Isaiah 2:1-5

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
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.

O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

A man observed a woman in the grocery store with a three-year-old girl in her basket. As they passed the cookie section, the child asked for cookies and her mother told her “no.” The little girl immediately began to whine and fuss, and the mother said quietly, “Now Ellen, we just have half of the aisles left to go through; don’t be upset. It won’t be long.”

He passed the Mother again in the candy aisle. Of course, the little girl began to shout for candy. When she was told she couldn’t have any, she began to cry. The mother said, “There, there, Ellen, don’t cry. Only two more aisles to go, and then we’ll be checking out.”

The man again happened to be behind the pair at the check-out, where the little girl immediately began to clamor for gum and burst into a terrible tantrum upon discovering there would be no gum purchased today. The mother patiently said, “Ellen, we’ll be through this check out stand in five minutes, and then you can go home and have a nice nap.”

The man followed them out to the parking lot and stopped the woman to compliment her. “I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Ellen…”The mother broke in, “My little girl’s name is Tammy… I’m Ellen.”

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Patience. It has been said that patience is that quality that you admire in the car behind you but can’t stand in the driving in front of you. Many of us learn from our children just how much patience we have.

I wonder how many of us have struggled with patience. For the moment we currently live in is one that seems not to value patience all that much. We don’t like to be told to wait.

Perhaps that is why the Christmas decorations start coming out the day after Halloween. Or why the Black Friday Sales start on Thanksgiving evening these days. We don’t like to wait. And most of the time we don’t have to. So we don’t.

But here in this church, we are invited to pause. Advent season asks of us that we resist the temptation to live as though it is Christmas, and instead to take the time to reflect and remember why Christmas matters at all. To marinate in the question:

What would it mean for the Kingdom of God to be born in this world today?

It certainly meant something to the people to whom our Scripture was first written. It is easy to forget, but these words were proclaimed to a people living in deeply uncertain times. The people in Isaiah faced a siege by foreign powers, so they were locked up in their walled city with no food and nobody to bail them out, and they found themselves asking hard questions about who they were as a people of God. And the prophet Isaiah is unsparing—in the verses before today’s lesson, he rips them apart. You have forgotten what really matters, he tells them. You have forgotten justice, kindness, mercy, and peace. You have been impatient in seeking your own well being, and in doing so have neglected the vulnerable, the very people God has commanded you to protect. The mountain of the Lord is coming, he says. But right now, we are in the deep, dark valley.

The people to whom Paul wrote were also facing uncertainty. Remember, Jesus was born into a world where the Jewish people were the vulnerable. And remember, Christ gathered to himself marginalized people—poor, sick, widowed, orphaned, cast out—and promised them a place in God’s Kingdom. In a world where they had no place, no power, no community, he promised them a seat at the table. Christ assured them he was coming back soon, told them to wait and keep watch, but it had been a while since those words were first spoken. The ears who heard them had grown old while waiting, and those that came after that had never laid eyes on Jesus, never heard for themselves, grew impatient. And so the hope that he had kindled in these people was threatened. Was Christ worth waiting for? Would the Kingdom of God ever come?

Time and time again, the people of God have found themselves in moments such as these. Seasons when the future seemed uncertain, when they feared threats from outside their borders, or from within. Seasons when even the most patient among them began to lose heart in the face of injustice. Seasons when the drumbeats of war seemed to drown out God’s promise of peace. Seasons when it became easy to let their fear rather than their hope drive them forward.

A colleague of mine reflected recently that when we live our lives responding only to our fears, we often end up reversing the prophecy of Isaiah. We take our plowshares and turn them into swords, and beat our pruning hooks into spears. We take those things that are meant to build up the body of Christ—words, for example—and in our fear use them as weapons that divide the body of Christ to the point of breaking.

But in Advent we are invited to set down our swords. We are called to remember the Holy One, whose Word became flesh and dwelled amongst us as a healing balm and a Prince of Peace. We are called to remember a God who asks us to let go of our weapons so that we may clasp our hands with our neighbor. We are called to remember that some things, even when we cannot see clearly yet, are worth waiting for. Because God is playing the long game.

And because God is playing the long game, we are called to resist the temptation of instant gratification. We are called instead to be a people of patience. For one thing we learn in Scripture is that God works through people, and people take time. Prophets like Isaiah don’t happen overnight. Communities don’t form in an instant. Wounds need time to heal. Babies must be carried in the womb long before they can be born. And we are always being born, always in the process of healing.

As we wait and watch for signs of Christ’s coming today, what might it mean to live into patience? To resist the temptation to rush through things, and instead experience this season as valuable in its own right? To remember that some things need time and patience—wine, bread, and babies do not happen in an instant. And Christ, who came to us as a fragile baby, who offered his body as bread and his blood as wine, comes to us still every moment that we choose hope over fear, light over darkness, joy over despair.

Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. -Romans 13:12-14