Following the Revised Common Lectionary for Advent Year A, this four week Advent sermon series encourages your congregation to dream of God’s future alongside the prophet Isaiah. Despite living in a time of war and crisis, Isaiah dreamed up worlds in which hope, peace, joy, and love held sway; worlds where predator and prey were friends and the desert brought forth gardens; where highways were safe and justice and mercy flowed from those in power. He did not know he was dreaming of the gifts of Christ. He could not have known. But he knew that God’s story was not over; that it will not be over until all people see the great light of God’s salvation dawning into our world.
Week 1: “Dreaming Up Hope”
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5 + Romans 13:1-11
The book of the Prophet Isaiah offers us some of the most beautiful writing in our entire Bible. The prophet is a gifted writer, but more than that, a gifted seer: he sees God’s world bursting through our world, in weapons bent into farming tools and crowds streaming towards God. In a busy and hectic season, how can we make room to look for God, and not just to our own schedules and to-do lists? How can we ground ourselves in enough hope to see God’s world peeking through our own?
Dreaming God’s dreams is a spiritual discipline, like prayer or service. It requires immense hope, that what is isn’t how it has to be.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 2: “Dreaming Up Peace”
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10 + Romans 15:4-13
Often known as “the peaceable kingdom,” Isaiah’s poetry in chapter 11 is both well-known and beloved. And yet it’s so hyperbolic that it can be hard to take it seriously. For predators and prey to lay down together would require the total transformation of their very natures. The first part of the scripture, however, offers us a step towards this peaceable world–a ruler who judges fairly and faithfully, not based on greed or outward appearances. How could shedding our biases and practicing right-judging bring us closer to God’s dream of peace?
If the carnivores are going to have to learn to go vegan and the great military complexes of the world grind to a halt, it’s going to take an act of God to bring peace on earth. And while we believe God could and even that God will, God doesn’t seem to be terribly rushed about it. Usually, though, when I start getting irritated at God, and why God hasn’t done something I want done, I find God standing in front of me with a great big mirror.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 3: “Dreaming Up Joy”
Scripture: Isaiah 35:1-10 + Luke 1:46-55
In scripture, the wilderness is a place of great danger, but also a place where God is present most viscerally. Jesus meets with both the devil and with angels in the wilderness. During December, our congregations often feel an urge to paper over any grief or anxiety with “holly, jolly” Christmas activities. Yet Isaiah reminds us that there can be joy even in the strangest and scariest places, when God is present there.
God loves to bring joy in unexpected places. Flowers in the desert, safe passage in the wilderness, a baby in a barn.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
Week 4: “Dreaming Up Love”
Scripture: Isaiah 7:10-16 + Matthew 1:18-23
The final prophecy from Isaiah is not as lush as the first three; instead we are taken more baldly into the politics of Israel. The Assyrians and Babylonians are marching to war, and King Ahaz is afraid. So Isaiah gives him a sign: a young woman is pregnant, and before he is old enough to know good from evil, those enemies will be drained of their power. In other words, help is on its way. When Matthew repeats these words from Isaiah, he also knew that help–in the form of the infant Christ–was coming soon. God’s love is always searching for us, in every time of terror.
We are prone, in American culture, to think of love as something soft and gentle. But Love is also powerful and strong and brave. Love is fierce. Love rushes in where there is pain or fear or suffering. And the fact that God comes to us not where God will be most worshipped and adored and pampered, but where we are most in need of saving—that tells me that God truly is Love.
Rev. Carol Holbrook Prickett
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You have done it again. Your word, your wisdom are a welcome balm for my novice soul. Thank you for this creative touch to Advent
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