Advent: ploughshares and pruning hooks

Advent
Ploughshares and Pruning Hooks

There can be little doubt early Christians lived in expectation of the immediate return of Christ to bring an end to the horrors they experienced through persecution in the first and second centuries.  There is also little doubt this expectation is reflected in New Testament writings including the Gospel for this Advent Sunday: Matthew 26: 34 – 36.  Two millennia later, how do we honestly read these texts and make them part of our lives?

Did they misunderstand?  Or perhaps more to the point, were they wrong to frame Jesus’ teaching in light of their contemporary experience?

If we err, it is usually because circumstance and influences have led us to focus on one aspect of a much larger truth or reality.  Let me illustrate from the last verse of Matthew’s gospel: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”. Why are we expecting the return of one who has not left? The consequence of Jesus’ death and resurrection is his constant presence, the promise that his presence ensures that nothing, not even death itself can separate those who trust in his grace from the renewing love of God.  But do we live as if we believe it?  In like manner, John’s Gospel begins with the proclamation that in Christ a light has come into the world that darkness can never extinguish.

So, in what sense is the one who is eternally present to ‘come again’?

They were not wrong, and we are not wrong, to long for the ultimate dispelling of all darkness. But we are wrong to forget that in the present, not only is God present but, extraordinarily, “We are the body of Christ”, we are agents of God’s renewing grace in the world. What effort has the Christian community made over 2000 years to turn swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, as tantalisingly suggested by Isaiah? 

There have been few more contemporary saintly bishops in the Anglican communion than Bishop Dinis Sengulane of Mozambique, who at his retirement in 2014 was the longest serving bishop in the Anglican Communion. He contributed to the ending of the country’s civil war by proposing not just disarmament but the exchange of weapons for domestic implements, especially for farming.  Hundreds of thousands of weapons were exchanged. For this ‘ploughshares initiative’, he was awarded a peace prize. From there he proceeded to develop a programme to eliminate malaria as the country’s most serious health scourge.

On a much more ambitious scale, sponsored by G20 nations, a similar ploughshares programme could be effective in Sudan, Gaza, Syria etc. Ending conflict is only one small part of the struggle, enabling freedom through economic, health, and educational programmes is quite another.
 
As we look at, and are refreshed, by the natural order, we cannot miss truth that renewal is constantly on display.  Where we live on the NSW south coast, there had been very little rain for three months. The last couple of weeks have brought showers, the immediate transformation is stunning.  Renewal can happen in seconds, and it can take millennia, but the biblical promise is that nothing that exists, no person, no generation, exists outside the possibility of renewal, of redemption. The ‘I am’ Moses experienced in the burning bush and that we have encountered in the birth of Jesus, is the eternal presence of the one who renews.

It makes absolutely no sense to expect the ‘return of Christ’, if his presence is not encountered now.  In him the past and the future intersect with the present.  This leads us to the other readings for today.
Isaiah 2:1–4, known as the ploughshares passage, questions how people celebrate God's presence.

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 nations shall stream to it.

Modern day Israel and its supporters amongst Christian Zionists celebrate Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of Jewish people.   This is not how Isaiah saw it.  His vision is of a sacred place, hosted by Israel, celebrating the renewing and healing presence of God for all the peoples of the world.

Jerusalem’s Eastern Gate, also known as the Golden Gate, overlooking the Kidron Valley, was closed in the 16th century and remains closed. For Christians, it is the gate Jesus used to enter Jerusalem. It remains closed, symbolically awaiting the return/arrival of the messiah. There is a growing tendency for Jews and Christians alike to live inside the false security of a closed gate.  Does a Christian congregation exist for the spiritual growth in piety of its members, or does it exist as a powerhouse of transformation in the world?

Herein lies a dilemma. If our focus is upon the one we await, rather than upon the one who is present, faith is esoteric with little relevance to contemporary living. If our focus is on the one who is present, the one who proclaimed the reign of God’s love, then our living will reflect such presence.
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In 2025 the three kings would not be able to travel safely through what are now Middle Eastern countries, guided by a star or not!  The Shepherds would not be grazing their sheep on the fields outside Bethlehem; they are flood lit with search lights and barriers prevent free movement. The world of today longs to celebrate the one who has been born amongst us; the one who brings peace to and through those who walk as he walked – the people of the Way.