“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil--

to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!”

These verses from Isaiah 64 will be the first words of Scripture that we hear on Sunday, at the beginning of a new liturgical year. They are words that not only announce God’s coming as a righteous judge, but that long for it and even plead for it. Advent, as the season that simultaneously looks towards the Incarnation (Jesus’ first coming) and the second coming at the end of all things, is a time when these notes of God’s judgment are inescapable. It can be uncomfortable to contemplate, especially when we think of God’s judgment as the same kind of judgment that we experience now from other humans. 

But what if we take God’s difference from us seriously? What if we started thinking of God’s judgment – that wrath to come, as John the Baptist says – not as an act of God’s violence against us, but as the act of a holy God that puts an end to violence once and for all? Isaiah’s vision of God’s kingdom certainly leads us to that conclusion: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

In these days of Advent we see the love of God for this world. This is a love so complete that in God’s good time “the way things are” will be transformed into “the way things should be.”  It is a love so complete that we will know conclusively that the only possible logic of the world is one of peace, of harmony, of new life, of love and redemption. We will know this because the knowledge of God’s truth will fill the world. No longer will we see dimly or guess at God’s designs. We will know at long last what Julian of Norwich saw in her vision: “Would you know your Lord's meaning? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love.” This indeed is something to prepare for – not just by decorating our homes and getting all the festive foods ready, but by making a path in our hearts. 

Yours faithfully in Christ,

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade