Waiting for a Miracle
December 2, 2007
Jonathan Slater
Text:
Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44
Romans 13:11-14
I.
Evan Baxter is an ambitious and successful man: A former TV news anchor, newly elected to the US congress, now settled with his wife and three sons in a huge home in a newly developed suburb of Washington. Immediately upon arriving in Washington, he is asked to co-sponsor an important piece of legislation – the Citizen Integration of Public Land act – an act which would open up fringe lands of national parks for development. Here is his opportunity to fulfill his election promise to “change the world”.
But when it comes time to publicly declare his support of the bill, he stands before congress and announces that God told him that there will be a great flood on September 22 at mid-day, and that he is to build an ark. Needless to say this doesn’t go over very well with congress – which suspends him, or with his wife – who takes their children to stay at her mothers. But, without work or family to distract him, Even sets to work building a 250 foot long boat on the eight lots which he has purchased for the purpose next to his huge home in the suburbs.
September 22 rolls around, and Evan, whose family has rejoined him, is standing on the deck of the ark. A crowd of neighbors and international news media have gathered – under sunny clear blue skies. Everyone is waiting What will happen? Will anything happen?
Suddenly, there’s a rumble in the distance. Evan’s heart leaps. Is that thunder? No, it’s the sound of the police-escorted demolition crew coming to execute the court-order to demolish the Ark. A megaphone voice announces: you have three minutes to evacuate. Frustrated and disparate , Evan prays: “God, would it be too much to ask for a little precipitation?” His wife who was with him consoles: Perhaps he had misunderstood God. Maybe God didn’t mean a literal flood, but a flood of emotion, or awareness.
But as Evan and his family begin to disembark, confused and disheartened, the sky grows dark and it begins to rain.
Here it is – the miracle he has been waiting for. Hope rises again, only to be again crushed as the rain stops and the clouds disperse. Laughter and jeering erupts from the onlookers. A news reporter remarks, “It seems that Baxter was right about the rain, but made a miscalculation about the quantity.”
I don’t know if you can imagine yourself as Evan – With your career, family, friends, and reputation staked on having done something that appears absurd, but which you are convinced God wants you to do. Everyone else is going about their business, and here he is out on the deck of huge boat in a suburb of Washington waiting for a miracle to come. In spite of the jeering crowds, and his own confusion and doubt, he still clings to the conviction that it can’t end this way, that something is going to happen. You’ll have to watch Evan Almighty yourself to see how that story ends.
II.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent – and like Evan, we are waiting for a miracle. Advent is a time of waiting for the magic of Christmas. For warm family feelings, for feasting, gift-giving and receiving, for a break from the regular rhythm of work. Advent is also a time of waiting for a renewed sense of the wonder of God coming among us, being born in a stable in a backwater town of the Roman Empire some two thousand years ago.
And today’s reading from Isaiah reminds us that Advent is also a time of waiting for the future fulfillment of the hopes of Israel, for the final fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham, that he would be a blessing to all nations. Isaiah presents a vision of the nations streaming to the Temple in Jerusalem. Many peoples will 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.’ There will be an end to international strife, “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.”
Can you imagine it? Jerusalem, now a focal point of strife and violence in the middle east, will become a place of instruction and righteous judgment which brings peace – A lasting peace, where the instruments of war are permanently decomissioned, converted into agricultural tools, instruments of death becoming instruments of fruitfulness and life. Is it possible? A global end to war and conflict that would make the arms industry obsolete, rendering the weapons of war useless such that the billions of dollars spent on instruments of war would be channeled into sustainable agricultural development? Can we imagine such a future? Is the fulfillment of this vision any more likely, more possible, than a deluge hitting a Washington suburb? We can probably envision some way that could happen. Floods do happen. But lasting peace in the middle east? It would take a miracle beyond what most of us can imagine.
In The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor relates an experience she had when visiting Jerusalem which I think nicely captures our struggle with Isaiah’s vision:
“A few years ago I spent a month in Israel, arriving in Tel Aviv one day after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Tension between Palestinians and Isarelis was running high; their mutual fear and hatred hung over the streets of Jerusalem like a toxic smog. I saw Palestinian boys throw stones at Jewish tourists and Israeli soldiers smash bottles all through the Muslim quarter of the Old City. The Arabs went on strike every afternoon, closing their shops and withdrawing behind shut doors. City authorities retaliated by withholding municipal services, so that many Palestinian neighbourhoods were covered with uncollected garbage.
During my last week in Jerusalem, I walked through one such neighbourhood with a small group of Christians. We were on the traditional pil
grim’s route that leads from Bethany down the Mount of Olives to the ancient garden of Gethsemane. We were imagining Jesus ahead of us, balanced on the back of a small donkey, entering the last week of his life along a road strewn with palms. Arab children joined us as we went, while their mothers watched us from darkened doorways and windows. Just before descending to Gethsemane we paused at a rise in the road to look across the Kidron Valley at Jerusalem. We looked at it with some of the heartache Jesus must have felt, caught between its beauty and its violence. On our side of the valley, the barren hillside was covered with trash. Skinny dogs sniffed empty tin cans while the August wind caught stray wrappers and sent them crackling out of sight. On the other side of the valley all we could see were graves. The western slope of the Mount of Olives is covered with graves, because everyone wants to be there to meet the Messiah when he comes.
Silenced by the scenery, we hardly noticed the sheets our leader put into our hands, inviting us to read Isaiah 60.1-5 together. ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come,’ we read in unison, ‘and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’. It was preposterous. There was no correspondence between what we were seeing and what we were saying. ‘For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’ The disparity between the vision and the reality was wrenching, like looking at a wasteland through a window painted with flowers.” (The Preaching Life, 59)
III.
Let us for now leave Brown-Taylor struggling with the disparity between Isaiah’s vision and the reality she sees around her, and turn our attention to today’s Gospel reading. In Matthew 24 we find Jesus on the mount of Olives. Where Barbara Brown Taylor saw the graves of those waiting for the Messiah, there were once disciples, gathered around Jesus, the one that they believed was the Messiah
They have come to him for answers. These are exciting times, times filled with expectation. No longer is Jesus wandering around the fringes of Israel, teaching in towns and the countryside. Rather, he has just entered Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna, and entered the Temple, driving out the sellers and money-changers. There is the sense that Jesus is about to fulfill his mission as the anointed Messiah, as the one sent by God to fulfill Israel’s hopes – to end the long period of waiting for God to act.
Israel had been waiting: waiting for God to fulfill his covenant promises to Abraham, that Israel would be a blessing to all nations; waiting for God to fulfill his promise to David, for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy; waiting for God to fulfill his promise that Exile would end. And Jesus’ followers were waiting for Jesus to fulfill his medias destiny, driving the Roman rulers from the land, restoring Israel to its rightful place as the center of God’s activity in the world, a place where the nations would gather to worship the God of Israel. They were waiting for God to vindicate Israel and crush her enemies, including those Israelites who oppose the promised Messiah
But their expectation is mixed with questions: What did Jesus mean that the temple would be destroyed? How will that fit in with his Medias mission? When will God’s promised peace finally arrive? When will he come into his Kingdom?
Our gospel text this morning comprises only a small part of Jesus’ response to their questions – a reply which extends two whole chapters, from Matthew 24:3 to the end of Matthew 25. And what he says to the questioning disciples was likely as bewildering to them then as it is to us now – but for different reasons.
If we have trouble believing Isaiah’s vision because we can’t imagine what it might look like, first century Jews had a fairly clear idea of what the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes should look like. And what Jesus said bore little resemblance to what they were expecting.
In response to their questions, Jesus warns them that a time of trouble is coming, a time of war, false Messiahs, persecution and betrayal. The temple in Jerusalem will be desecrated and destroyed once again. Rather than echoing Isaiah’s prophecy of the nations coming to Jerusalem for peace, Jesus echoes the language of Isaiah 13.9-11:
“See, the day of YHWH comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it.
For the stars of the heavens and the constellations wil not give their light;
the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.
I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity;
I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of
tyrants.”
While there is a well-established tradition of reading Jesus’ language about the sun and moon being darkened, and the stars falling from heaven in rather literal terms, it is likely that what Jesus was doing was appropriating the language of the prophets such as Isaiah, who often used language of cosmic darkness and upheaval in connection with Yahweh acting in judgment on the nations. When Yahweh acts, the results are earth-shattering.
Jesus’s troubling words in Matthew 24 to 26 are his retelling of what was at that time a well-known Jewish story: The story of God vindicating his people, judging his enemies; The story of Israel returning from Exile, Yahweh acting to judge and to save. But in this retelling, Isaiah’s prophetic words get turned on their head It is the Temple and Jerusalem that are the enemies to be judged, rather than the Romans.
Responding to their questions, Jesus assures his disciples that they need not worry that they will miss these events. They need not spend their energies looking for warning signs. When calamity takes place, it will be clear to everyone, as clear as lightening flashing from east to west.
Furthermore, and this is the focus of the section we read this morning, there will be no warning. Calamity will come suddenly and without warning. An earth-shattering event is coming, but the time of its coming will be like the days of Noah: People going about their business, heaven and earth very fir
mly in place, the world turning as it always does – until the flood of violence comes and sweeps the unsuspecting away.
So what is the faithful disciple to do? Rather than trying to predict when these events will take place, the disciples are to keep awake so that they are prepared for the unexpected.
IV.
But if Jesus’ warnings here have to do with being ready to flee when the Romans invade Jersualem, what use are they to us now. It is almost two-thousand years since the Romans desecrated and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem
Understanding this passage as speaking more directly about a future second-coming of Christ to save some and judge others has the advantage of rendering it immediately applicable to us: We should make sure we are ready to meet our maker. And this is, I think, an appropriate role for this text to play within this season of Advent. Advent is a time for us to reflect on God’s coming in Christ, past, present and future. Indeed, it is as true today as it was two-thousand years ago that we should keep awake, for we do not know on what day our Lord is coming. We must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
However, reading the passage in isolation from its surrounding literary context, and without any appreciation of its historical context, can lead us to understand this waiting in an overly passive, individualistic, and futuristic way. It is overly futuristic because placing our sole attention on the final coming of the Lord can lead us to fail to attend to the ways that the Lord comes to us in the mean-time. It is overly individualistic because it tends to place our attention on the future destiny of our souls, which sometimes leads us to pay less attention to our embodied existence in the mean-time. It is overly passive because by envisioning the coming Kingdom in exclusively apocalyptic, otherworldly terms, it can lead us pay little attention to the ways that we may bear witness to the shape of the Kingdom of God in our present activity in the world.
V.
Jesus’ concern with our present embodied witness to the shape of God’s kingdom in the World is clear in the two parables with whch he ends his words to his disciples. Yes, they were to keep awake, ready to flee when the time came. But in the meantime, they were to invest their energies. It was as they were slaves who had been given Talents by their master. They were not to bury them, just waiting around for the master to return, but they were to invest their talents, put them to fruitful use. Their waiting is to be a waiting in activity.
But what kind of activity? They were to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty; to take care of the sick, and visit those in prison, and to welcome the stranger. Not only were they to do these things while they waited for Jesus’ coming, but they would in the end discover that Jesus was coming to them as they did these things: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
In unexpected ways, Jesus comes to us as the hungry who needs food, the thirsty who needs drink, the sick who need care, the prisoners who need compassion and companionship, the stranger who needs welcome. Jesus meets us – we meet Jesus – as we shape our lives in conformity to the kingdom which is coming, as our lives bear witness to the reality of the Kingdom of God which is both coming and is come.
VI.
And so in Romans Paul reminds and admonishes: You know what time it is. Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep. The night is far gone, the day is near. And since the night is gone, and the day is near, let us live as in the day.
Rather than viewing the Kingdom of God as now, already present and only waiting to be realized, or than viewing it as not yet, a future only to be waited for, I think Paul views the Kingdom of God as both already and not yet. The day is near. It has not quite arrived. There is still more to come. Nevertheless, the night is gone. It is defeated, finished. It has no future.
So let us live as in the day. Let us live in the light of God’s future which has come and is coming, rather than in light of the night which is passing away. Let us live as if our swords were already beaten into plowshares, as if our spears were already beaten into pruning hooks. Let us lay aside quarreling and jealousy
Let us live with compassion, feeding and clothing those in need, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoners, and the alone, welcoming the strangers among us. Let us live lives which bear witness to the truth that the night is gone and the day is near.
That is how we can ready ourselves for God’s coming. The waiting of advent is an active waiting, a waiting that watches and responds: To God’s coming to us in the form of the stranger, the prisoner, the sick and the needy; To the memory of God’s coming to us in the form of a baby, while we were strangers, imprisoned, sick and needy; To the hope of God that God bring to completion the good plans that he has in store for his good creation.
Commenting on Isaiah’s prophetic words, Old Testament scholar Walter brassage suggests that “there is something deeply outrageous about Advent…. It is outrageous because the new world of God is beyond our capacity and even beyond our imagination. It does not seem possible. In our fatigue and self-sufficiency, and our cynicism, we deeply believe that such promises could not happen here. Such newness is only poetic fantasy, and there are the persistent realities of injustice and grief and terror, and it will never end, not in any future we can conjure.” (The Threat of Life, 65)
Isaiah’s vision is preposterous, outrageous, impossible. There is no way to get there from here. It would take a miracle.
VII.
Again, Barbara Brown Taylor:
“Silenced by the scenery, we hardly noticed the sheets our leader put into our hands, inviting us to read Isaiah 60.1-5 together. ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come,’ we read in unison, ‘and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’. It was preposterous. There was no correspondence between what we were seeing and what we were saying. ‘For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, a
nd his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’ The disparity between the vision and the reality was wrenching, like looking at a wasteland through a window painted with flowers.”
As we continued to read, however, my eyes began to play tricks on me. ‘Lift up your eyes and look around,’ Isaiah dared me, and the land before me became transparent. Instead of a garbage dump, I saw a holy city, with pilgrims streaming to it from the four corners of the earth. ‘They all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your laughers shall be carried on their nurses’s arms’. It was not a lie; the reality had not yet caught up with God’s vision, but it would.”
Amen.