Desperate Measures

12-02-07

I want to start by stating the obvious: you have a weird pastor. Okay, some of you may not know me well enough. So let me tell you, I often am praying about sermons and have strange songs and ideas pop into my head. Isaiah was a very fruitful text for me this week. I thought of the show Desperate Housewives to use as an example, and here’s one of a few songs that went through my brain: "One of these things is not like the other; one of these things just doesn’t belong."¹ Well, that one gets a bit of redemption, because it is now a sermon illustration! It is a song that goes with the activity of showing kids how to categorize on the basis on likeness and difference. I think it is the perfect song to sing as we read the early chapters of Isaiah.

We come to the passage before us in chapter two and find it all by itself. It is the one, "not like the others." What comes before and what comes after have to do with God’s judgment of the rebellious nation. But Isaiah 2:1-5 has a very different tone and a very different message. It is a message of hope, hope that one day, "in the last days" things will be very different indeed.

We can see the author’s vision of a new day through the symbols he uses: envision a high, lofty, breath-taking mountain; and on the mountain the bright, shining, holy house of God is built—a temple beyond all temples. And all people will live in unity. Weapons become harvesters. Instead of injury and death, people are filled with love and enough to eat. Isaiah holds for us a beautiful image of hope and peace as we start our Bethlehem journey once again.

In the time of the prophet Isaiah, Israel was learning about itself as it struggled through the intensity of war.² Israel was living the consequences of thinking that they were an untouchable nation. They lived with the idea that because God blessed King David’s throne, that no enemy could ever prevail against them. You see they believed that God’s grace has more to do with their righteousness than it had to do with God’s boundless love. So it was extremely rattling and damaging to the psyche and spirit of the nation when Assyria (which is the region of modern day Iraq) attacked and conquered Israel. The people of Israel were left with the question, what hope is there for us now? They realized that they were as vulnerable as any other nation. As a nation they realized the war, they had largely brought upon themselves, had a greater cost than money alone, it cut to the very core of their national and religious identity, and forced them to re-examine their relationship with God.

As a country at war, we also know about the cost of war. It’s extravagantly expensive in many ways. Certainly we can gauge economic costs: dollars spent on recruiting, equipping, and training soldiers to fight, personnel to support, monies for assisting war-torn countries in finding stability, money to help the families of wounded and dead service men and women long after combat is over.

We also pay in national values and beliefs gained or lost through the necessary cultural debate on the appropriateness of war. We pay in national resolve and patience with the ebb and flow of support in responses to battles and successes. We pay in the numbness that grows as we continue to here news of wounded, death, and missing soldiers and civilians. Often the costs of war are far greater than we first anticipate. This Advent, like the last five Advents, we can especially identify with Israel’s struggle as a nation, and hope for peace in the near future.

In the midst of their struggles, I think Israel realized something critical: it desperately needed to rediscover its hope in God. The nation needed to collectively awaken to the lack of hope they had as a nation and renew a sustaining trust in God. By that, I mean a trust that God has a vision, and that humanity is able to help bring about that vision in this world. I think we can use a few more desperate people in this world.

Let me explain what I mean. Did you know that the meaning of the word "desperate" comes from the Latin (de)sperare, meaning "hope". It’s amazing to me that we have a word like desperation that derives from a word like hope. When I think of desperation, I think of those who see no other options except for risky and often violent behaviors. In my mind desperation is often what leads to violence, robbery, suicide bombers, child abuse. Desperation seems like a lack of any kind of hope. Yet the root word indicates that even in desperation there is hope. Perhaps this world needs more "desperate" people, (i.e. people of hope) who continue to work for a world in which swords are turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (2:4). Imagine desperate people who help to create a world where tanks, and bombs, and guns, are transformed into materials and resources to address the root causes of poverty and hunger. Imagine a world, were fear and greed and power are no longer appropriate means by which to run the governments around the world. Imagine a world where each and every one of us has the power to make this vision of transformation a reality. We do folks. For visions to become realities, people must engage and live the vision into reality. You can claim responsibility for yourself only, and yet you, each and every one of you, can let a commitment to peace and hope be reborn in you this Advent season and you, each and everyone of you, can be the change you want to see in this world.

You see, God offers an alternative vision of time, but not everyone can see that vision; especially at times of no hope desperation. It is easy for me to stand here this morning and talk about God’s vision, safe and snug among community and friends. I can only imagine the difficulty of hope and transformation in the trenches of battle. Yet, Israel’s recovery came about when they remembered that beyond any threatening earthly power, God controls destiny through the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. Through God we can actually imagine a time when war is not needed (albeit, this kingdom break-in sure has happened slowly over the years.) Peace seems to be the one concept that the world is unable to birth together. The good news is that enough peace has occurred in our homes and our communities that we at least have a concept of what it looks like.

Today in our Advent liturgy we do not participate merely in passive memory, but engage in an active expression of hope. Like Israel, did thousands of years ago, we too can sing anew about an almost cosmic day, when God will turn the existing order of peoples on its head and when people like you and me will become the conduit for God’s grace in the world.

Rather than great nations being defined by military power, economic or political influence, they will be defined by how well they treat their people, how present the divine is in the life of the people. Old things will pass away as people reshape their weapons of destruction into harvesting tools. Indeed this was and is an alternative view of time that is worth a song and praise, one that inspires hope even when hope seems to fade away into unimaginable circumstances.

So this Advent, as our nation lives with its decisions to stand and fight a war with which our children shall live, where do we as a church find hope? This Advent, what do we as the people of God say to the nation and world around us? Like the people of ancient Israel, we as the people of God, offer an alternative vision of time. We see that beyond mere circumstance, a day is coming when God will reorder time and God’s kingdom will become reality. We too look to that day when creation is reordered to reflect God’s desire to give life to those whom God loves. Truly, then, we hope in that promise and watch for its occurring. Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. Amen.