War transformed into peaceI pasted the translation from the Revised Common Lectionary because it’s easier than typing, and because that headline sets up my theme for this Advent: God’s reversal.
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!
We usually think “reversal” is a bad thing. Maybe it’s because reversal is the fundamental mechanism of Greek tragedy: the tragic hero can’t be tragic, or a hero, without at least a reversal of fortune; or, better, fate. But the Greek concept of tragedy is rooted in the conviction that the universe is rooted in chaos. Reason (logos) only controls chaos; but it doesn’t defeat it. Chaos persists and, in the end, prevails. It’s a fatalistic view of reality, and leaves everything in the hands of fate. As Burns wrote, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. But that’s not a concept that the Hebrews had.
As one of Job’s friends said to Job: “If we expect good from God, can we not expect evil, too?” For the Greeks, even the gods were not ultimately in charge, and were often chaos agents themselves. For the Hebrews, God was both creator and active in human history. God ‘s creation was not the temporary restraint of chaos, it was good ab initio. For the Greeks, a reversal was the triumph of chaos over logos, or the product of the tragic hero’s tragic flaw (which allowed chaos to reassert). For the Hebrews, a reversal could be a sign of God’s justice.
In science today, for example, we have reversed course on eugenics. What was once sound science, is now pseudoscience. We gave reversed course to correct a grave error, to correct an injustice. But a reversal in the Hebrew Scriptures is war into peace, or streams in the desert. Not peace as the cessation of war, a temporary respite, but peace as the replacement of war, peace as the replacement for war. Reversals are not chaos; they are cosmic justice. God’s justice, at work in human history.
They may seem like chaos to those affected. Ask anyone addressed by Mary’s song, especially the rich and the people being cast down from their thrones.
This is not just a recurrent theme of the scriptures; this is the annual theme of Advent. The liturgical calendar begins the liturgical year announcing the arrival, the Advent, of God’s justice. And God’s justice always means a reversal of the status quo. An arrival that is also (although we won’t discuss it right here), apocalyptic.
Fuck this shit. Yeah; it’s not just a profane sentiment.
So Isaiah, in the days before the Exile, in the century after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel, announces a vision of a re-united Israel in the southern kingdom of Judah, a “holy mountain” which will inspire all nations to come learn peace and justice from Israel, an Israel operating under God’s law, enjoying God’s justice. It’s important to note here the fall of Israel (the northern kingdom) and the exile of Judah (the southern kingdom) was not a product of God’s wrath (the image of the “God of the Old Testament”), but of Israel’s (both kingdoms) apostasy. That, at least, is the uniform teaching of the prophets. A teaching always linked to God’s justice, and visions like Isaiah’s holy mountain.
And that justice, that vision, became fundamental to Christianity, and the nativity stories. They were cast as another reversal.
The reversal is not just a change in an individual’s life. It’s a fundamental change in circumstances, like nations beating swords into plowshares. The vision is of a permanent change, of nations living in peace because there is no need for war. And not because God has taken over and wiped out all dissent. The victory is won, not by mindless obedience (or a failure to mindlessly obey, the usual slander against the Hebrews and the “God of the ‘Old Testament’”), but through wisdom. "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." And that comes because Israel will set the example, by learning (again) the ways of God.
Which the gospels say is what Jesus came teaching. Hold on to that last verse, the admonition to “walk in the light of the Lord.” It’s another persistent theme of Advent.
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