December
1, 2013
Prescott
Baptist Church
1st
Sunday of Advent
Isaiah
2:1-5
Our Old Testament text gives us a chance to imagine the
future, a future that we can hardly imagine because we have seen so much
conflict and war. Only the foolish would beat their swords into plowshares.
My partner, Anna, and I were at Epcot, this past week. Epcot
is one of four parks at Disney World in Florida. Disney does a terrific job of
providing an ideal place, a positive experience for visitors. Clean. Smiling.
Welcoming. Fabulous landscaping. Authentic
accents from around the world. Fun rides. Cheerful songs being sung by happy
people and animated characters. Good
food. There is no conflict there. Every possible need has been given
consideration.
We went to Epcot, 300 acres of park dedicated to the
celebration of human achievement. The first ride, Spaceship Earth, was a
celebration of human communication. Immediately, as the ride began, we were
told to smile and cameras flashed. The spaceship took us back to a time when human
speech began, moved us on to cave drawings, rounded a corner and paper was
invented. Then the printing press.
The climax of the ride was the opportunity for Anna and me
to establish our hopes and vision for our future life together. The computer
asked us a few questions about what we like and what we enjoy. Then a video
popped up on the screen, a movie starring Anna and me. Our happy faces were
imposed on little cartoon characters enjoying a perfect future together, the
very future we imagine and long for. A dream come true right before our very
eyes! Disney is all about making dreams come true.
The prophet Isaiah is leading us into a dream, a dream of
the future. And this is the way we will enter our Advent season. Our worship
experience today marks the beginning of the New Year for our faith. The word Advent comes from the Latin word
“adventus” which means “coming.” Advent is our set-aside time to wait and
prepare for the coming of new life, new hope, the future Reign of God.
Isaiah sees this future: The Lord’s house on the highest
mountain. And he sees more: All the nations streaming toward the mountain to be
taught the ways of God, to learn how to walk in the light of God’s love. It’s
interesting to notice that this same vision is described word for word by the
prophet Micah, Micah 4: 1-5.
This scripture passage is often referred to as a “floating
oracle of peace,” a promise of the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom to come on
earth. Can you see it? It’s not easy – I recognize the challenge. We live in a competitive world. We are too
familiar with envy, greed, resentment, betrayal, mistrust, violence, fear and
hate. We’ve seen the video images of
people being beaten, stabbed and shot on
Black Friday at Walmarts and stores across the country. The highest prize: a
good deal on a flat-screen television.
We are a generation in need of reassurance as surely as
those who lived in Isaiah’s time. We are a people who long for light in the
darkness of our own days. Isaiah takes us to a mountain top and shows us what
is true and what we long for: a day when people from every nation, every
culture and every race will look to God for divine instruction, a day when all
people will enjoy an end to war. We long
for God’s peace. This is the prize that satisfies our longing. And we are now
entering the season to wait and prepare for the prize of peace on earth.
Advent proposes impossibilities. We can easily relate to
Mary’s story and her bafflement when the angel announces to her, a virgin, that
she will give birth to a child. “How can this be?” We are entering a season of
mystery; a time when being baffled is part of our faith’s natural cycle.
A featured story on the CNN web-site caught my attention
this week. Leon Gersten, a Holocaust survivor, had the amazing opportunity to
meet face to face with the man, Czeslaw Polziec, whose family hid Gersten and
his family in the attic of the Polziec’s barn for two years, saving them from
death by the Nazis. Polziec is Catholic; Gersten is Jewish. The two men reunited
this week on a day when the beginning of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day merged
on the calendar. It is the first time that has happened since 1888. Two
celebrations of gratitude, two men face to face once again with so much
gratitude to share.
Gersten is now 79 years old. He has children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren. “I am alive and my children exist because of the
Polziec family,” the man says.
In July of 1942, the Nazi soldiers came into the Polish
town, Frystak, where Leon Gersten and his mother lived with her parents. Leon’s
mother was a door-to-door saleslady and she had customers throughout the
country side around the town of Frystak. The Nazis lined up 1600 Jews in the Frystak
market place, mostly children and elderly, and executed them all, tossing their
bodies like garbage into a mass grave. Leon’s mother disguised herself as a
Catholic, putting on a cross. She took her son, her sister, brother-in-law and
nephew out of Frystak. She went door to door, knocking and asking for shelter from
her customers throughout the countryside. Many refused to shelter the group. Obviously
they were a group of Jews on the run. Sheltering them could be fatal.
But the Polziec family did not refuse shelter to the group
of three adults and two children. Maria and Stanislaw Polziec lived on a farm
in nearby Zawadka with their four daughters and son, Czeslaw. They had barely
the means to feed their own family, let alone buy food for five strangers. Czeslaw
Polziec was ten years old. Leon Gersten was eight years old. The Catholic
family gave bread and potatoes to the Jewish family. They kept guard over the
barn when the Nazi soldiers came through. On cold winter nights the Gerstens
came into the home of the Polziec family to keep warm by the fire.
One night the Nazis came and they heard the sound of the sheltered
people as they scampered into their hiding place. Mr. Polziec said that it was
the sound of his own children playing in the barn. The Nazi soldiers beat Mr.
Polziec cruelly that night. Leon Gersten still remembers the sound of his rescuer’s
cries. But the guests were not harmed. Gersten says his rescuers never showed
any sign of resentment toward the Jewish family who put them at such great
risk.
“Should we have let them die?” Polziec responded in a
statement to the Jewish Foundation for
the Righteous who brought him to New York City for the reunion.
“The question alone does not bear thinking about,” he said.
“They had every right to live. Nobody who has not lived through those desolate
days will ever really understand what my parents did, and I am sure, were they
still with us, they would be surprised that an honor has been bestowed upon
them. They were ordinary people who did what seemed right to them in a
desperate situation.”
Just a glimpse of those swords being beaten into plowshares.
The light shines brightly in Gersten and Polziec’s story because of the
darkness in the background. Yet it
lights the way for us to imagine this mountaintop where we can go to learn new
ways to live in peace. Fear can be replaced with faith. The season of Advent is
the time for replacing fear with faith, a time for new visions to be born in
our imaginations.
A vision of peace. It is a vision and a hope shared by many
people in many lands and through many generations. In the North Garden outside
the United Nations headquarters in New York City stands a statue created by the
Russian sculptor, Evgeny Vuchetich. An intense and muscular man is pounding a
sword with a mallet. The sword is bending, curving into a plow. The sculpture is titled: “Let Us Beat Our
Swords into Plowshares.”
John O’Donohue, Irish poet and theologian, says: “When there
is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed
to the very edge of life. There is a lovely idea in the Celtic tradition that
if you send out goodness from yourself, it will all come back to you multiplied
ten thousand times. In the Kingdom of Love there is no competition; there is no
possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will
have.”
And we will let this be our guiding thought during our
Advent season. Love is the gift we have been given. Love lights our way and
allows us to see the word of God, a time when peace will reign for people everywhere. Look
this week for those who have been pushed to the edge. See them walking with you
to the mountain top. Give them love to light their way.
Amen
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