Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties Scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation and even the podcast. So we're glad your here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: For those of you who don't know, my name is Jason Coker. I'm one of the co lead ministers here and we are jumping into Advent. Today is the first Sunday of Advent and if you, like me, were raised in a tradition that really didn't have traditions, Advent might be new to you, or this might be old hat, but if you haven't celebrated Advent before, Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas where we lean into themes of hope and expectation and waiting for the Christ Child to come on Christmas. And so today we're going to jump into the passage that you heard a snippet of earlier, which has to do with our first Sunday of Advent theme, which is hope. What is hope and how do we lean into it in a way that empowers our faith? Our passage is From Isaiah, chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. If you don't have a Bible with you, we're going to put the words up on the screen as usual. And here is what the prophet Isaiah says in chapter two. The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the 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 people 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, and he shall judge between nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you for today, this opportunity for us to gather, to lift our voices, to sing our songs, to pray our prayers, to read these ancient words and to be inspired by them, to be challenged by them, perhaps to be disturbed or frustrated by them until we're ready to break into something new.
We ask that you would do that work in us today, that whatever dissatisfaction or disillusionment we are feeling with the world or with our faith that you would offer a new hope for us, that we'd be able to see with fresh eyes what's possible.
We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
Okay, so I just think, like, there is no better example of hope then that Christmas morning when you were like a very, very young child and you were like, old enough to understand that Christmas meant that you were gonna get presents, right? Like, our Grandson Otis is 3 years old and he's just at that place where he, like, understands gifts, he understands his birthday, he understands Christmas. It means that there is some, like, magical source of new presence for him.
And his sister doesn't know this yet.
Yeah, that's right.
Two days before Thanksgiving, our daughter Savannah gave birth to our second grandchild. This officially means we are old.
And that was Eve Magnolia. And so far, she's the exact opposite of Otis. She's very quiet.
So.
But Otis really, really understands Christmas. And I. I don't know about you, but I feel like I can connect to that sense of magic that I experienced when I was very, very young and I went to bed the night before Christmas in hopeful anticipation and excitement. And even better than that, woke up on Christmas morning and was like, filled with excitement and jumped up and ran out into the living room where our Christmas tree was, and they were like piles of presents.
That sort of naive childhood magic of Christmas, I think, perfectly encapsulate what, what we mean by hope, that anxious anticipation of what's to come.
And of course, after that, and that might happen at a different age for each of you, but after that, there comes this, like, frustrating time in childhood around Christmas, right? It's that time when, like, maybe you learn that there isn't a Santa Claus. Spoiler alerts for any of you who might not know that there isn't a magical old man who lives at the North Pole who somehow knows if you've been naughty or nice, who's going to deliver presents to you. And you deal with the frustration and the disillusionment of that and the realization, oh, my God, my parents are buying these presents.
And then as you lean into adolescence and you experience the dissatisfaction that comes from that disillusionment, you realize you have a direct connection to the people who are buying this presents and they should be getting you better presents.
And so you drop hints, you become petulant, you learn to emotionally manipulate them, to, like, get you the radio controlled, you know, race car or the bicycle, or, you know, the switch that you have been longing for.
And of Course, most of the time, you don't get the presence that you actually want. You get socks.
As a teenager, you get up on Sunday morning with that sense of, like, hopeful dread.
Hope ceases to become an entirely positive, pleasurable experience. It becomes, instead, the expectation of disappointment. And that disappointment is confirmed when you open your gift. And it is socks.
I like socks.
Tina always knows where I'm going.
Because then, of course, at some point, you become an adult and you move past the disillusionments of the realization that there is no Santa Claus.
And you discover that even though there's no Santa Claus, there is still a kind of magic in Christmas.
You discover that that magic isn't because some sort of old man who lives in the North Pole is going to give you all the things that you desire. But instead, that magic exists when two people or three people or a whole family of people actually know and see each other.
And so when they give gifts on Christmas morning, the gifts that they give are about so much more than just our superficial desires. They are instead, expressions of our genuine love for each other.
And so you get up not with the kind of naive, hopeful anticipation of a child who wants what the heart wants, but instead, you wake up with a kind of hopeful security that you live and exist with people who love you and know you and get you exactly what you want, which is socks.
Because there is, as an adult, I'm convinced that there is no joy like the joy of a good pair of socks. I mean, they don't have holes in them, and they're soft and they stay up on your legs. You know, they. They're comfortable and a little bit fashionable. Even if you really, you know, dare to hope, this is.
I want to suggest to you that this place, this adult magic, is also a kind of naivete that we leave behind, the kind of childhood naivete of a belief in, you know, again, an old man in the North Pole who's going to give you whatever you want at a moment's notice. But instead, we embrace the naivete of the idea that we might actually be in relationship with people who love us and see us and accept us and care about us enough to gift us with their love.
And that is, if you think about it, in many ways, more naive than that childhood expectation.
It's more naive to believe that other human beings might actually see you and accept you and love you and gift to you some expression of that love.
I think that that tension between sort of childhood naivete and adult naivete and the disillusionment that comes in between is part of the tension we experience when we read passages like Isaiah, chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. This is one of the most famous prophetic passages in all of Hebrew scripture.
And it has the nerve, it has the gall to end with this beautiful but frustratingly naive poem that he shall judge between the nations in that day. There is a day coming, a time coming, a hope that we can set our eyes upon where God will arbitrate between all the nations and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
That nation shall not lift up sword against nation and neither shall they war anymore. Is there a more naive hope than that?
Maybe, especially in the times that we are living in today, that feels hopelessly naive.
Isaiah was offering this passage at a time when this seemed hopelessly naive to his own people, the Jewish people.
This was a time when all of the kingdoms around Jerusalem were warring and seeking to expand. Assyria was conquering all of the nations around Jerusalem. And there in the center of the Middle east, was the kingdom with Jerusalem at the center that was small and relatively weak and clinging to an idea of God as their sort of tribal warrior God who would make sure that they succeeded and won and were victorious no matter what.
But they were surrounded increasingly by more powerful threats, political alliances and jockeying between kings and nations that Jerusalem was being left out of. And in the midst of this political turmoil, in the midst of this military threat, Jerusalem's beloved king Uzziah dies and his son Jotham takes over his son who nobody liked and nobody trusted. And in the midst of this, Isaiah offers his prophecy.
And if you consider this context, if you consider this history, it becomes an even more audacious prophecy. Because Isaiah isn't saying, don't worry, our tribal warrior God will deliver us. Don't worry, our tribal warrior God will conquer these huge, powerful nations around us. Instead, Isaiah fundamentally shifts their theology.
He says, listen, I think it's important that you know that this tribal warrior God that you have been worshiping, this tribal warrior God that you have placed in the center of your theology, isn't the real hope.
Instead, he offers them something radically different.
He offers in verse two, for example, a God who in the days to come shall be established as chief among the mountains, raised above the hills. And in verse two, it says, all the nations shall stream to that mountain. All the nations being a Hebrew word that's translated by the Septuagint, which is a later translation of Scripture, into the word ethnos, which means all the nations all ethnic groups, all people. That's why this word frequently, or this passage frequently uses the word peoples, because Isaiah is lifting up before them a God who is not the God of just one people, just one tribe, just one nation, but rather a God who is universal, a God whose authority extends to all people, nations.
And that God whose authority extends to all nations is not limited to war, to conquering with might and with force, but rather, in verse three is the God who will teach us his ways so that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction the word of the Lord. And this gets to to the heart of First Temple Judaism, the idea that at its core this God is about truth, not might.
The ancient Jewish tradition of the Torah as the expression of the Word of God as good and right and true. Instruction that they gather around, that they organize their entire culture around, is a fairly radical departure from old ideas of gods who are simply their tribal chieftains.
Isaiah shifting them away from expressions of power and military might and shifting them towards an idea of God that represents that which is good and right and true, not only for them, but for all people.
It's a God of teaching, a God of instruction, a God of wisdom.
And because this God is a God of wisdom, he will, verse four, obviously judge between those nations.
Our judge is not meant in the way that we tend to think of the word judge or judgment when we think about religion, like the way that we sort of justify ourselves by judging others to be wrong or to be bad or to be our enemies, but rather judge as in the sense of wisdom that can take tell the difference between what is right and what is wrong, how to properly allocate resources in order to make sure that nobody is too rich and nobody is too poor.
Because any God that has that kind of wisdom ought to be able to make those hard judgments.
And so as a result of that, as a result of a God who represents a kind of universal morality, a universal ethics, a universal representation of what is good and right and true, and is able and willing to teach us what is good and right and true. And because of that, out of it will flow the ability to judge between what is good and what is not, what is right and what is not, what is true and what is false.
The inevitable result of that, according to Isaiah, will be peace.
That people who are aligned with what is good and right and true would look at their swords and say, what use is this?
What we really need is plowshares.
Our job here is not to kill each other. Our Job is to grow more food.
This is Isaiah's vision of God. It's a fairly radical departure from the God that they put their hope in. It is a God who represents an entirely different morality, an entirely different sort of ethics.
And this is the God that we generally are deeply frustrated by.
This passage that is all about the wisdom of God, the goodness of God, the peace of God, the righteousness of God is often interpreted to mean that because this God is chief among all the mountains, we ought to go out and conquer on behalf of that God.
But that tendency to want to take charge, that tendency to want to conquer on behalf of this particular vision of God is to completely misunderstand this God.
It is, I would suggest to you, actually, an expression of unbelief.
That when you read in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament scriptures that this is who God is, that God is the representation of goodness and righteousness and peace, and you go and try to conquer on that God's behalf, you have fundamentally said you do not believe in a God of goodness and righteousness and peace.
This is, of course, exactly what's happening in our world today, in our nation. Today. People are saying that this is the God for whom Christianity should be conquering.
Our nation, our government, our world.
And this is a sure sign that they don't actually believe in this God.
This, then, is a vision of the future that is hopeful, that is full of possibilities that seem, again, to be a bit naive.
The question is, I think, what kind of naivete do we have?
Do we still have the kind of childish naivete that believes that whatever's going on in the world, whatever is happening in the world, that this God will eventually descend from the North Pole and bring us his gifts of peace?
Or are we in a place of disillusionment where we were raised to believe in exactly that kind of God? We were raised to wait passively as that God finally brought us the presence that we have been hoping for, only to discover that those gifts never come, only to discover that peace never comes, only to discover that in our world we spend more of our time turning plowshares into swords than swords into plowshares.
And because we look around and see so much evil and so much destruction and so much evidence that the God of the North Pole doesn't exist, that we are stuck in a place of adolescent disillusionment, And our only reaction to that, our only response to that when we're in that place of disillusionment, is to try to force God's hand to ask for more, for bigger, for better, for louder, for more powerful expressions of what we want?
Or are we ready, as the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur once described it, are we ready to step into a kind of second naivete?
Are we ready to grow past that childish naivete and also to let go of that disillusionment of the God who doesn't meet our expectations because we're still holding on to a childish understanding of him?
Are we ready to move past that disillusionment, to accept the truth that is represented in these poems and stories and symbols and myths, the truth that God is a God of goodness and righteousness and peace.
And it is our job to live into that.
It is our job to represent that vision in our world. It's our job to say, yes, this hope is naive, but it is the naivete that I believe in that I will lean into.
And even though we do not live in a world of peace, we do not live in a world where swords are turned into plowshares. That is the world that I choose.
At the end of this passage, Isaiah says, come, Come.
It's an invitation, not just a promise.
It's an invitation for us to step into this reality.
When Isaiah says, come and beckons us to step into this future, he's inviting us to create the future that we hope for here and now.
We can go to the mountain of the Lord anytime, any Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday. We can choose to come to this mountain of goodness and righteousness and peace. We can choose to let go of our own divisions and biases. We can choose to let go of a tribal God of conquest and war.
We can learn from God's teachings.
We can beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks. And in doing this, we can be the evidence that this hope is true.
We can be the evidence for the rest of the community, the rest of the world, the rest of the. Of the neighborhood that this naive hope is worth believing.
Hey, listen, I don't know how many of you were here on Saturday for our 150th anniversary carnival, but.
But. And there were a lot of really fun things that happened that day, but for Janelle and I. And this is going to sound a bit like, you know, like I'm bragging, which I am, But maybe the most gratifying.
One of the most gratifying moments of that day was when Oceanside's mayor, Esther Sanchez, got on the stage and stood behind the microphone and was about to read a proclamation which was very long and, you know, very boring and, you know, not that interesting. But before she read the proclamation, which was very kind and generous, she spoke from the heart.
And I don't know if you heard what she said if you were there, but what she said was this.
She said, this church steps up, this church walks its talk.
When there's a need in this community, I know that the Oceanside Sanctuary will show up and be there.
And I say that even though it sounds a little braggy because I'm bragging about you.
That's what this means.
Whatever is happening in our world that is making you feel like there is no hope, I want you to know that when we step up and demonstrate with our actions that we believe in this naive possibility that swords can be turned into plowshares, people see it and they think, maybe it's real, maybe it's true, maybe it's possible.
And that is a hope that I can hold onto, however naive it might seem.
Amen.
Would you pray with me? God, we thank you again for today. We thank you for these words and for how they inspire us and challenge us to truly believe that these naive ideas could be possible.
We ask by your spirit, God, that you would fill us and inspire us with this hope that we would be captured by the vision of peace and goodness not just for ourselves, but for our community, for our neighborhoods, for our co workers, for our classmates, for our families.
We pray that you would give us the naivete to continue to press into these possibilities even when all the evidence seems to point in a contrary way.
We pray that you would keep us moving towards Christmas. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, visit us at oceansidesanctuary. Org. We hope to see you again soon.
