Advent I

The First Sunday of Advent 2019 – Cycle A Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

The ringing sound of hammers striking iron.  Sparks fly as ox-like men lift and let fall sledgehammers. The rhythm echoing in our ears reminding us of the “Anvil Chorus” of Verdi’s opera, “Il trovatore”.  That sound! – of metal striking metal is the first voice we hear this year announcing the Advent.  A distinct sound that I invite you to keep in your ears for the next weeks.  (YouTube, “Anvil Chorus” and listen.)  There is a rawness and strength to the sound of metal striking metal.  It is the sound of something being created.

So vivid is the image of swords and spears being beaten into farming equipment; plowshares and pruning hooks.  And so much do we want to believe this dream of God for us.  And yet God’s dream in contrast to our human realities always seems with every news cycle to evaporate like the burning off of morning fog.

“Nor shall they train for war again”. 

“Yet, O God, the hard reality is training for war is all we humans have ever done since Cain raised his hand against his brother Abel”. 

Nine nation states have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The United States and Russia together have 14,000 of the 15,000 nuclear weapons known to exist in the world and 2,000 of these are said to still be on “high alert.”   Pope Francis called on the world’s political leaders “not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security.” 

Speaking last weekend at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the only two cities in the world to be destroyed by atomic bombs, Pope Francis made an impassioned appeal for the total elimination of nuclear arms. “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral,” he taught, “just as the possession of atomic weapons is immoral.  In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance and sale of ever more destructive weapons, are an affront crying out to heaven.  We will be judged on this.”  

We are the first generations in human history who can destroy ourselves and the creation that was entrusted to us.  Will we hand on to future generations a backend, bleak waist of a planet or a planet of tumultuous, climate conditions that are incompatible with human life?  “We will be judged on this.”  

Like a great pealing of bells, the ringing sound of red hot metal being forged, shaped and fashioned by cold iron in our ears reminds us that, “the only weapon worthy of humanity and capable of ensuring lasting peace,” Francis said, is dialogue.  “[H]istory teaches us that conflicts and misunderstandings between peoples and nations can find valid solutions only through dialogue…”   

The intense listening required of dialogue is the heat and sweat of beating hatreds, old perceptions, misunderstandings, and old hurts into farming equipment; into the personal virtues that sows seeds of new growth and harvest peace.  Unlike the beating of metal, listening is a silent rhythm but a rhythm none the less.  To humbly listen to another person or a national history respecting without judgement their experiences and perceptions allows us to enter into their world and them to enter our world.  It is in that in-between threshold space that nation can encounter nation, person can encounter person, anew.

This is the hope Advent sets before us.  It is a place of dreams that are as strong as sledgehammers striking metal.  A season of stillness so that we may resonant – and be drawn to God by – the echo of metal striking metal; of something new being created within us.