you."
122:9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
Romans 13:11-14
13:11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;
13:12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light;
13:13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.
13:14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Matthew 24:36-44
24:36 "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
24:37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark,
24:39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
24:43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
24:44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
This is no way to start a season: talking about the sudden end, about how half the people will be swept away, and to what? Rapture, or disaster? Jesus doesn't point to a miraculous departure of the faithful, here. His context is the flood, when evildoers were carried off. The arrival he describes is that of a thief, who comes to steal from you, to take what you value. If the kingdom of heaven is in the future, is still to come, this is how Our Lord says it will enter: through the window you forgot to close, the door you forgot to lock; and it will take away everything that isn't nailed down, will even come and snatch off the person right beside you; or maybe it will take you. And this is a good thing because....? The kingdom of heaven is like a thief? How is the kingdom of heaven like that?
But this is what we are to prepare for. This is what Advent is about. The arrival of the Prince of Peace, the coming of the King of Heaven, when all's set at six and seven, when word from heaven comes first to shepherds, to outlaws, and then to foreigners, to Magi, who read the sky and study the stars and know nothing of the word of the Lord but only how to read the signs they discern in nature. How do we prepare for this?
And a thief. A thief?! Christmas is supposed to bring us something! Advent is supposed to be the time we get ready to receive it! What does a thief bring? Bring?! Nothing! A thief brings nothing! Precisely. That's precisely the problem! The thief brings nothing! The thief doesn't bring, the thief takes. But not just possessions, or in this case even persons; the thief takes security, takes comfort, takes our assurances away. The thief violates our space, invades our privacy, tramples our hospitality by not even allowing us to make an offer to the stranger. The thief is the stranger who is not guest but enemy, the one who invades, the one who leaves us unsafe and unsure and makes our most cherished and protected places an open plain, a bare rock in the middle of the desert, a wind-swept plateau with nothing around to shelter us. The thief takes our shelter even if the thief takes nothing from us at all. Just by being there, just by having entered uninvited and unwanted and prowled among what is ours, what is not on public offer and made for public display, the thief destroys the boundaries between us and world, between our save and secure selves and all the selves out there who have no right to see! no right to know! no right to invade! This is private! This is ours! YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! YOU HAVE TAKEN WHAT IS MOST PRECIOUS AND YOU CANNOT PUT IT BACK! KEEP OUT!!!!!
The thief crosses all those barriers, and knows what we would not have strangers know. The thief who takes nothing, is the worst kind of thief; that thief is the one who takes everything, and leaves us with nothing, ever, ever again.
Is this what we are supposed to prepare for?
"13:13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy."
Oh, but we do, we do! We live honorably, we don't engage in public drunkenness, we keep our Christmas celebrations orderly, our revels in check, our exuberance within the accepted social boundaries. We don't consort with bums and prostitutes and outlaws, we try to stay away from quarreling and jealousy, especially this time of year. We remind ourselves that what someone else got for Christmas, especially something we secretly longed for and desperately wanted, even if we didn't admit it to ourselves, is no reason to envy them. We keep our demeanor, we are thankful for what we have, what we are given. We don't try to take more. We are not thieves. We know the cliches about office parties, but we don't engage in debauchery and licentiousness and if we do, even a little bit, we repent and forgive ourselves because, after all, it is Christmas; it only comes around once a year. We make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Well, maybe a little one. Just once in a while. We're only human, after all. And it is only Christmas. But at least we're are not thieves!
But maybe we should be. Maybe something in our decorous attitudes is stealing something from us. Maybe Christmas is not supposed to be reassuring, but subversive. Shepherds, after all, were not the priests of the tribes of Israel. They were not of the priestly lineage like Zechariah and Elizabeth. But the angel Gabriel came first to him, and look what happened. Mary was not of the priestly line, either, but she did alright. And the shepherds didn't have to do anything, just get up and walk back to the buildings and listen for the cry of a newborn baby, and just from that, they knew.... But priests didn't know, or kings, or the movers and shakers of Palestine. The king of heaven slipped in almost like...almost like...almost like a thief...in the night.
Surely Herod felt that way, when three wealthy Gentiles came calling from the even further reaches of the Empire, maybe from outside the Empire even! They were not scholars of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as his scholars were, but somehow the word by-passed all his scholars and came, not through the scriptures, but through the stars. How was that? Why was that? And two years later, already? That's why he had to kill all the children 2 years and under in Bethlehem. Even his scholars didn't know! Scholars! What good are they to a king if they can't tell you about the important things?! But even they were passed over, and the word went to...well, not even to children of Abraham. The word slipped out, and took something with it when it went. Almost like...a thief.
Maybe the model is thievery. After all, how do you sneak into a thief's house at night? Probably he's the only one awake, expecting you, or someone, to break in. And then how would a thief greet a thief, except as a brother, except as the one waited for, the one anticipated, the one for which the thief had stayed awake all night, every night, for so very long....
There won't be trumpets. That's what the Stephen Sondheim song said: "There won't be trumpets/or bolts of fire/to say he's coming/No Roman Candles/no angel's choir/no sound of distant drumming." Would a thief, after all, announce himself? Would he come while you are looking? What thief would do such a thing? Don't we know this? Don't we remember it every year? "Go to sleep!" we tell the children. "Santa can't come while you are awake!" Santa, of course, is the anti-thief, the Robin Hood of Christmas, the one who breaks into your house to leave things, not take them. The one who gives to the rich, and for the poor?
Once again the words of Jesus disturb our actions. Even our remembrance of Santa Claus when he was good St. Nicholas, tossing the bags of gold through the window so the poor father's daughters could be married, brings a bit of shame to our celebrations. Let's turn, then, to Isaiah. Isaiah offers much better value for the season:
In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.But even Isaiah doesn't say quite what we think he says. Isaiah doesn't foresee a time when all the world is converted. Isaiah simply sees a time when all the world takes instruction from the God of Jacob, when the peoples of the world want to learn God's ways and walk in God's paths because God has become the judge of the nations. The idea of a "judge" is an historical one; it hearkens back to the days before the kings, when judges, both men and women, settled disputes between the tribes ("extended families" we'd say, today). So this image of peace is one built on arbitration and coherence, upon community and reconciliation, upon acceptance and respect, when swords can be beaten into plowshares because disagreements are settled by the "judge," not by combat. It's an apocalyptic vision in the best sense of the word: the revealing of truth which brings peace to a world sorely in need of it. So why doesn't Jesus promise this peace, too? Why can't we have that, instead of a thief coming in the night?
2:3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Because they are both promising thieves; Jesus is just more honest about it. We who are not children of Abraham may not welcome the coming age promised by the ancient Hebrew prophet. We may not really want to stream to Jerusalem and be put under the judgment of the Hebrew God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Jesus. It may not suit us as much as we think. It may take away more than it gives. But if that day is coming, whether we wish it or not, if it comes like a thief who will slip past our best defenses and around our securest safeguards, shouldn't we get ready? Shouldn't we stay awake? Shouldn't we prepare?
Prepare? Prepare what?
The way of the Lord, of course. The one who is coming, and has come, and will come. What strange wonder is this? This season of preparation for something that has already happened? Can what has happened happen again? Can it return in time and occur as if it hadn't happened before? Can Jesus himself be born again, as if never born before? Why not? Who says it was ever over, that it was an event in history, once and for all?
Northrop Frye wouldn't quite say so:
If I had been out on the hills of Bethlehem on the night of the birth of Christ, with the angels singing to the shepherds, I think that I should not have heard any angels singing. The reason why I think so is that I do not hear them now, and there is no reason to suppose that they have stopped.We assume it's over. Why do we assume that? We assume that what has happened, can never happen again. Why do we think that? We assume the angels are long since through singing. What evidence do we have for that?
Maybe this time, this year, we should try to stay awake. Maybe the angels sing to thieves who stay awake, and listen, long enough. Maybe thieves aren't so bad, after all. Well, some of them; at certain times of the year. Maybe we should reconsider this whole "good/bad" thing.
Amen.
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