Tick Tock-- This is Your Wakeup Call for the First Sunday in Advent

The word from the prophet Isaiah, and the word from the Psalm appointed for today, is Peace. The prophet, speaking to people who had enough of war, enough of hunger, enough of exile, shared a dream of a new Jerusalem, where God would live. People of the world would stream in through the gates of the city to sit at God’s feet and learn of God’s ways, directly from the source of all life. Nations would not go to war over boundaries or water or food or oil; instead they would come to God for binding arbitration. God would judge between nations, and there would be no arguments, no appeals, so the weapons of war could be broken down and reformed into tools for the farmer and the orchard keeper-- plows and pruning hooks, for wheat and olives, for bread and oil. The stuff of life, courtesy of the author of life.

The psalm transports the worshipper in exile to Jerusalem, not Jerusalem as it was, or is, but as it ought to be, as God wills it. My feet are standing within your walls, Jerusalem, built as a city, where, as in Isaiah, justice is established, because God is judge.

The judgment of God is that all have the things that make for life. Biblical justice is overwhelmingly not retributive justice—not eye for eye as in Leviticus—but distributive justice, as in everyone having a share of the things that make for life, as in the miracle of the manna from heaven, and the feeding of the 5,000, and the wheat that never ran out, and the oil that was never spent.

The prophets promise that Peace is coming, that God will bring it to fruition. But that is not to say that we can sit back and wait for peace to over take us. We can participate in God’s peace now, we can practice living in God’s peace while we are still waiting for the fullness of time. The apostle Paul assures us, Peace is nearer to us now than when we first began to believe. Be Ready! The gospel warns, keep awake and be ready, for the Prince of Peace is coming. How will it look if he comes and finds us sleeping? Or worse, if he comes and finds us at war? As the Vaughn brothers sang, “Tick tock, people. Time’s ticking away.”

We may never see the fullness of God’s peace in our lifetime, but we can participate in God’s peace even today. The paths of peace are before us, and the milemarkers are justice, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. Let’s be on our way.