We were a Canadian Witness for Peace delegation, and were heading slowly, as fast as possible, for “Quilalí” and “Wiwilí”, peasant villages up in the mountains where bands of counter-revolutionary forces were gathering. Our presence in these villages would stop these quais-military forces from their usual operations of raping, pillaging and murdering peasants. Because their secret funding came from the US government, harming North Americans might cut off their financial support. So when North Americans arrived in a village, the counterrevolutionaries held off their attacks. That’s why we were there.
The year was 1985. Six years earlier there had been much exhilaration in the air. A popular multi-sector revolution had come to power in 1979, deposing the CIA-supported Somoza family dictatorship who had run Nicaragua for many decades as their personal fiefdom. Within only five months after taking power, the new government reduced illiteracy from 50% to 12%. It also had the support of many base Christian communities; there were even priests in the National Cabinet. In short, the revolution had gathered up all the hopes and dreams of the Nicaraguan peasants and labourers along with the professional and middle class. But now, in 1985, all this exhilaration and joy and hope and expectation had given way to terror, the terror of a counter-revolution financed by the USA, the most powerful country in the world, against the poor banana republic of a sparse two million people. All they could do was to be waiting for a miracle.
[Play song 4.07 – 4.29]
Waiting for a miracle … That was the conclusion of Bruce Cockburn, Canadian singer-songwriter, several months later when he also visited Nicaragua. The resultant song Waiting for a Miracle was also part of my personal journey after returning from Nicaragua, a journey that forced me to face the rage that burned within me toward Ronald Reagan’s regime and his counter-revolutionary puppets who were destroying the hopes and dreams of an oppressed people. Cockburn taught me that, at times, we have to wait, wait for a miracle. The beginning verses of his song:
Look at them working in the hot sun
The pilloried saints and the fallen ones
Working and waiting for the night to come
And waiting for a … and waiting for a miracle
Somewhere out there is a place that’s cool
Where peace and balance are the rule
Working toward a future like some kind of mystic jewel
And waiting for a … and waiting for a miracle
During the time of the Isaiah scripture passage we read, the children of Israel were also waiting. After the mega-tragedy of the destruction of their beloved and holy Jerusalem and their forced exile into Babylon in 587 BC, they had finally returned, re-occupied their promised land, and rebuilt the temple. Ah, their temple. It was to be a glorious place of peace and well-being; the centre of God’s shalom. But it hadn’t been realised. The “ideal Jerusalem” – to be, indeed, a new creation – hadn’t been realised by the restoration and rebuilding of the temple. The bricks and mortar were there, but the great hope initiated by the enlightened policies of [sigh-rus] Cyrus the Great, the Persian Emperor who defeated Babylon, that great hope was fleeting. The children of Israel were still subject to a foreign power, with little autonomy. In addition, division and strife remained among them. The Temple did not go back to being the only institution for Jewish religious life. Other centres for worship remained strong, including among “the people of the land” who hadn’t been exiled and who distrusted the returnees from Babylon. There were also other Jewish centres among those half-breed Samaritans in the north, and even in Babylon where some hadn’t returned from exile, where some had found a new Promised Land there.
Indeed, there was so much infighting among the children of Israel back in the Promised Land over the re-building of the temple that [sigh-rus] Cyrus the Great’s government put a stop to the rebuilding for two decades. Clearly, the glory days of the Davidic monarchy had not been restored. In a word, they were still waiting for Jerusalem to become all it was dreamt to be, “some kind of mystic jewel” in Cockburn’s words. They were waiting for a miracle. And so, the compiler of the Isaiahs put their dream, their vision at the very beginning of the book, chap 2:
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
all the nations shall stream to it … and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh,
that the Lord may teach us the Lord’s ways
and that we may walk in the Lord’s paths.’
Yahweh shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
In the days to come. Days to come. The future. For now, they were waiting, waiting and hoping for that day. But is waiting enough? Is it? And besides, how do you sustain hope while waiting?
In Cockburn’s song about the Nicaraguans, he poetically portrays how they weren’t just waiting, not just waiting for a miracle; they weren’t waiting passively. The chorus:
You pretend you’re strong
In the hope that you can be
Like the ones who’ve cried
Like the ones who’ve died
Trying to set the angel in us free
While they’re waiting for a … while they’re waiting for a miracle
Thousands in Nicaragua had cried and died “trying to set the angel in us free”. One was a 14 year old boy in 1979 who refused the order from the dictator’s army to move off the church steps that were an entrance to a community liberation centre. He was shot dead. “Trying to set the angel in us free”. That’s active waiting. Many Nicaraguans had given their lives to pushing their country toward, as Cockburn sang, a place that’s cool, where peace and balance are the rule. This “place” is analogous to the Jerusalem of the people of Israel’s vision as expressed in Isaiah chapter 2: a “place” where all walk in the Lord’s paths, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, where war would be no more. Both the people of Israel and the people of Nicaragua looked for and worked toward, in Cockburn’s words, “a future like some kind of mystic jewel.” Working toward that future is precisely setting the angel in us free – struggling toward getting the good in us all to rise above self-interest and work toward the peace and wellbeing of all.
And here our New Testament lectionary passages shed some light on both the Isaiah oracle and Cockburn’s Nicaraguan song. The apostle Paul writes that “salvation is nearer to us now”. Salvation? What salvation? Here we can learn from and understand the Jewish concept of salvation which was more about salvation for an entire people rather than salvation for an individual. So when Paul in his letter to the Romans, and then Matthew in the Gospel reading for today wrote about salvation and the return of Christ, they referred not simply to a bodily return of Jesus, but rather to all that Jesus represented, the inauguration of kin[g]dom of God. This is exactly what Isaiah’s oracle was talking about: “the mountain of the house of the Lord” – Jerusalem – where all learn Yahweh’s ways and learn war no more.” This is salvation, where the Lord will arbitrate between all nations, resulting in swords being beaten into ploughshares. Then nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
This sounds like Cockburn’s future Nicaragua, a place where peace and balance are the rule, a place where the angel in us will be free. A miracle! Salvation! But it doesn’t just happen, Paul says; we too do our part, we have to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep awake, yes. Watch for the signs, yes. But also work at making the signs appear. Here! – An outbreaking of peace and balance. There! – Glimpses of the world’s people walking in the Lord’s paths. Swords beaten into ploughshares! Miracles! Yet still they’re only foretastes; we’re still waiting for more miracles, fuller miracles, complete miracles.
The children of Israel were waiting for Jerusalem to be that glorious centre of universal peace and wellbeing. The Nicaraguans were still waiting for a miracle – a more just society. They and we are still waiting for these miracles because we can’t simply make such miracles happen. We can’t design and plan them into full existence. So then we groan and cry out with Cockburn “how come history takes such a long, long time? … How come history takes such a long, long time, when you’re waiting for a miracle?” The Gospel of Matthew’s response to our cry is that “about that day and hour no one knows”. We must remain diligent, watchful, for “the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour”. Patience and readiness while working toward and waiting for a miracle. A miracle.
And now it’s Advent 2010. What miracle are you waiting for this advent season? What will “the Lord’s coming” mean for you during this Christmas season? Of course we all want an end to war and poverty and oppression and violence in the world. We all yearn for these miracles, of course. That’s the core of salvation, the centre of Yahweh’s’ mountain Jerusalem. But there’s an additional dimension to salvation. Salvation of a whole people isn’t complete if some members are suffering, it’s not finished when some members aren’t experiencing peace and wholeness. Individuals – that’s you and me — are part of the core of salvation. Salvation, wellbeing and peace also have deeply personal implications. So, now I’m asking you personally. For Advent 2010, what miracle will the Lord’s coming bring for you? This advent, what miracle are you waiting for?
- A new relationship … or a renewed relationship?
- A fulfilling job … or any job?
- Belonging … acceptance?
- Health … physical health … emotional health?
- Freedom from resentment or grudges?
- Healing of wounds … strength to live with the scars?
- Release from that which binds you?
[pause]
Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. So put on the Lord Jesus Christ. But about that day and hour no one knows…. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
Going up to the mountain of the Lord
Beating swords into ploughshares
Waiting
Waiting for a miracle
How come history takes such a long long time?
Setting the angel in us free
The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Now? This Advent? Could it be?
Miracles this Advent.
Waiting … waiting for a miracle.
Endnotes:
2 – Following Childs and Sweeney in dating this redactional / theological insertion into the beginning of Isaiah as post-building of Second Temple.