Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:37-44
In the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York is a striking bronze sculpture. It depicts a well built man holding a hammer aloft in one hand and a sword in the other, which he is making into a ploughshare, digging up the soil beneath him. Created by the Russian artist Evgeny Vuchetich, it was gifted by the Soviet Union to the UN in 1959, and spoke to that organisation’s founding hope that humankind would find an end to war and convert the means of destruction into creative tools for the benefit of mankind.
Looking at that sculpture gives rise to a number of feelings today. First, a sense of irony that a communist and atheistic state should choose a biblical image from the prophet Isaiah to make its point. But second, and more importantly, feelings of disappointment that the world has not moved on as hoped. Isaiah’s vision is still not a reality. In Ukraine, in Sudan, in the Middle East, nation is still lifting up sword against nation, and the ways of war are being learned afresh by a new generation.
If it seemed for a while at the end of the 1990s (and at other points since the eighteenth century) that the world is slowly getting better, that view is now much harder to entertain. What we could call the post-Enlightenment improvement narrative – which fired those founders of the present United States some 250 years ago – is now barely credible. And whatever we think and feel about AI, it is difficult to see it bringing eternal peace.
So what are we meant to do with this picture from the prophet Isaiah? Is it a picture of an ideal never to be realised? The answers to these questions take us to the waiting that is at the heart of this Advent season.
You see, I think Advent is about two types of waiting, related to the two advents of Jesus.
The first type of waiting is a countdown to a celebration, a waiting that can be marked in Sundays observed and windows opened in an Advent calendar. We are waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us in the world and God coming to us to defeat sin and death and bring life in all its fullness. And as we wait we grow in anticipation, until with the angels we will burst into songs of praise that the long-awaited Messiah is born.
Advent reminds us that the first coming of Jesus was much hoped for and much rejoiced over. For Isaiah it lay 700 years in the future. Just because it now lies 2000 years in the past does not mean we should lose our sense of wonder. Yes, it is a thing of tradition, but Christmas should never be routine. Advent invites us to wait to celebrate something truly remarkable. Yes in the weeks to come we will sing our carols and do fun things, but let’s make sure we keep something back for the feast of Christmas itself. Because it is the waiting that makes it really special.
The second type of waiting is explored more in today’s gospel reading. It is a waiting not to celebrate something which happened in the past but an event still in the future. The coming of the Son of Man, for that is the event in question, will be a decisive moment in the history of the world. It will be a time of judgement, just as the flood was in the time of Noah, and it will be a time when Christ the King’s kingdom will be fully realised.
It is easy to get bogged down in the detail in both this passage and elsewhere in Matthew 24, but the main point is this. When Christ comes again, he will do something that humans cannot do. Just as through his first coming Christ defeated sin and death, so in his second coming Christ will usher in a kingdom of justice, mercy and peace, where nation will not lift up sword against nation and war will not be learned any more.
It is easy to have a view of the world that it is gradually going to get better and better and whenever we die we will look down from a celestial viewing platform as humans beings sort themselves after all.
Advent invites us to look at things very differently. Yes, we are called to live out God’s ways of justice and righteousness in the world. Yes we are called to build God’s kingdom. But the decisive act is not in our hands. The decisive act will be the second coming of Jesus Christ. That is what we are waiting for.
Only it is a waiting that is hard because we don’t know when it is going to happen. Indeed, we are told specifically in this passage that we are not going to know. So don’t bother trying.
So, how are we to wait?
Two thoughts for us as we start Advent together.
First, we are called to wait expectantly. ‘Keep awake’, Jesus says. The Lord is coming. We read it in our Bibles and we say it in our creeds. He will come again. That is our confidence. This isn’t hope like I hope England will one day win the Ashes down under. This is hope that Christ promised. We may ourselves be in glory when it happens, but it will happen. In a world where there are wars and rumours of wars, not to mention economic uncertainty, Advent invites us to lift our eyes to God’s future and not simply our own.
Second, we are called to wait faithfully. ‘Be ready’, Jesus says. Isaiah moves on from depicting the future kingdom of God to a very practical instruction to his listeners ‘O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!’ Being ready isn’t about doing nothing and being on high alert. Being ready is walking every day in the way of Jesus Christ. It is about serving God and our neighbour, because that is what Christ calls us to do.
There is so much in this world that is both dark and beyond our control, but we are called not to get distracted by the darkness but to walk in the light of Christ.
That is why Advent is, like Lent, a time of penitence and preparation. It may sit a little uneasily with Christmas celebrations all around us, but the second coming of Christ invites us to reflect carefully on own walk with the Lord, on what it means to look to him in good times and bad, for guidance, for strength and for hope.
Back to our sculpture of swords into ploughshares. To say that the United Nations will not be the means through which Isaiah’s vision of a peaceful kingdom will be finally achieved is not defeatist. Indeed, we work and pray for peace, in our communities, in our nation and in our world. But our hope is not in what human beings on their own can achieve. Our hope is in the decisive intervention of God, an intervention which took place that first Christmas in Bethlehem and which will take place when Christ comes again. Advent is about celebrating one intervention and waiting for the other. We are called to wait expectantly, trusting in the words of Christ himself, and we are called to wait faithfully, walking each and every day in the light of the Lord. As we come around the Lord’s table today, we are invited both to look back with thanks for Christ’s first coming which took him from the cradle to the cross and to look forward with hope to a heavenly banquet in a kingdom of justice, mercy and peace. As we do so may we be fed by the body and blood of Christ to live faithfully in the present. Amen.