Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44 (RM) or 36-44 (RCL.)

It’s the purple season for Roman Catholics, blue season for Protestants.
It’s the standing-on-tiptoes-craning your-neck season
        (and not to see whether Santa is coming…)
It’s the season of expectation.
And of dreams.
It’s Advent.

Whichever Lectionary cycle we’re in (and we’re starting Year A, with Gospel readings drawn from Matthew) the Advent readings unfold a four-week sweep of topics that lead in a logical progression:

• First Sunday: the second coming of Christ
• Second Sunday: a focus on the origins of John the Baptist
• Third Sunday: the preaching of John the Baptist as the precursor to Jesus
• Fourth Sunday: the approaching birth of Jesus in the flesh.

Now all of this is solidly embedded in time, historical time, yet invites its readers and hearers into something more and deeper. The genius of the First Reading this week from Isaiah is that it was written out of the painful experiences of a certain period in the history of Israel – but its vision draws the hearer out of ordinary time, into a time outside of time.

This is not time-travel in science fiction, but a visionary voyage of hope.

Isaiah’s vision of pilgrimage to a mountain of unity and moral wisdom, of repudiating warfare and destroying the instruments of destruction, makes sense considering that when it was written, in the mid-700’s BCE, Jerusalem was surrounded by war and the threat of violence, insurrection, shifting military alliances, and Assyria’s ambition to build a world empire by conquest.

The prophet Isaiah, apparently a well-educated son of the upper class, was familiar with wisdom traditions and impelled to proclaim a vision of justice and peace transcending national boundaries and the aggressive ambitions of kings. His introductory formula, “In days to come…” seems to promise an armistice at a date in the future, but in fact it’s no more about a time-date expiration stamp than the conventional story formula “Once upon a time” introduces a start date. We’re floating above everyday linear time here. Kairos, the time outside of chronos, is quite different from flat prosaic history.

Just as visionary is the idea of a universally applicable moral law that will secure justice for the poor and oppressed, and free those who are most vulnerable from every form of violence and destruction that can threaten them. On one level we might interpret this as a form of colonialism – why should it be the God of Israel that “imposes terms” on every other nation in the known world? – but, in the face of terror, maybe it’s a last resort. Maybe, beyond the authoritarian and nationalistic aggressions that drive the forces of one nation to march against other nations (and where are they all now?) a deeper core of moral behaviour rooted in the dignity of each person could begin to stabilize the chaos and relieve suffering.

The lovely and comforting vision that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” has inspired prophets and peace activists of later generations. The prophet Micah’s version of this same text adds the vision that all shall sit down under their own vine and fig tree, “and no one will make them afraid.” But even in the Hebrew Bible the vision can be distorted and even reversed: in Joel 3:10 “Beat your plowshares into swords” is a call to battle.

Last night I was reading through the most recent issue of the Catholic Worker. I always look for names of people I know, because once long ago I was active in Pax Christi on a local level. Some of those people I knew have answered a call to non-violent action to oppose nuclear weapons. Some make huge cauldrons of soup every day to feed whoever comes in the door, no exceptions. Some meet regularly for what the CW calls clarification of thought. Some write. Some pray.

We might not have a use for plowshares or pruning hooks.
But there are many creative, practical, and visionary ways to help make peace.

© Susan K. Roll