Isaiah Hath Foretold It

Isaiah 2:1-5

November 29, 1998

James R. Gorman

Every year in the Advent season, we meet a strange character that should be familiar to us, but is not, really. His name is Isaiah, a prophet who lived some 700 years before Jesus Christ. Isaiah is the most popular of all the prophets in the eyes of the New Testament authors. He is quoted more often than any other prophet, some 590 references for those of are counting (and I know that many of you are!).

An indication of the special role that Isaiah's prophecies play in the Christmas story and therefore the season of Advent is the sizeable contribution that Isaiah made to Handel's Messiah. Of the 18 verses from the prophets in Handel's Oratorio, 13 verses come from Isaiah, 3 from Malachi and 2 from Zechariah. But more than mere numbers, this particular prophet is of special interest to those whose ears are attuned to the surprising magic of the Christmas story; to the surprising twists and turns that this most moving of all stories takes

The words most commonly used by this prophet are these, "And it shall come to pass. . ." and so in this morning's lesson, these words, "And it shall come to pass that God shall judge between nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore."

I say that these are surprising words, for it is important to remember the nature of the land in which Isaiah was preaching. The proclamation about peace was as nutty an idea then as it would be today in the Middle-East -- and it would be pretty nutty there today. Can you imagine, for example, someone today standing in the Gaza Strip and proclaiming as he faced Israel that, "It shall come to pass, that nations shall not lift up tow missiles against nations, they shall beat their armored tanks into harvesting combines and their recoilless rifles into fire hoses. And they shall study war no more."

Imagine that.

This ancient land 150 miles long and no more than 50 miles wide at its broadest point, has been caught in the cross hairs of the weapons of war for centuries. This tiny land is familiar with all the forms of human aggression from the most primitive to the most sophisticated weapons. And it is in this land that the prophet dares to carry out his career of surprising announcements and dreams of days in which weapons of war would become tools to till the land and feed the people.

And the prophet says, with the full authority of one who is sure of his message, "And it shall come to pass." And he goes from town to town, announcing the coming of the day of the Lord, a day of peace,

And it shall come to pass.

"There will come a day of peace. A day in which all the makers and sellers of weapons of war will take a rest from all of that." And it shall come to pass.

In the creation story, there is no record of any thing being created Holy. Not trees, not animals, not mountains or valleys. . . no thing is endowed with the qualities of holiness, not even human beings, not Adam not Eve. The only entity created holy was a day. The last day, the seventh day, the day of rest. This is all we are commanded to remember and keep holy. The day of which Isaiah speaks, the day in which it shall come to pass, is a day in which all nations finally rest from all the pretensions and preparations of war. That day on which war takes a Sabbath is truly a holy day.

Dreamers and prophets are people who take the seventh day of creation seriously. They keep the day holy by resting and dreaming and believing for a moment that a day will come when there will be a world without war.

And it shall come to pass.

It is those who refuse to rest, who refuse to dream dreams, who stand in the way of the coming of that holy day of peace; the day of broken swords and spears and SS 20s and Pershing II missiles and 9mm Glock handguns, or who refuse to dream of a day in which war is no longer studied are like T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Pufrock who measure out his life in coffee spoons and wonders at every turn:

Do I dare

disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

We are all of us, locked into minutes and hours and days and months and years with so many things to do that we may miss the right time. The Word, the nourishing word of God, the very presence of the one the Evangelist, John,, call the Word made Flesh (which means "Immanuel") cannot enter the busy life, the noisy life. Only those lives which have empty spaces and wasted hours, can be truly open to the strange movements of this unexpected God and God's unexpected ways.

Sometimes we slow down voluntarily to hear the unexpected word of God. Sometimes we are slowed down involuntarily. Various kinds of illnesses and diseases have a way of slowing down the too busy soul. The day of the Lord and its attendant time of peace may well come against our will and as an utter surprise.

The message of Isaiah is that a day is coming and it may well be against our will, in which Sabbath from the anxious business of War-studying and missile-making will be observed or else. A holy day in which war will no longer be studied, in which swords will become plowshare and spears become pruning hooks and Isaiah would dream this dream in the most war torn land on earth, then and now.

This Isaiah with all the temerity a prophet can muster makes the dreams of the young and the old the very stuff of divine prophecy and so taken are we by his language and the eloquence of his ancient voice, that we echo his words in our telling of this Christmas story. And all the shocking and unexpected nuances simply prove the point, that we do not know the hour or the day, for it may come like a thief in the night.

For those of us who measure out our lives in coffee spoons, who do not dare to disturb the universe and the way it is put together, we must quietly take heart from the brashness of Isaiah's prophecy read this morning. And then be appreciative of the claim of Paul's letter to the Church at Rome that we awaken from our dogmatic slumber in which we move on, unquestioning the fundamental assertions of our culture. It is time to listen, matching our boldness to Isaiah's. It is a time to get prepared for the unexpected, for we do not know the hour or the day.

Isaiah, crazy Isaiah, preaching where he ought not be, preaches a message that completely ruins the party. In a land torn by the mechanics of war and rumors of war, he preaches the Gospel of Peace, and then makes an even more astounding claim. That this era of peace shall be ushered in by a child, born of a virgin, who shall be whipped and scorned for our sins. He shall open the eyes of the blind and make the deaf to hear, the poor shall have good news preached to them and we . . . all of us. . . shall study war no more. Isaiah said all of that! No wonder our tradition love this prophet most of all.