Isaiah 2:1-5
Advent 1- Year A
In days to come .... In days to come we look for life to be different than it now is. The difference is to be better. That which is still chaotic will become established. The extraneous parts of life vying for, and thus choking out, attention will find their place within larger pictures and we will live more solidly with one another.
In days to come we expect to see a resolution to life’s perplexing questions. That which leads us to conflict will be transformed into consensus. The huge moral question of war will cease to confound us and we will learn peace rather than war. Imagine the transformation of our thinking if we learned history through accounts of peacemaking rather than a chronology of wars won or lost. Instead of “learning war” we would understand it as aberration, its incompatibility with the best of every teaching.
But we are not there yet. Wars and rumors of wars continue to abound. Such are convenient control methods to keep us fearful and unthinking. So how do we make a shift that seems so absolutely impossible?
A key phrase is for us to respond to an invitation to “walk in the light of the Lord”. Among other things, this is a call to live the future as if it were already here. Advent is not just waiting time, but practicing time. Advent: the pre-arrival of a future that we climb aboard. We have seen a better future and, rather than wait for it or expect G*D to bring it about according to some yet undisclosed plan, we begin to implement our part of it in the present. A better future is not based on some future event, but on what we currently do.
Let us walk in the light of what we posit G*D will be doing—teaching, mediating, transforming implements and attitudes of war into communal feeding and universal health care. Our Advent is proactive waiting. Our waiting is preemptive futuring that breaks free from being caught between practice and actuality, a rock and a hard place.
We know where all this is going. Let its breaking news, its Advent, begin now.
as found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Someday we will desire to come to G*D willing to learn. As for now we yet come trying to teach G*D how to be on our side while claiming that G*D has been on our side all along. It is an interesting process.
Through a learning process we come to find out that when nations are judged between that there will be some World Court decisions that will support us and some that will not. As many are arbitrated for there will be an increasing number of decisions that are not straight forward. A decision here will have ramifications there. We won't always be able to tell the consequences of a decision and so what at first seems like a justification will come back in the next case to bite us. We won't be able to get away from, "what goes around, comes around".
The result of all this arbitration may simply be to give us time to come to our senses. It may be like Matthew 5:25-26 — " . . . say you're out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don't lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you're likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won't get out without a stiff fine." [The Message]
When we finally make things right, even if it is because we give up on an eternal arbitration process, then we not only won't learn war anymore, we will begin to unlearn it — which still takes awhile since we are neither puppets of the Holy or quick studies.
Is it possible to be preemptive in giving up arbitration and simply make things right? Can this be done without being taken advantage of or is that simply part of the deal?
On this Thanksgiving Day in The United States of America — thanks for a picture into which it is worth investing our time and energy. Friends, come, let us walk this way. :)
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
A back story to our work this year is encouragement to see Peace and Security as parallel realities. Our current world tends to separate them so a focus on Peace leaves us insecure and an emphasis upon Security keeps us from hope or trust.
For Jerusalem to be Jeru-Salem these issues of Peace and Security need, as the Psalmist says, to be "bound firmly together." Isaiah is clear that the light of the Lord will lead us to finding Security only in the Peace of swords turned to plowshares and Peace only in the Security of the whole and not just our part.
Matthew has an intriguing image follow after examples of usual places of togetherness --around table and in "marriage". Togetherness is swept away when we divide ourselves up - in the midst of everyday life, one is taken way and one is left behind. We are usually told this is about a second-coming and judgment day but it makes as much sense to consider this behavior as the result of our choosing sides against one another or allowing our house to be broken into by dividing Peace and Security.
Judgment against our current divisions is already evident and we are encouraged to work against our desires for privilege and exemption from common work alongside one another.
As the rich get richer and the poor poorer, as some earn their keep through interest from money and others provide for themselves by their labor, we loose the bonds of two becoming one and find two dividing into two.
Advent places before us a choice for a different future where, instead of being separated from the world by an attempt at renewal, Noah-style, two by two, we are ready to set aside separation and quarreling to respond to a call from our descendents, Children-of-human-style, to, one by one, rebind Peace and Security.
- - -
May peace be our life
among family, friend, stranger, enemy.
May security be our heart
among our common house and common good.
May these gifts give light on our way
among ancestral dreams and coming hope.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html
The mountain of the "Lord's House" shall be established as the highest. Either things are moving to Tibet/Nepal or some cataclysmic event will uplift the land of Israel (making it unfit for both Arab and Jew?).
Of more import than such literalistic playing, nations and peoples cowed or awed by such an event of power leads to a new kind of arbitration (not between two adversaries, but between the two and a mutually perceived greater need). In this setting, swords for blood can become plows for produce. War qua war becomes no longer possible. In psycho-social terminology, what meme is large enough to capture the imagination of fearful adversaries and lead them so see both their survival and well-being depends on agreeing to a larger vision?
Do your best to state clearly and concisely where common good resides. This is the high mountain that has been cloud-covered for too long. When it comes clear we can see we have been struggling over piddly, middling matters. Advent is a time of clarifying better goals and beginning to practice moving in their direction.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaiah-21-5.html
In days to come . . . . In days to come we look for life to be different than it now is. The difference is to be better. That which is still chaotic will become established. All shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. The extraneous parts of life vying for, and thus choking out, attention will find their place within larger pictures and we will live more solidly with one another.
In days to come we expect to see a resolution to life's perplexing questions. That which leads us to conflict will be transformed into consensus. The huge moral question of war will cease to confound us and we will learn peace rather than war. Imagine the transformation of our thinking if we learned stories of peace rather than stories of war. Instead of learning war we would understand it as aberration, its incompatibility with Christian teaching.
But we are not there yet. Wars and rumors of wars continue to abound. Such are convenient control methods to keep us fearful and unthinking. So how do we make a shift that seems so absolutely impossible?
A key phrase is for us to respond to an invitation to "walk in the light of the Lord".
Among other things, this is a call to live the future as if it were already here. In some sense Advent is not waiting time, but practicing time. We have seen a better future and, rather than wait for it or expect G*D to bring it about according to some yet undisclosed plan, we begin to implement our part of it in the present. The way to a better future is not based on some future event, but on what we currently do.
Let us walk in the light of what we posit G*D will be doing – teaching, mediating, transforming implements and attitudes of war into communal feeding and universal health care. Our Advent is proactive waiting. Our waiting is preemptive futuring.
We know where all this is going. Let its breaking news, its Advent, begin now.
While Advent can be waiting, it is also the pre-arrival of the future that we can climb on board. It is this tension between waiting and not waiting, between practice and actuality, between a Coming and a Second Coming, that gives Advent its peculiar energy. To emphasize one side over the other is to deny both.
To focus on a past-future such as Christmas sentimentalizes it to the point of denying its transformative power. To focus on a future-future such as a static utopia devoid of conflict removes a Second Christmas from the realm of our participation in it right now. Our challenge is to work with a present-future birth experience that both births anew and is born anew.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
This year I am going to be looking at two recent bibles:
The Common English Study Bible
and
The New Community Bible: The International Catholic Edition (commentary reflects a Liberation Theology perspective from the Philippines and I admit a bias for a bible that emphasizes community).
Here are comments regarding justice coming from temple [CEV] and community [NCB] that you might fruitfully reflect on as you rub them together.
The same oracle (a form of prophetic speech) is also found in Micah 4:1-3, but the conclusions in Isaiah 2:5 and Micah 4:4 differ. Whereas in Micah 1:24 God’s own people were viewed as God’s enemies, here enemy nations become God’s own people, coming to the temple for divine instruction. I contrast to Micah 1:12, where the temple was trampled by unjust worshippers, now it is the source of justice. Such hopeful portrayals of Jerusalem occupy key points in Isaiah (Isa 4:2–6; 12:1–6; 33:20–24;40:1–2, 9–10; 62:1; 66:7–14, 18–23). [CEB]
It is true that the Church has many unattractive aspects: her institutions, her hierarchy; her paralyzing traditions are no more exempt from error and scandals that were those of the Jewish community. Perhaps we fail to discern the profound riches which the Church develops in sincere believers. In the world, they are those who keep the fire that Christ lit burning, and who create a network of more human relationships and more authentic life around them.
In the final analysis, this is what prepares for the coming of the “new creature.” Isaiah alone has done more for human progress than all the kings of Assyria with their armies, their victories and their laws. This leaven of authentic civilization is what, one day, will be placed “on the high mountains”, or “on a lampstand” to enlighten the world. (See Mt 4:14.) [NCB]
How is it that swords are transformed into plows?
Divine instruction?
Authentic civilization?
Would you list a third option?
Are these just spelling differences for the same dynamic?
Come, let us walk together to create light.
= = = = = = =
As encouragement to consider purchasing our own commentary, Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience, here is an excerpt:
Wars and rumors of wars continue to abound. Such are convenient control methods to keep us fearful and unthinking. So how do we make a shift that seems so absolutely impossible?
A key phrase is for us to respond to an invitation to “walk in the light of the Lord”. Among other things, this is a call to live the future as if it were already here. Advent is not just waiting time, but practicing time. Advent: the pre-arrival of a future that we climb aboard. We have seen a better future and, rather than wait for it or expect G*D to bring it about according to some yet undisclosed plan, we begin to implement our part of it in the present. A better future is not based on some future event, but on what we currently do.
Let us walk in the light of what we posit G*D will be doing—teaching, mediating, transforming implements and attitudes of war into communal feeding and universal health care. Our Advent is proactive waiting. Our waiting is preemptive futuring that breaks free from being caught between practice and actuality, a rock and a hard place.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/11/year-advent-1-needed-change-1-december_26.html