After we completed looking at the fruit of the Spirit last week, someone astutely said to me that they were looking at the nine fruit and thinking then about the themes of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy and love. Three of those are fruit, but then they said that when we lose the others, or when we are separated from the Spirit so they aren’t working, then that’s where hope comes in. that’s where we need gone. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, we don’t hope for what we see, we hope for what we don’t see, and so it is in this season of Advent as we heard in the candle lighting liturgy, Advent is a time of preparation. In some ways it’s like a little Lent, the season to prepare for the coming of Easter, only now we are preparing for the birth of Christ. An even that has already happened, and yet we also await the coming again of Christ, because the promises have not yet been completed. It’s an already and not quite yet event, and so we prepare. And as our act of preparation we are going to be thinking about and looking at gifts that God has given to us through Christ, which all, in many ways relate to that theme of hope, and we begin today with the gift of reconciliation.
That’s a theme that’s really important, especially in the New Testament, but it’s not one that we spend a lot of time thinking about or talking about. And yet it’s right there in one of the most famous pieces of scripture, John 3:16, in which we are told that Christ came not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. The whole world, not just parts of it, would be reconciled, brought back into proper relationship with God, trough Christ. And those who believe, will move out of the darkness and into the light of Christ. And that promise of reconciliation is already seen in the passage we heard from Isaiah, from whom most of our scripture readings are going to come from this Advent. Isaiah gives this vision of all the nations walking in the light of God, learning from God and following God’s paths, which leads to them turning their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Or we should hear that as turning their tools of war, into tools for feeding people. And then it continues that nation shall not raise up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war any more. That’s the image that tends to be focused on because of our yearning for such a thing to happen, not having war anymore seems like a good thing, and we also have the same imagery given to us by the prophet Micah. And in hearing that we can definitely think that not engaging in war, would be an indication of reconciliation happening between nations, but there are some key things that lead to that reconciliation that we need to pay attention to, because it doesn’t happen by itself.
