November 28, 2004

“In the Meantime:
Between the First and Second Comings”

Isaiah 2:1-5

How he knew every day that it was time, still baffles me. Can a two year old have an internal clock? Certainly he knew instinctively when it is time to eat, and I think his body told him that it was time to nap, but how did he know it was time for Sesame Street? But every single day, he knew. “Sessy Steet; Sessy Steet.” And he was right. The songs were what got me. Here, years later, I know every word to “Elmo’s Song.” I suspect that they write these children’s songs intentionally so that they sound like broken records in our heads! Just ask any parent of a child who watched Barney, and they will tell of their experiences of not being able to fall asleep because “I love you; you love me; we’re a happy family” played over and over and over in their minds. It has been years now since my son watched Sesame Street, but the songs still get me sometimes.

How about this one? “One of these things is not like the other; one of these things just doesn’t belong.” 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. Well, that’s the song we should be playing as we read the early chapters of Isaiah.

We come to the passage before us in chapter two and find it floating almost, in mid-air. 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 tenor 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. Blood becomes bread.

But what is this day? Certainly, the restoration of Judah after various captivities. Jerusalem will rise again. God will prove himself faithful. God will bring new freedom. God will restore the broken people, and renew their sense of unity and purpose. Certainly, the day the author envisions is coming for the people of Judah. Isaiah assures them.

And yet, we look beyond this restoration, to one of a new kind, an even better kind. A new thing happens, and new Day dawns in the incarnation of Jesus, who is the Christ. God remains faithful to his people, but the means of salvation shift from an emulated memory of the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to faith in a person, Jesus, who is able to forgive sins, and to transform the heart from within. It is a new type of reconciliation with God, which manifests itself in reconciliation with others. Jesus brings a new type of being to us. We can be new creations. Advent beckons us to shout from the rooftops that God has done a new thing. There is a new covenant. New life. New freedom. New unity. New purpose. It is more than appropriate to see the hope of which the author speaks of in Isaiah as fulfilled in the incarnation, ministry, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the suffering servant who takes on our sins. He is the second Adam who forms us into new creations.

And yet, shouting from the rooftops does not take us out of the land of the living. We live life, and life is not perfect. We are redeemed, but the world remains fallen. And its fallenness comes to fruition in agony at times, hostility and strife, pain and bloodshed. The Incarnation did not bring this to an end. It was a new beginning, in which we participate. But the complete fulfillment of the promises of Isaiah 2 are still to come.

We live with the tension of what some call, “the already, but not yet.” We have indeed experienced the salvation of God in Christ as we grow in faith, trust, holiness and love. We want to say, rightly, that full salvation is very much a present possibility and reality. And yet, we still wait. We wait for something else, something more. We anticipate a radical newness not yet grasped. As Christians, we hope for something more.

And so, we believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is the means by which an even more pervasive newness will appear. And Isaiah gives us a glimpse into this future reality. There will be overarching peace and unity that affects all people. The Lord will establish a “holy temple” where God will be worshipped by “all nations.” God will be the one to settle any disputes among various peoples. “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore,” (vs. 4).

This is quite a scene. Will it really take place? Dare we hope? We cry, yes!
And yet, what do we do in the meantime? That is the relevant question. A question presented to us in the here and now, more than memory and more than a dream; it confronts us, with intensity. How then should we live, in the meantime, in the in between time of the first and second advents of Jesus?

There are things to be done. And I would suggest that we take the admonishment that Jesus has said to us seriously. Relevant to our words from Isaiah, I dare say that we must look ourselves straight in the eye, as individuals and as the Church, and ask whether we are, in any way, fulfilling God’s expectation that God’s people be peacemakers. (See Matthew 5:9). What do we do in the meantime? What do we do in the in between time?

Do we simply resign ourselves to the warring condition of the world, and wait for God to break in one day and end the bloodshed? Do we disengage from the world, believing that we can make no difference? Do we see our here and now situation only as doom and gloom, from which there is no escape, certainly no potential for real change? Do we isolate, and wait for God to take us out of here? We wait for a new day, but do we “sit” and wait? Or do we wait with hope, a hope that brings a bit of that new future into our here and now?

What is our responsibility as persons who have already, but not yet participated in God’s Kingdom of peace and unity? The question is not, what is easier. The question is, what is our responsibility? The history of the Holiness Movement evidences a very different approach than disengagement. Holiness folk in the 19th and early 20th centuries were right in the middle of causes for the poor, the slaves, the immigrants, the women, and anyone oppressed. They were thoroughly optimistic about the potential for change. And quite convinced that they were the means by which this change would happen. God intended them to change the world.

Today, what do we believe today? Of what are we convinced? Do we carry swords, or plowshares? Spears or pruning hooks? How does the world see us? As lovers or haters? As peacemakers or “warriors for God”?

There are many, many Christians who have taken the road of disengagement, that leads to a bunkering down, walling in, protecting what we have. It is certainly the easier thing to do. For hope, true hope is hard. When it comes to living in the meantime in the between time, let us be, “not like the others.” May we dare to be different in how we live for others, strive for real change, and hope in the completion of what God has started in us.