So, what will Christmas bring? What do we expect this year on this usually gala occasion? Some of us find ourselves blessed with children or grandchildren, nephews and nieces, most of whom anticipate a Christmas cornucopia. For parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, Christmas is a matter, as one person suggests, of dashing through the dough.

I am acquainted with one set of parents who, on Christmas eve, arranged a table with cookies and milk for Santa and watched their 6 year old set a note next to this smart little repast. They later discovered on her note to Santa she had added a P.S.: “Don’t forget the batteries,” and a P.P.S. asking, “Are you friends with the Easter Bunny?”

At the other end of the spectrum, I know the father of a college student unable to get home for Christmas, receiving from his son a set of inexpensive cuff links with a card reading, “Dear Pop: this isn’t much, but it’s all you could afford.”

So Christmas will bring, probably, no small dose of debt and fruitcakes, and we will no doubt witness again the conflation of Boylston Street and Bethlehem so beautifully expressed by a second grader: “I like how the three kings brought presents and that gave Santa the big idea.”

I

But even as we yield to what promises to be a somewhat muted commercial holiday season, there exists side by side with it—indeed, there exists behind it—another hope, another promise of what Christmas might bring. It resides in those majestic words of Isaiah we read just a moment ago, words, you will recall, portraying an image of many peoples streaming to the base of God’s holy mountain. The prophet sees nations, their histories drenched in blood and violence, coming together, beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks; nations flowing together no longer targeting weapons against one another, peoples transformed from cultures of war to communities of peace: indeed, a new world order.

The prophet himself, remember, lives among a diverse and disparate people. Jews they are, but they identify with twelve different clans, revering different shrines, claiming and contesting the same turf, struggling over water, clashing over borders, sometimes side-by-side as allies, often as enemies, but always uneasy, uncertain, unstable, suspicious of one another.

On occasion, a common enemy can engender an alliance among these fragmented tribes. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon—the voracious powers of the time—sent their armies across that fertile crescent, disrupting, conquering, enslaving everyone on their road to empire; these Hebrew clans among the most vulnerable. The Old Testament narrates the sordid and bloody history of Israel and Judah, their diverse peoples crushed amid the intrigues of international politics; their existence always under the threat of the insatiable appetites of marauding despots. When Isaiah speaks of the nations and peoples beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, he does not utter a sentimental aphorism about peace; he speaks from the military graveyards of those who died in conflicts over blood and soil, and in his vision born amid the worst human beings can do to one another, he anticipates this vast constellation of people from across the world transformed from the human race to the human family—nation no longer mounting weapon against nation, no one studying war anymore, everyone, he envisions, walking in the Light of the Lord.

II

Is that glowing promise of Isaiah’s something we can hope for? Is this Advent hope of peace something Christmas might bring for us? What can we expect this Christmas? Well, living as if we were in some kind of fantasy land, we might hope the fighting in Nepal, in Ulster, in Israel, in Afghanistan might cease, but that vision is not complete. The factions might lay down their arms, but we know we live under precarious and volatile conditions. In our time, as in almost every time, we see Isaiah’s radiant vision of peoples gathered in mutuality and support, yet stumbling on nothing less than human imperfection, frailty, ethical myopia, and sin. We witness the quarreling Afghan factions in Bonn this very morning inching toward a tentative, transitional governing council while even as they negotiate, their surrogates in Afghanistan struggle for turf, battle for spoils, murder their prisoners of ethnic and national difference. The President of the United States speaks of this nation’s being engaged in a battle for civilization, for liberty and justice, for democratic values against a nihilistic evil—and even as he speaks mortar shells, bombs, special forces trained for military tactics too terrible, cunning and insidious to see the light of day do see the light of day. As a headline in one of our newspapers read, “Power isn’t easy to share with guns at the ready.” As those jealous and hostile Afghan clans try to splice a tentative armistice and confederation in Bonn this morning, one commentator says that in Jalalabad, few are optimistic peace will prevail. And one observer reports: “Among the (peace) doubters is Ali, the security chief. In an effort to persuade residents to turn in their guns, he has attached a loudspeaker atop his four-wheel drive vehicle, which he admits he stole from a UN compound. (He says he’ll eventually return it.) He drives the vehicle around the tree-lined streets broadcasting an appeal to disarm. ‘Don’t carry weapons night or day,’ Ali says into the loudspeaker. ‘If you are found with a weapon you will be punished.’ “He says he promised the governor that he would give this ‘Diplomatic approach’ a one week trial. If that doesn’t work he and his men will ‘crack some skulls.’ ‘If anyone dares cross me,’ he says tossing a hand grenade into the air with his left hand, catching it with his right, ‘This is the Afghan way. No other way will work.’”

Now why these observations? Why this commentary on the news in church? Because that Bonn effort to share power, that crazy little stolen Toyota pickup rambling around Jalalabad giving peace a chance describes a little taste of what in desperate circumstances the Advent hope signifies. Isaiah’s Advent vision, on the one hand, and the bloody, violent eruptions of our day bespeak a tragic and grievous disparity. Indeed, Isaiah’s vision laid over the terror-stricken, ambulance-filled, suicide-bombed streets of Jerusalem and Haifa this morning; Isaiah’s vision set against 500, 5,000, 15,000 pound explosives blowing Kandahar to smithereens, leaving villages a shambles, innocent Afghans dead in the streets. My soul! What are we doing here in church? With this violent disparity confronting us, is our faith an illusion, our Advent hope finally a fraud? Do we Christians really deal with the world as it is? Is our hope just wishful thinking?

Oh friends, on this first Sunday in Advent, with the demons of war let loose, how grateful I am that we gather around this Holy Table. Here, in Advent, at this table, amid war and rumors of war we are uniquely set symbolically amid the tangles of interest and empire brutalizing not only the nations and people of Isaiah’s time, but the peoples and nations, the creeds and clans brutalizing and devastating one another in our own era. This table, with its elements of bread and wine, under this Cross, demonstrates for all time, on the one hand, how self-interest and injustice can brutalize the world stretching across the centuries, from Isaiah’s to George W. Bush’s. This Cross, this table, show us brilliantly how national and religious interests frequently conspire to wreak havoc in our world. The death of Jesus—reeking with conspiracy and betrayal, religious and civil corruption—the death of Jesus is cut from cloth no different from the world headlines covering our front pages this morning. You see, this table, metaphorically bearing a broken body and shed blood, and this cross demonstrate, first of all, bad news about human life. They show us life as pathos, the human condition as tragedy. We see here a world of bitter and tragic irony: A world where peace, if you will, is forged by a hand grenade flipped from left hand to right and the threat of cracked skulls, a world where justice in our world is sought through 15,000 pound bombs, streets littered with spilled blood and broken bodies.

Nevertheless—and what a magnificent “nevertheless” it is—nevertheless we see here also our only hope in our tragic world. For at the Cross and in this bread and wine—this shed blood and broken body—we see not only the harsh and cynical realities of our common life, we encounter as well the Presence of One who comes among us willing to undergo the tragic circumstances you and I live with.

Now hear this: our God is not one who sits up in the sky somewhere unaffected, out of reach of our bombs and blood, our terror and cynicism. Our God submits to the sinful circumstances of our world where the so-called “peace” is maintained by appeals to justice and democratic values, backed up by gunships, mortar fire, and land mines. And in that very submission our God shows us the way to peace literally—literally—beyond our understanding. It is the peace promised by Advent: it is the peace Christmas promises, the peace of this table and Christ’s Cross, where revenge dissolves in mutuality; where fear crumbles in solidarity; where the slaughter of the peace-maker and his embrace of even those who slaughter him—ostensibly to keep the peace—yes, where his way makes possible the impossible hope of beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, or should we say B-52s into baby food, howitzers into housing, rockets into reading rooms.

So, my friends, I invite you to his Holy Table on this first Sunday in Advent. Here we encounter and participate in the deepest mystery of our faith: our sharing life with others, where bodies are broken and blood spilled, in order, as we say, to battle evil and to cobble together some sort of public order and peace in our tragic world. But Nevertheless—praise be to God—gathering here this morning, we stand grateful for, indeed we share, and we commit ourselves to the way of the Cross, the way of this table. For here, in truth, we discover the true way of peace Christmas brings.

SCRIPTURE READING
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!