Let Us Go Up -- First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5

December 1, 2019

            May 1977. I was 11 years old. I was outside playing and talking with my friends, and Leslie, one of my friends in our neighborhood, was telling us about this movie she had just seen called Star Wars. She kept imitating this character named Darth something who dressed all in black, wore this weird total head covering helmet and talked like this … (imitate Vader’s breathing).

            Leslie’s excitement about the movie was contagious, so we ran back to our houses and asked our parents if we could go see this movie, please, please, please, please, please!

They all said, “Yes!”

 One parent agreed to drive us to the theater and another agreed to pick us up. Yes! We got ready, we got our money, we got our ride and away we went to see Star Wars, Episode IV, A New Hope.

There are some moments in your life that are unforgettable. They are seminal and formative. I have been blessed to have many: marrying Brent, holding my babies for the first time, discerning a call to ministry and seeing that first Star Wars movie in the theater on that big, big screen.

Maybe I exaggerate a little by calling it a seminal moment, but I will never forget the thrill of seeing something that was so beyond the realm of my experience to that point. When the opening words flashed in blue on the screen, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” I was hooked. Then STAR WARS seemed to blaze before us, and then these words began to scroll up the screen.

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.”

That was it. We had never seen anything like it before, not in storytelling, not in movie making. Today, that scroll looks dated because technology and computer graphics have advanced so much. But in the theater that day, I saw words in a way I had never imagined, and I was awestruck.

If those words on that screen could fill me with awe, imagine what Isaiah must have felt when he saw the word of the Lord concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

When we read this passage, it is easy to overlook that opening sentence and move right into the images of the days to come. But let’s linger on them for a moment.

“The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.”

What does it mean that Isaiah saw the word? Did a big screen appear in front of him and the words of the vision scrolled past as if they were disappearing into space as they did in Star Wars? Probably not. Did the Lord just speak words into his head, and Isaiah wrote them down like he was taking dictation? I’m not sure. I’m not sure what it meant for Isaiah to see the word of the Lord. But I do think that he saw images and understood clearly that those images were the word of God.

Isaiah was a prophet called by God who saw God’s word. Maybe we think we know that means, maybe we don’t. But I think it helps to clarify what a prophet did and who a prophet was. I think sometimes we confuse prophets with fortune tellers. We think of them as looking into a crystal ball and seeing images of a future that may only look like clouds and mist to a non-prophet’s eye. But that’s not what a prophet did. A prophet was able to read the current situations and predict the consequences of those situations. I am not saying that they did not hear the voice of the Lord; clearly, they did. Clearly, they were given unique insight into what God was doing, both in the present and in the future. And they were not just called to see, but also to proclaim what they saw. Yet perhaps what really made a prophet a prophet is that they had what is known as the prophetic imagination.

They could imagine the future consequences of actions taken now. They could imagine a different reality, a different present and a different future. A prophet was gifted with the imagination to see the world as God sees it. So perhaps when Isaiah saw the word of God concerning Judah and Jerusalem, that’s what was happening. He was not just seeing words scroll across a screen in his mind. He was seeing the different reality that God had in mind.

What did he see?

“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.”

What did he see?

He saw God as arbitrator, God as teacher.

“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.”

What did Isaiah see? What word of God did he envision, what word did he imagine? He saw a world where people from every nation, which implies that they were people of all genders, races, ethnicities, backgrounds, streaming, streaming like a constantly flowing river, to the mountain of God. Isaiah saw God as judge and arbitrator between every nation. And in response to that judgment, people were not only putting down their implements of war, they were remaking those implements into tools for growth, for harvest, for food, for nurture and nourishment.

Think not only about what Isaiah saw, imagine what he heard. The sound of metal against metal, beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

Isaiah saw a world where every nation not only stopped their warring, they stopped learning that war to begin with.

These are powerful words to see indeed.

What do we see? You see the thing about the prophetic imagination is that it is not given to only a few; we all have the capacity and the ability to see, to imagine as well. As elders, whether teaching or ruling, we promise in our ordination vows to “serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.”

That use of the word imagination is not necessarily about being artistic; it is about seeing in a new way, seeing – if only a little – through the eyes of God.

What do we see? Right now, we see a world of violence. In the last 48 hours there have been two stabbing attacks. Our world is experiencing a grave refugee crisis – refugees, people fleeing their homes because of war and violence. There are more refugees, displaced people, in the world today than at any time since World War II. Think about that.

What do we see? We see people right here who are affected by violence and abuse. We see children who are hungry. We see neighbors hating neighbors. We see pain and sadness and brokenness and violence. We see a lot that cannot be possibly be a reflection of God’s word.

But this is the first Sunday of Advent, and the word of the day is hope. The world that we see may seem hopeless, and it is easy to be infected by that hopelessness. I struggle against it every day. But we are not without hope. We have been given the wonderful, wondrous, awesome ability to imagine something different. We have been given the wonderful, wondrous, awesome ability to see the world as God sees it. That’s what this passage from Isaiah is trying to get us to do – see the world as God sees it. It’s pushing us to see the future that is God’s. But we can’t just announce that God’s got it and walk away. Because the picture of the future that Isaiah gives us must stand in stark relief to the present we live in now. We have to hold up Isaiah’s vision like a mirror. What is the difference there between God’s future and our present? What do we see?

What do we see? And even more importantly, what can we see? Our hope lies in what we can see, and we are not a people without hope. The future is indeed in God’s hands, and God calls us everyday to work toward that future, to come to his holy mountain, to stream to God and God’s word. Let us go up. Let us imagine a different world, a better world, God’s world. Let us do our part in working toward that future, that vision, that world. Let us go up.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.