Be Ready: SALT's Commentary for Advent Week One
First Week of Advent (Year A): Matthew 24:36-44 and Isaiah 2:1-5
For SALT’s “Strange New World” podcast episode that explores these passages, check out “The Poetry of Christmas - Part One: The Dawn Chorus.”
Big Picture:
1) Happy New Year! The Christian year begins with the season of Advent, and this way of beginning is itself significant. You might think the year would begin with the trumpets of Easter, or the softness of Christmas Eve, or the winds of Pentecost — but on the contrary, we begin in the shadows of despair, war, sorrow, and hate. For it’s precisely there that the God of grace will arrive, and accordingly, it’s precisely there that God’s church is called to light candles of hope, peace, joy, and love. It’s worth remembering this deep poetry: as the Christian new year begins, we join hands and enter the darkness, actively waiting, singing, and praying anew for God’s light to overwhelm the world.
2) This week is also the beginning of “Year A” in the Revised Common Lectionary, a year of walking together through the Gospel of Matthew. Our ancestors likely chose Matthew to be the first of the four Gospels because of its accessibility — more expansive than Mark, less scholarly than Luke — and also because of Matthew’s emphasis on deep continuities with ancient Jewish tradition. Matthew’s Christmas story, for example, portrays Jesus as a kind of “new Moses.”
3) When death-dealing forces seemed to have the upper hand, as they did when Roman troops destroyed the Jerusalem temple shortly before Matthew was written, one ancient literary response was to envision an imminent divine rescue and a new era of justice and redemption. This literature is often called “Apocalyptic” (from the Greek word apokalupsis, “uncovering” or “revealing”). God pulls aside the veil, revealing to God’s people the hidden, dramatic deliverance to come. Apocalyptic narratives and images, typically expressed in vivid, poetic terms, can be found throughout the Bible (Daniel and Revelation are prime examples). In essence, these are extravagant, evocative visions of hope when all hope seems lost.
4) The reading from Isaiah is from one of the book’s introductions, casting a vision of worldwide peace and flourishing “in days to come” (Isa 2:2). New Testament writers quote Isaiah more than any other author in the sacred library of Hebrew Scripture, not least because of the prophet’s moving descriptions of a coming new era worth hoping for.
Scripture:
1) Jesus is nearing the end of his public ministry, and Matthew 24 is a litany of signs that the current age is coming to an end, beginning with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. A time of great suffering will follow — but then new signs will appear (here Jesus echoes the ancient voices of Daniel, Joel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel), and the Child of Humanity will arrive and make everything right. But since we don’t know exactly when the Child of Humanity will come (not even Jesus knows — strange but true!), we have to stay vigilant. Keep awake! Jesus says. Be ready!
2) Jesus’ reference to “the days of Noah” is a crisp shorthand meant to underscore the urgency of staying alert and being prepared. According to that ancient saga, though the world was “filled with violence,” many were blithely oblivious — and so were “swept away” when the waters rose (Gen 6:11; Mt 24:39). In contrast, of course, Noah and his family built an ark — and it’s worth remembering that this work, which Jesus implicitly commends and contrasts here with the oblivious status quo (“eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”), was for the sake of preserving all God’s creatures, not just themselves (Mt 24:38).
3) Isaiah envisions a world in which God will come to dwell on earth and put an end to war once and for all, inaugurating a new era of shalom. Within the library of Hebrew Scripture, the famous phrase, “beat their swords into ploughshares” sits in opposition to the prophet Joel’s call to “beat your ploughshares into swords” — and that tension sums up the crossroads at the heart of human life (Isa 2:4; Joel 3:10). Which direction shall we go? Swords into ploughshares? Or ploughshares into swords? Isaiah declares that, by the grace of God, a great transformation is on the way: war into peace, weapons into tools, battlefields into gardens. Take heart — and hold on to hope!
4) Reading these soaring, challenging passages during Advent, we may well think of Mary’s “Magnificat,” her song responding to Gabriel’s astonishing news (Luke 1:46-55). In its own way, that song is a hymn of praise for apocalypse, for revealing how God is turning everything upside down, lifting up the lowly and bringing the mighty down from their thrones. But make no mistake: God’s revolution runs deeper than military victory. This will be a revolution of love and justice, a revolution of Spirit and flesh, a revolution of “good news of great joy for all people” (Luke 2:10). Or as Isaiah puts it, a new day in which “all” will walk in God’s paths of peace: “neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isa 2:2-4).
Takeaways:
1) As we enter the season of Advent, this may be a perfect time to name what Advent is all about: entering the shadows of despair, conflict, sorrow, and hate; actively waiting for Jesus to come; and lighting candles of hope, peace, joy, and love.
2) Likewise, to really hear what Jesus (and Matthew) is saying, we first need to enter the shadows, those places where all hope seems lost. We have to listen alongside the traumatized soldier, the desperate refugee, the lonely prisoner, the heartbroken addict. Roman armies desecrate and destroy the temple, ruining the sacred heart of the world — not just in first-century Palestine, but also here and now. For you and your community, what contemporary desolations threaten to extinguish the light?
3) Once we have entered the shadows (both intellectually and emotionally), from there we can proclaim the good news, the hope that rings out in the midst of catastrophe. The essence of apocalypse, the point of what is “revealed,” is that God is on the way, turning the world around! And precisely because of this, all of us should be watchful and alert over the days and weeks ahead, cultivating a mindful attentiveness to signs of hope and wonder. Keep awake! Be ready!
4) Ready for what, exactly? Isaiah’s vision helps answer this question, and at the same time ties together the traditional themes of Advent’s first two weeks. This week’s theme is Hope, and the prophet’s vision of the coming world for which we hope is itself a portrait of peace — and next week’s theme is Peace. And if we follow this line of thought, a thematic Hope-Peace-Joy-Love choreography opens up: This week, we hope. Hope for what? Peace! How do we feel when peace arrives? Joy! And what action both flows from joy and helps sustain it? Love!
5) In a world fraught with anxiety (and hungry for hope!) about climate crisis, Jesus’ reference to “the days of Noah” offers an opening for reflection: as the waters rise, how can the church contribute more boldly and effectively to our care for creation, reclaiming and protecting the planet itself as an “ark” for all God’s creatures?
6) Advent means “arrival,” and Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century abbot and theologian, wrote eloquently of “three Advents”: first of all, the Incarnation, the Advent at Christmas; and last of all, the Parousia, the Advent at the end of the age (Matthew’s subject in this week’s passage). And the second or “middle” Advent, the one in between these other two, is the everyday arrival of Jesus: the host at the table, the still small voice, the hungry mother, the weary migrant. In other words, Jesus comes to us again and again, calling us, inviting us to help repair the world, little by little, a thousand swords remade into a thousand ploughshares. The new era of God’s shalom is dawning even now — though its glimmers aren’t always obvious at first. On the contrary, they often shine in unexpected places and at unexpected hours, like a thief in the night. Keep awake! Be ready!
For SALT’s “Strange New World” podcast episode that explores these passages, check out “The Poetry of Christmas - Part One: The Dawn Chorus.”