Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44

Even after all the theological training, sermons preached and prayers prayed, I continue to come to our Advent texts daunted, challenged, even a little disappointed that I'm so ready to embrace the baby-Jesus and yet, can't hold him until I wrestle with these ‘end of time' texts!

Advent evokes the childlike, innocent and vulnerable parts of us.   Whether our imaginations turn towards sugar plums and faires- or lambs lying down with lions and swords being turned into plowshares - it's easy for this season to become a celebration of a never-never-land where no one has to be grown-up and deal with the doom and gloom of war, poverty, and human depravity that still enslaves the streets of our nation's capitol city.   A bit more snuggle-time with baby Jesus seem far preferable to the scramble for power laid bare by the latest You-Tube, Barnum-and-Bailey-like presidential debates!  Christmas can mirror this theme with an either/or temptation to succumb to childish avoidance of responsibility, or to the "Bah! Humbug!" of worldly power, grown cynical of hope, much less love and vulnerability...our challenge during the Advent season is to hold the tension between divine hope and challenging the realities that demand prophetic intervention, while preparing ourselves to receive the greatest love ever laid bare.

Advent is the Church's memory of God's longing to overturn the world's expectations that human power will suffice.  God's dream is not for the most poised, clever and ambitious to win out, but for our holy beloved to penetrate the very center of human weakness and brokenness and need. The prophet Isaiah was among the first to put into words this divine vision of an age of peace and prosperity for all peoples, a day when nations "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks" and will no longer lift up sword against one another or "learn war any more." Isaiah was writing words of hope at a time almost eight hundred years before Jesus-- during which the northern of the two Hebrew Kingdoms, Israel, was being attacked by - and would ultimately fall to the Kingdom of Assyria - or as we know it today, Iraq.  Isaiah's words of hope would endure a darkness deeper than anyone had yet known, for his own nation would have to die, so that one day she could live in justice and peace and freedom once again.

Almost 800 years later Paul wrote his own urgent words of anticipation to the new Church in Rome, saying: "You know what time it is... salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." So, Paul wrote, "Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light," the Lord Jesus Christ."