Texts: Isaiah 2: 1-5; Matthew 24: 35-46
Well. Thanksgiving is over; there is still turkey in the fridge and Christmas is around the corner. Retail stores were ecstatic over the surge in spending on Black Friday, America’s national equivalent to binge drinking. It was even more than they had hoped for, one of the biggest binge shopping days -- ever! Spending is fueling the economy again. Oh, boy.
The Dillon County, South Carolina, Herald newspaper took an informal poll and found that almost 60% of its readership was planning to shop the Black Friday sales. How can you do without that whatever it is made in China for only $179? The hopes of retailers have been fulfilled. In spite of inflation, we still spend money on things we don’t need and will never use.
We all hope for a return to pre-pandemic, pre-Covid life of course, but at what cost? Some people citing Thoreau’s statement, “That government is best which governs least,” and pulling it out of context, would have you believe that there can be no recovery without massive deregulation of business, including consumer protection. Others just wink at outlandish sales as a cost of doing business.
But is that all we are to hope for? This is not to minimize the real cost of Covid, it should be added, by the very same group of people who now push consumerism not just as one key but the key to recovery. Just take a look at the websites and you will see that consumerism becomes the new god.
The two readings this morning may at first seem quite disparate. First, there is the lovely image given us in Isaiah: 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. Contrasted to that image is the Matthean version of Mark’s small apocalypse used in the radical right’s version of what has come to be called the rapture with all of its attendant political consequences. Both these passages were composed in a time when people felt under attack. Both were composed to offer hope to the despairing. The Isaiah to whom this passage is attributed lived and prophesized during the mid to late eighth century BCE, at least from 740 to around 698. In 740 Israel, or Samaria, as it is alternatively known, had been invaded by the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-Pileser; Judah to the south had been left alone. But twenty years later, Ahaz cast his lot with the wrong side in the struggle between Egypt and Assyria and found his kingdom threatened. His son Hezekiah stopped paying tribute to the Assyrians but, more notably, enacted reforms and restored Yahwistic worship in the temple and destroyed the altars erected to the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah. As a result Sennacherib invaded Judah and besieged Jerusalem but failed to take the city. The biblical account states that an angel of the Lord destroyed the Assyrian soldiers; Herodotus attributes the deaths to a plague of mice. It was a time of terrible turmoil, and it is worth noting that this lovely dream of peace will come when the people return to the holy mountain, that is, Jerusalem.
Just as in Mark, Matthew’s “Little Apocalypse” was composed in a time of turmoil. The insurrection against the Romans had failed; Jerusalem had fallen and the temple destroyed. The new Christian communities were irrevocably splitting off from their Jewish roots and were continuing to look to the imminent return of their Messiah. Now, if you look at the Matthew passage closely you will see that the ones swept away in the allusion to Noah are the evil ones; Noah enters the ark. The Rapture people may have read this passage erroneously; the left behinders, as we may call them, may be the ones saved rather than lost. The promise of return in most ancient texts says that not even the Son knows when all this will occur. These eight verses are interposed in a strange way, almost like a third person commentary.
Both these texts are promises of a time to come when all will be restored. Isaiah tells us it will happen when we return to the mountain of the Lord; if we extrapolate this to our own time, it tells us that our hope for peace will be fulfilled when we worship God in spirit and in truth. We can create the opportunity to turn swords into plowshares. This past week, several thousand people went to Fort Benning, Georgia, to call on Congress to shut down what was called the School of the Americas. This was the training ground for more than 60,000 officers, some of whom were egregious violators of human rights in Central and South America, including Rios Montt in Guatemala, the Atcatl Battalion in Salvador, and the founders of the La Zeta drug cartel now terrorizing northern Mexico. Two dozen people were arrested for trespass, given $75,000 bonds and promised six months in jail by the local hanging judge who has a particular history with the protestors. Congress did respond in 2000 by renaming the training center and requiring an eight hour training course in human rights. A small step but a beginning.
We are told to watch and wait for the time but not to do nothing. During this time we must work actively for peace by living as if the Kingdom of God is already here. We are told that the Kingdom is here and now. Thy kingdom come, we pray, on earth as it is in heaven. This is not a watch and wait for the Kingdom in some afterlife; this is get up off your duff and work for the Kingdom. It’s like the You Tube exhortation to teens who are bullied because of their sexual orientation. It does get better, but it gets better not just because you sit and wait but because you work at it.
So, what are we hoping for? Not just an economic recovery based on Black Friday numbers, but for a world at peace. And how do we accomplish this? By being alert, that’s what the watching is about, being alert so that it doesn’t escape us, so that the thieves of war and destruction, of distrust and disharmony do not snatch us away, so that we are able to create the Kingdom.
As we begin the Advent season, let us be alert to all the ways we can make the world a better place, open to the possibility of peace through living the Kingdom of a just and merciful God.
Let us pray: Ever surprising God who comes into our lives in unexpected ways, bring us into your life so we may give life to others. Amen.