A VISION AND PRAYER FOR ADVENT

(Preached Sunday, November 28, 2004)

 

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.              -Isaiah 2:3

 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem;...    -Psalm 122:6a

 

Beautiful stuff, isn’t it?  This vision from Isaiah, spoken over 2,500 years ago, is still the stuff that grabs our hearts, brings tears to our eyes, and lifts our spirits to heights they normally do not reach for most days of the week.

In our era of increased anxiety, when through unrepented injustices, terrorist and war, we live with much less expectation of “peace on earth and good will among people.

Maybe the first thing we should do with this passage from Isaiah is to let it wash over us; to allow ourselves to become baptized in its beauty until we are completely saturated; until we become absolutely, completely intoxicated with these beautiful words.  Utterly intoxicated!

 

If we do that, we will find that the Bible words will meet up with a deep yearning within our own hearts for complete reconciliation.

For a world where violence, injustice and war are banished forever.

We need to nurture our spirits on such wonderful Bible passages; allow them to mesh with a sacred part of our own being.

If we gave as much time to dwelling on them as we do to reading the sports pages, the political goings-on, the stock market reports, the love life of stars of film and television, then we would begin to live more creatively, with more hope.

 

“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Ponder for a moment a world where Arab and Jew live as sisters and brothers.

Where fourth and fifth generation Americans and the recent immigrants live together with respect, justice and love.

Where the tribes of the Balkans and Africa and Ireland, of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China, no longer maintain their ongoing fears, resentments or rage.

Think about a world where there is no longer need for armies or secret police, no more razor wire, prison compounds or grey jails.

Think about a world where the billions of dollars spent on armaments are diverted to feeding, clothing, housing, teaching, healing, the peoples of the world.

Think about a world where all are neighbor and every individual is treated as intrinsically precious.

Where the vulnerable can leave their doors unlocked without anxiety, and ordinary people can walk on the streets at night without fear.

Think about Jesus and his way of life, loving, accepting, embracing, forgiving.

 

That vision is not a pipe dream, it is not wishful thinking.

It will become a reality.

The key to that vision becoming reality, Isaiah points out, is that time in the future when all people shall come to realize their need for God and for learning how to live life from God.

Just imagine, a time when every person on earth will want to do God’s will instead of his or her own.

When self-rule and selfish desires are a thing of the past.

When no one will seek just her or his own welfare, or the good of his own country, but the good of all?

When human pride and greed, power and anxiety are things of the past.

 

Advent, the weeks leading up to the celebration of Christmas, is a season for dreams and visions.

It is a time for reminding ourselves of God’s grand vision for the world.

And as we remember that vision let it inspire us to begin living bits of the future now!

That is the call of Isaiah to the people of God after he shared the glorious vision: “Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

Our roles as member of the household of God are meant to be active.

We are not spectators at some sporting event.

We are co-participants with God, we are partners, teammates, co-creators with God in bringing the vision into being.

 

Yes, it is God’s work primarily; the advent of peace between the nations if God’s doing.

But we have a role to play with God.

One key activity for us, which acknowledges both God’s primary role and our participatory role is prayer.

In Psalm 122, the psalm for today, the psalmist calls us in verse 6 to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

What better thing could we do this Advent season than focus our prayers on peace?

The word shalom, translated “peace,” means much more than the mere absence of conflict.

And of course it is not only Jerusalem that is in need of peace; the whole world needs the shalom that the psalmist dreams about.

So actually, we should expand the breadth of this prayer, and deepen it with our awareness of the various meanings of the Hebrew idea of peace.

 

Pray for healing in our world.

Shalom includes the idea of wholeness, or what we might describe as “healing.”

Africa is currently wracked by a devastating AIDS epidemic.

Hundreds of thousands of people die weekly of this horrible disease.

Our prayer for the peace of our world cannot overlook the need for healing of the sick.

 

Healing is also needed in our political affairs.

Our own nation is angrily divided along partisan lines.

It becomes almost impossible to build a sense of national unity after a campaign simply because the rhetoric is so heated and so divisive.

Pray for the healing of our land, that we might see ourselves as neighbors once again.

 

Pray for the feeding of the world.

The Hebrew idea of shalom includes the notion of prosperity.

In our culture, prosperity is the measure of everything, int he rest of the world the lack of prosperity is the measure of misery.

It is hard not to imagine that the two things are connected.

Our great wealth is out of proportion to our size.

America is only six percent of the world’s population, yet we control most of the world’s resources.

Our prosperity contributes to the poverty of others.

Perhaps if we prayed for the feeding of the world, our obsession with material gain might begin to give way to a more balanced view of the meaning of life.

 

Finally, pray for the end of war.

Shalom does include in its various meanings the cessation of conflict.

As we move through the next four weeks, toward our celebration of the birth of Jesus, the babe who was hailed as the Prince of Peace, let us pray that we can find a way out of the warfare and bloodshed that marks so much of our world.