First Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5;
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Isaiah 2:1-5
1The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning
Judah and Jerusalem .
2 In days to come[1]
and shall be raised above the
hills;
all the nations shall stream to
it.
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.”[5]
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
4 He shall judge[7] between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many
peoples;
they shall beat their swords into
plowshares,
and their spears into pruning
hooks;[8]
nation shall not lift up sword
against nation,
neither shall they learn war
any more.
Judgment Pronounced on
Arrogance[9]
5 O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the LORD!
-------------------------------------------------------------
Beating up on the Swords
Words and thoughts on a sermon based on Isaiah 2:1-5
This section
of Isaiah is unusual in a couple of different ways. First, it starts a new unit
and it’s only the second chapter. One would expect the various sections to be a
little longer than that, and they usually are. You can tell it’s a new start by
the fact that it has a new introductory formula in v. 1 that sounds very similar
to the introduction in ch. 1:1.
Compare 2:1, in the text above, with
1:1 “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz,
which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham,
Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
More
importantly, it also is unusual in that it starts with a poem in vv. 2-4 which is
almost exactly like one found in Micah 4:2-4 (Micah adds a brief bit at the
end).
Read through
our poem from Isaiah 2:2-4 above and then compare it with this one from Micah
4:2-4 and you’ll immediately see the resemblance:
2 and many nations 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.
3 He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall
arbitrate between strong nations far away;
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;
4 but they shall all sit under their
own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one
shall make them afraid;
for the
mouth of the Lord of hosts has
spoken.
The options
are that either Micah borrowed it from Isaiah, or Isaiah borrowed from Micah,
or both borrowed from some earlier (popular) song. Probably the majority of OT scholars
believe the latter, that it predates both Isaiah and Micah (even with “mythopoetic roots[10])
and it was later adapted to fit into the two books either by themselves
or by one of their later editors.[11] And
again, probably the majority of
scholars believe that in Isaiah’s case, the one who added it was not Isaiah
himself, because it is in such a different (positive) tone, unless perhaps he
returned to his manuscript at a much later age with a more hopeful attitude.
Walter Brueggemann
says that beyond who wrote it, the point is why
was it placed here. For preachers and interpreters, the best question is what
message occurs by its being here? What is its theological point? Whether it was
placed there by Isaiah or someone else, the interesting and important point is
that someone wanted us to hear a
hopeful word in response to the dour message of chapter one, and that is the “Gospel” theme of the passage.
It is a scene with the hope of peace contrasting with a scene of the
destruction of war. Wherever it came from, he thinks that someone pasted it
here later as an antidote, an alternative, to the hopelessness of chapter one. “Its
placement,” Brueggemann says, “reflects a characteristic tendency of the final
form of the text of Isaiah. For all of its harshness, the tradition of Isaiah
characteristically moves to hope….Here …the Jerusalem tradition looks beyond ‘the coming
fire’ (1:31) to the ‘latter days.’”[12]
In this
small passage nations are portrayed as wanting to come to Israel because Yahweh
is present there and proclaiming the “teachings” (Law, torah, instruction) that
make for peace. Imagine a time when people would flock to a certain nation
because they were hungry for peace amidst their fighting and thought that they
could find resolutions for it there. God would be the final arbiter for their disputes.
Issues would be decided without recourse to fighting. Their swords would be
turned into plow-shares, their spears into pruning hooks, and their young
people would no longer learn how to kill others from other lands. There would be
complete disarmament.
Are they
going to do it because the word of Yahweh comes forth upon them? Or because the
temple itself proclaims the teachings, instructions, Torah, and therefore people
will flock to it (“stream”) and lay down their swords? We are not told.
Norman
Gottwald sees this scene as something like a precursor to the United Nations.
“Nations all come in concert, drawn by a shared offer of well-being, where war
will be unnecessary and no longer an available practice of the nations.”[13] “All
the nations will accept Israel’s Torah as their charter for wellbeing.”[14]
Yahweh (or Yahweh’s temple) is kind of like the world court, United Nations, a
court of appeal for the problems and brutality of the world.
This
promised world is theological (that is, it can only happen when Yahweh is
acknowledged as the judge and creator of all that is) but at the same time it
is political (when nations acknowledge Yahweh as the adjudicator of international
disputes). What a difference it would make in the world if there were an
equitable authority that settled international disputes. No more critical a
vision in “Isaiah’s” day than in ours. He saw the hatreds of countries and
ethnic groups descending into hell and he asked, what if there was a time and a
way when all of those groups could come together as one? He envisioned a world
in which people would trust God and not arms. War as a national, “normal,”
policy would no longer be needed.
The point of
the season of Advent is promise and hope. To hope for a better world. To envision
a better world. And if you are able to see
the new world, then you can work
towards it. It’s easy to get tied up in this season with visions of a baby in a
manger, and forget that the point of this early belief was that this baby would
be the prince of peace, the savior of humanity. During Advent we lean forward
in hope, we see glimpses of what is ‘not yet.” That is the foundational function
of sacred promise: faith empowers us to see what will be that is not yet, and
the seeing is the first step towards creating.
This vision of
hope is a “word” that Isaiah “saw” (1:1). Odd phrase. Usually one hears a word
and sees a vision. But in a sense, you do have to “see” the word of God in the
world, in action wherever it can be found, to truly be able to “hear” it. A
pastor friend once remarked that you have to look seriously at yourself before you can see the future of what you could be. You have to authentically and
honestly look at your own shortcomings before you can construct a vision of a positive
hopeful new future. You must see the grit of today before you can envision the
(possibility of) a joy tomorrow. Is there a “whiff” of that here? In the negative
passage of Ch. 1 just before the positive passage of Ch. 2? The juxtaposition
of what is now with what could be?
The
relationship between this passage and the Gospel reading for the day is that
both of them anticipate a coming God event. Both herald something coming and hoped
for. The Gospel speaks of being vigilant for the time in the future of the
coming of the Son of Man. The prophet speaks of a time in the future of the
coming of world peace, when all of the nations of the world will come to God’s
holy mountain and God will hold forth and teach them and adjudicate their
disputes. All international issues will be decided by God and therefore they
will no longer need to settle their disputes by killing each other by war. They
won’t even study war anymore. It will be irrelevant, and they’ll have to turn
their swords into something more constructive, like plowshares.
This is all
well and good, but is it really an “Advent”
passage? When most of us who are in churches think of Advent we think of the
four weeks that run up to the coming of Jesus in the manger. But is that all
there is to Advent? Well, of course not
The word, “Advent,”
is a word by itself, and predated the churchy purposes to which we have
assigned it. It means “anticipation,” and “waiting.” It is the anticipation of
something grand and glorious that is coming. And that’s why we ripped it out of
its history and applied it to the anticipation of the coming of a new world in
Christ. We are the ones who are waiting for, anticipating that age of the
plowshares made out of melted down swords and bombs. God will be at the end of
the waiting period and “God” is the meaning of peace.
Here’s an
interesting fact. There was a poll a few years ago that found that people who expect to be mugged or burglarized tend
to feel more fearful of others and more hostile to them than people who don’t. The
interesting part is that odds are they actually will not be burglarized any
more than anyone else. But their thinking
and anticipating that they will
actually makes them dour and fearful and hostile. You are more likely to be hit
by someone who is afraid of being hit than by someone who is not. Think about
that in terms of the recent presidential campaign. Which candidate seemed more
fearful of being hurt by outsiders and was (therefore?) more angry and verbally
violent to those outsiders and others?
When people expect bad things to happen that impacts
how they will feel while waiting for
it. People who feel fearful of terrorists, tend to expect to be attacked by
terrorists, and tend to be more angry and dismissive (and perhaps even violent)
to others, even though actual attacks by a terrorist are off-the-charts
unlikely. But those who live in fear of them, are probably far more serious and
worried and tense and nervous and probably angry and a bit resentful than those
who are better able to brush it off and not worry.
One time,
years ago, when I was a teen, I did something terrible. My mother was at home
and dad at work, and I did something bad. I don’t actually recall what it was,
but at the time, it seemed real bad, like breaking a window with a baseball, or
wrecking my bike by driving in traffic.
She said to
me, “You just wait until your dad gets home and he’ll take care of you for
this,” or something to that effect. I spent the day in hell. Nothing that
happened that day could lift my spirits. It was a miserable wait. I was living
in the “Advent” of a horrible upcoming event. The waiting around for something
miserable to happen made the entire day miserable. Nothing was good that day.
My every second and minute felt awful. As it happened, when he got home he
talked to me about it, and we worked out a way for me to pay off the broken
window or the broken bike and that was it. No spanking, no grounding, no
nothing. The actual event was not nearly as bad as my waiting anticipation of
it. But anticipating something terrible, made my very life and existence feel
terrible.
Be careful
what you hope for, because you will be living in that hope while waiting for it
to come. Be careful what you live in your own “advent,” because you will live
with that during the time you are waiting for its coming.
So what does
any of this have to do with Advent?
People of
God in ancient Israel lived during wars and horrors and rumors of wars, yet
they created this prophesy (this and many others) of a time in the distant
future when all the nations of the world would turn around, and come together up
on the mountain of God, and God would speak and teach and they would listen and
God would adjudicate their disputes and all of their conflicts. And they would
therefore no longer have to study for war. They would lay down their swords and
turn them into plowshares, and turn their spears into pruning forks.
It was an
impossible vision, an impossible dream, an impossible prophesy. And, in fact, it
never happened. From that day, thousands of years ago to this, it never
happened. It quite possibly will never
happen.
But was it
wrong? Was it wrong to live out their lives expecting, anticipating, hoping for
an age of peace and justice? Was it wrong to lean forward into the future
living out an “advent” of the time when nations would turn their swords into plows
hears? Was it wrong to live in hope?
[1]
“In days to come” “Latter days,” “in a
later time, “in the distant future” etc. “The
phrase, which does not appear again in Isaiah, is not at first what it later
becomes (cf. Dan. 10:14), a technical term for the messianic age.” (Isaiah, IB). “Later in this chapter we
shall find frequent references to the day of the Lord, pictured as a day of
disaster. This oracle, in common with much else in Isaiah, seems to be saying
that beyond the disaster there will be a genuine hope of restoration and new
prosperity.” (John Barton and John Muddiman, Oxford Bible Commentary, Is
2:2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
[2] “The mountain of the Lord’s house” This is referring to the Jerusalem temple
which sits high up a hill. However, the usual expression for this would omit
“Mountain” or “house,” as the LXX does. The parallel in Mic. 4:1 omits “house”
but then adds “the house of God.”
[3] “Established as the highest” Or: “set first,”
made most prominent.” (Isaiah IB).
[4]
“The theme of the ‘cosmic mountain’ is a widespread one in the ancient Near
East and in the Hebrew Bible in particular (Clifford 1972 offers a useful
survey of the main relevant texts). The theme is frequent in the Psalms (cf.
e.g. Ps 48:1–3; 68:15–16), and both in this passage and in the Psalms the claim
is made that Mount Zion, in fact not at all a spectacular mountain, will be
established as ‘the highest of the mountains’. The mythical features of this
picture show us that this is theological geography.” (John Barton and John
Muddiman, Oxford Bible Commentary, Is 2:2 [New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001]).
[5]
“Walk in his paths.” “This familiar biblical idiom (cf. ‘the Way,” Acts 9:2)
connotes both a religious belief and the moral behavior according with that
belief; it appears to combine two pictorial ideas, (a) the path as a customary
route, and (b) the right path to choose where paths diverge, leading to the temples
of different gods (cf. Exod. 32:8).” (IB Isaiah).
[6]
“Word of the Lord” “It is striking
that here tôrâ (law) and ‘word of the
Lord’ are treated as synonymous.
The word of the Lord is characteristically that which was uttered through prophetic
mouthpieces; tôrâ, as we have seen,
had a variety of meanings, but here it may be comparable to the kind of summary
of divine guidance found in 1:16–17. (John Barton and John Muddiman, Oxford
Bible Commentary, Is 2:3 [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001].)
[7]
“He shall judge.” Or: settle the disputes…decide the issues.” “The biblical
pictures of the messianic age link the coming of peace with the establishment
of a just rule among men (cf. 9:7; 11:1-9). (IB Isaiah)
[8] But see Joel 3:10: “Beat
your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the
weakling say, “I am a warrior.”
[9]
This verse is actually a fragment. It is possible that it is a textual variant
of a part of v. 3. But nobody knows.
[10] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, ed. William P.
Brown, Carol A. Newsom, and Brent A. Strawn, 1st ed., The Old Testament Library
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 28.
[11]
Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville:
W/JK, 1998), p. 24.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.,, p. 25
[14]
Brueggemann. Texts for Preaching), p.
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