Advent Week One: Seeing is Believing

Good Morning.  Happy New Year to you!  I know you think I’m a month early, but I simply wish to remind you that in the church year, today is Day 1.  This is the first Sunday of Advent.  It probably sounds irrelevant or out of touch for me to remind you about the church year, but consider this.  Perhaps you are feeling a need for the kind of fresh start that comes with a new year; or perhaps you have found yourself dismayed at the commercialization of Christmas and want to know what can be done to restore its true meaning.  If either of those ideas resonates with you, the wisdom of Advent is that we don’t have to wait for Christmas Day.

Starting today, we can receive the gift of a fresh start; starting today, we are invited to restore Christ to the center of our lives.  Advent is our season of preparation.  And some time of preparation makes sense if you wish to see lasting change in your spiritual life—the kind of resolutions that might actually stick.  Instead of springing the birth of Jesus and the coming of the new year upon you a month from now, the church gives us a whole month of preparation to carefully and prayerfully consider what we will do.  Let’s get started.

During Advent, we’re used to hearing a familiar series of readings:  John the Baptist, the Prophet Isaiah, Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth; and I will draw upon those stories over the next four weeks.  But in addition, and with a nudge from my friend and Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, I’m going to introduce you to a new character whose story is filled with the spirit of Advent—the Prophet Elisha.  Through telling his story, we’ll breathe some new life into the Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love that we speak of every year

So who is Elisha anyway?  You might be familiar with the idea that a large part of the Old Testament, is devoted to the age of the prophets and kings.  First there are the early days of Patriarchs and Matriarchs and Moses and the Law…  Then come the prophets and kings; the people of Israel have established a somewhat stable monarchy, first in Judah and later in Samaria.  During this time, as one would expect, there are good kings as well as bad ones; and the role of the Prophets is that through them, God speaks to the kings about how they are doing.  You’ve likely heard of some of the major prophets who serve God in this way and have books named after them:  Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  There are many others, and in the books we know as Samuel and Kings the prophets are, first Samuel and Nathan, and then later Elijah, followed by his student, Elisha.  All of these prophets, and certainly not least of all Elisha, are about the business of helping kings to see the world the way God sees it.  When we read about them, we try to do the same thing—we practice seeing the world the way God sees it.  This is what Advent is—a season of reminding ourselves to see the world the way God sees it.

Here’s today’s story about Elisha.  The Arameans and the Israelites have been battling back and forth—they are neighbors in the Holy Land.  The King of Aram has been sending out troops in hopes of surprising the Israelites, but someone keeps tipping them off, so that when they arrive for the ambush, there’s nobody there.  Elisha is the culprit, he’s acting as a sort of spy for the Israelites, and when the King of Aram figures this out, he sends his troops after Elisha.  Here’s where the story gets fun.  There are some miraculous elements to how this story unfolds, and if you can suspend your disbelief and roll with the miracles, there’s a beautiful message hidden in this story.

Elisha isn’t scared of the Arameans; his faith in God is so strong that even in the face of threats to his life, he doesn’t lose his cool.  When the army shows up at Elisha’s front door, Elisha’s servant—you can think of this as his student or mentee—his servant goes to look out the window and comes back scared to death—there’s an army out there!  But Elisha’s got a plan.  Elisha wants for his servant to have a spiritual awakening; he wants him to see the world through the fearless eyes of faith—the way Elisha can see it. So Elisha prays over him, and then sends him back to the window, and when he looks outside, the whole town is surrounded my mountainsides full of his own friendly army, illuminated with horses and chariots of fire and outnumbering the Arameans at the door.  With his confidence fully restored, he steps outside and says to the general, completely convincingly, “Elisha is not here—but I can take you to him.”  And he leads the army out of the town and right into his own territory, where the Arameans are outnumbered for real.  They’ve been tricked.

Listen carefully—this is the important part.  Now that Elisha and his allies have the upper hand, now is when the real dramatic twist of the story takes place.  Elisha’s king wishes to take this opportunity to defeat the Arameans for good, but Elisha knows this is not God’s way, so he tells the king no.  Instead, he feeds the army of his adversary, he gives them something to drink and a chance to rest, and then he sends them home. And this act of kindness brings the warring of these two peoples to an end.

I wonder if you can think of places where this kind of mercy and hope is needed today—where someone’s grace and generosity could change a bleak world for the better.  There is the obvious example of the widening Middle East conflict, with innocent people on so many sides crying out to their leaders for mercy.

Are there leaders who wish to show mercy?  It’s hard to say.  I did notice this, that on Friday when Islamic rebels entered Syria, their general issued an edict:  he instructed his Sunni army not to victimize Shittes, or other religious minorities, for as he said, Aleppo has always been—and remains—a meeting place of civilizations and cultures, with a long history of religious diversity.”  (quoted by Malsin, in Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2024)  I know nothing of this man and his army other than that it sounds like the kind of edict we need more of.

Your thoughts may be closer to other conflicts, in our own land, wondering when our political parties remember how to work together for the common good.  Sometimes our longing for peace and mercy begins right in our own homes.  This idea may be a week late, but what if a member of your family, someone usually combative and opinionated, what if they suddenly showed up curious about what other people at the table think.  Has that person ever been you, and what if you could be the peacemaker?

Do these examples, large and small, do they seem impossible?  I assure you they are not.  As a pastor who talks to people a lot about their family problems, I can assure you that there are many examples where families are looking to make peace and restore their relationships.  A familiar example to more of you may be the Civil Rights Movement, or the end to Apartheid, which was built around people who were trained to respond not with the violent reactions people expected, but with nonviolence; they showed onlookers that there was indeed another way.

Here’s an Advent example.  I imagine some of you are familiar with what became known as The Christmas Truce 1914, during World War I.  Along the western front in Europe, it was a widespread, unofficial ceasefire that took place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  In some places it was limited to a pause in the fighting to recover wounded soldiers and engage in prisoner swaps, but in other places it was quite a bit more remarkable, with many newspapers of the day reporting on soldiers who came out into the open battlefield to shake hands, trade souvenirs, and talk and laugh.  In some places, as deceased soldiers were recovered, the two sides held joint burial ceremonies; in other places, soldiers from the opposing sides sang Christmas carols together.  It was a remarkable occasion of peace and humanity, and it took place right in the midst of one of the most violent conflicts in human history.

Elisha saves the people because he can see the world through hopeful eyes—as God sees it.  He is not stuck in the way things are, but has the hopeful imagination to see them the way they ought to be.

I wonder how you will prepare yourself for the coming of Christ this year.  How will you begin training yourself to see the world as God sees it?  Perhaps it will be through a daily commitment to prayer, alone or with your family, carefully considering a change that needs to come into your life; maybe you’ll be more intentional worship, or joining our Advent scripture study, or reading the Bible on your own during Advent, to come to know this story better.  Maybe you will engage in an act of giving or service, or will resist the trappings of commercialism to keep your focus on Jesus in this Advent season.  Maybe you will be a peacemaker among those who are closest to you, bringing the light of Christ into the world.  As the words of our tradition remind us,
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them has light shined…  For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  How will you prepare for his coming?  Amen.