A Vision of Hope: The First Sunday of Advent

On a long weekend when I was in seminary, I visited the Tremiti Islands, an hour’s ferry from the port of Termoli. The only way to get to the islands was to take the daily 7 am ferry from Termoli with a return ferry at 5 pm. The morning that I chose to go was lovely, the sea was like a gorgeous sheet of glass, mirroring the clear sky. It made for a smooth, pleasant trip, as I soaked in the breeze and delighted in the adventure that awaited. I decided to go to the island for its natural beauty and monastic history. I had Mass at Saint Mary by the Sea and lunched at a lovely restaurant near the harbor.

in the afternoon, I began to hear a refrain among the locals, “Nicolo is disturbed.” Apparently, this was a local way of saying that a storm was brewing. Indeed, as 5 pm approached and I arrived at the dock, I could see squall lines and could feel the blustery wind. Replacing the gorgeous sheet of glass, there were now white-capped waves. "Is the ferry still going to go back?" I asked the pilot somewhat apprehensively. "Oh yes, this is nothing," he said with a little chuckle. My adventurous spirit turned quickly into a seasick soul.

I held up remarkably well...for the first 15 minutes, but a volcano was brewing in the pit of my stomach. I had eaten a rather large lunch! One of the crew took one look, noticed that my face was the color of avocado, and told me, "Find the lighthouse on the shoreline, and focus on it." And so I did. There it was, what I would come to learn was Faro Punta del Diavolo - Devil’s Point Lighthouse, on the rocky shore across the frothy sea. And I kept my eyes on it. As I did so, I began to visualize life back on terra firma...in a warm, dry setting, with a cappuccino and croissant. After a while, my stomach became calmer and my head cleared. I began to breathe deeply. "I'm going to make it," I thought with brand new assurance.

The world in which Isaiah lived was a chaotic, unjust, and warring world. Isaiah’s prophetic career began and was exercised during the ascendency of Assyria, and their irresistible lust for power and plans for world empire. Israel, the northern half of David’s former kingdom, would be conquered and utterly destroyed by Assyria. The southern half of the kingdom, Judah, to whom Isaiah was speaking, was storm-tossed. They would become a vassal of mighty Assyria even as they were menaced by the Egyptians to the south. The kings and their advisors were occupied with what they needed to do to protect themselves. Events were getting out of their control.  Fear was running rampant, faith in the God of Judah waned, and trust in the covenant vanished.

As for their communal life, value became based on wealth and possessions. As the winds of greed whipped up and the waters of corruption frothed, the people began to sink. Widows and orphans were neglected. Strangers and foreigners were harassed. But out of that turmoil, out of that storm-tossed world, there was a voice that stood out - voice of God's own voice; a vision of God's own vision. To the world that was warring and killing, groping and sinking in the angry sea, Isaiah rose up as God's prophet and spoke: "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" (Isaiah 2:2).

Isaiah implored the people to keep their eyes fixed on the LORD. The LORD, Isaiah promised, had a plan:

"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.

He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

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.

O house of Jacob,come, let us walk

in the light of the Lord!”  (Isaiah 2:3-5)

Was Isaiah being a foolhardy idealist, impractical, and otherworldly? Or was Isaiah the only realist of his age - assured of the vision of the LORD penetrating more deeply into the essence of reality than anyone else dared dream? Be assured, Isaiah was no grinning Pollyanna. Only about ten percent of his message was "promissory" - that is, projecting the promise of God in the midst of an idolatrous people. Nevertheless, Isaiah had a vision, a vision of God's own vision. And what separated him from others was that Isaiah actually believed in that vision - the vision that in God, with God, and through God, the greed, egoism, and evil in the world can be overcome - the vision that the myriad of our violent insecurities can be stopped! And without that vision, the prophet says, the people perish.

The prophet, though, wasn't pointing just to the future. The prophet was also clearly speaking about the present! Notice how Isaiah begins the prophetic word we heard this morning? "It shall come to pass in the latter days" (Isaiah 2:2, RSV). It is a beautiful linguistic construction that points to the future (forward to an expected Messiah) and that anticipates a present becoming (a waiting in the midst of something already happening).

So, in our Church calendar, we have entered Advent - the beginning of the Church year. We light candles around a wreath. The first candle (the one we lit this morning) is just the beginning of that big wheel of time that turns every year from the waiting of Advent to the joy of Christmas, from the waiting of Lent to the joy of Easter, from the waiting of Eastertide to the joy of Pentecost, from the joy of life in ordinary time and back again. It circles back to the beginning every year. And while we light four candles as the weeks of Advent progress, we light them in a circular wreath, recognizing that as we await the future, we keep awake in the present.

The Advent wreath, like Isaiah in his prophetic utterance, suggests that the present moment is ripe. Or, to use an appropriate Advent term, the present is pregnant with God's presence. Now, I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to any of you...but I've never been pregnant. Many of you have, however, and maybe you remember the feeling of the first movement, the first wiggle, or kick. Maybe some of you fathers, or big sisters and brothers, remember waiting patiently to feel the movement of a child in the womb. It’s sometimes subtle, almost imperceptible. So, we remain still and quiet. We wait so that we might be sensitive to the hidden reality.

Isaiah's great gift to us this Advent is not to see magically into the future but to have a spirit that discerns the mystery of the present - the mystery that is our history, our story lived against a larger story of God and creation. It’s the hidden story that God’s presence is here, now, and that God’s vision is ready to be born.

The day when people "shall beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks" is nearer than we can imagine! Can we give sight to the vision of the prophet? Jesus did! He staked his very life on that vision. The question before us this Advent is whether or not we will keep awake, watch, and be ready to claim the vision, not in the future but in the midst of the present?

When I was young, in preschool or kindergarten, we made pottery figures of the creche scene during Advent in our CCD class (Catholic Sunday School, except on Wednesday). I made a sheep! It was beautiful, maybe the most beautiful sheep ever made by anyone in the history of time and beyond (aside from God, of course, at the creation). I was proud of my sheep, and I was going to take that sheep home for my mom on the last Sunday of Advent so that she could put it with Mary and Joseph as we waited for the baby Jesus. I saw my parents waiting down the hall. I got excited, so I started to run toward them. I fell and the clay figure - that most beautiful of all clay sheep - spilled out of my hands, shattering into what was assuredly a hundred tiny pieces. My father squatted down, and in the way that many fathers do, hugged me in his big arms and said, in an attempt at consolation, something like, “It’s okay. Don't cry. It doesn't matter." My mom, wiser in such ways, quickly intervened. “Oh, my," she said. "It does matter." And she cried with me. She scooped up the pieces and placed them in our creche when we got home.

The world was created beautifully, with a divine vision set before us, but along the way, we have broken some things. On this first Sunday in Advent, the prophet Isaiah tells us that God has set that vision before us. Along the way to live out that vision, we have broken some things - relationships and responsibilities. We have broken things in our families, our churches, our communities, our nation, and our world. And it matters. 

But what matters even more is that it can be made whole! There is hope and a promise. In the midst of the stormy voyage, with bristling winds and frothy seas, we can set our eyes on a godly vision, where the sword shall not be lifted and war learned no more. It matters that we can catch sight of the shore and walk in the light of the Lord. It matters that we can take the broken pieces and place them in the creche, awaiting and anticipating the Word become flesh.  It matters that, in the name of the Messiah, we can bring healing where brokenness lies. It matters that as we watch for, prepare for, and hope for the coming of Jesus, we can claim that Jesus has already come and we can work for God's kingdom of justice, love, and peace...right now, in the midst of our present.