Nov. 30, 2025 - Isaiah 2:1-5 - Advent 1

I remember on vicarage, there was a few times when my vicarage pastor reminded me that unpleasant things roll downhill.  I’ll let you fill in your own word there.  He wasn’t being mean or bossy.  It was a way of pointing out where I fit within that congregation.  There were times when something came up that I either didn’t have the experience to handle or I just wasn’t capable of dealing with because I wasn’t the called pastor of the congregation.  That left other things that still needed doing, to me.  They might have been less exciting, but they couldn’t just be ignored.  Since I wasn’t able to do the more critical things, but I could do the other stuff, well, that’s what I had to do.

It’s an aspect of authority that is very tempting.  If you are in authority over people, it means there are others around that you can pass off the less pleasant parts of the job to.  Dirtier, more menial, less exciting, whatever the case may be, if you are in a position of authority, directing others to do those kinds of things is one of the perquisites of the authority you have.  You also get the recognition for getting the job done.  After all, you’re the one who made sure the scut work got taken care of and that everything is moving along the way it should.  If things don’t get done, well, that’s another matter.  But, even then, you can probably pass the blame down the line to someone who should have been working a little harder.  It’s no wonder why people want that kind of authority and are happy to make use of it.

It also explains why no one really wants to go “up.”  If you go up, that means there’s someone higher than you.  There’s someone out there who can give you orders and commands, your boss, your commanding officer, the president, maybe even God.  There’s someone out there who can direct you to do unpleasant things.  No, be your own mountain.  Be the one everyone else has to climb to.

The passage in Isaiah today finds its setting on the mountain top.  God is on the mountain.  He is the biggest of the big, the strongest of the strong.  There is no one greater or more majestic than he is.  Isaiah chapter 2 sounds pretty positive.  Good things are happening and people want to be a part of it.  They go to the mountain, to where God is.  They go to learn from him.  There’s no better place to be than on the mountain with God.  
That all sounds exactly like what we’d expect God to tell his people, except that this is the beginning of the book of Isaiah.  Isaiah might end on a high note and it might have glimmers of hope scattered here and there throughout, but that’s not at all where it starts.  God’s message to Israel through Isaiah in the previous chapters begins, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;       for the LORD has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner,       and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”  Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.”  

He goes on for several more verses, describing how bad things have gotten in the land.  No one wants to hear what God has to say.  No one cares about his laws and commandments.  It’s starting to look pretty bleak in Israel, but they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge God as the only one worthy of worship and so things continue to go from bad to worse.  God’s judgment is rolling downhill and everyone around is going to feel it.
In this case, it isn’t because God enjoys inflicting misery on everyone else.  It isn’t a matter of God abusing the perks of his position to show off how great and amazing he is.  This all comes about because of a broken contract.  God had promised them health, security, and prosperity if they worshiped him alone and followed his commands.  Eventually they refused, and now they are seeing what life is like when God is not protecting them and supplying their needs.  So, it’s punishment in a sense, but not in the way we might normally think about it.  God isn’t so much singling them out for some kind of special punishment here.  He doesn’t need to.  When God withdraws his protection, the sinful world is simply allowed to run its natural course.  Soon, the Israelites will see the result of that.

It’s an interesting phenomenon.  Thankfully, I’ve never seen it in person because I find seeing surgery pretty unnerving, but from a scientific standpoint, the human body has countless amazing and awe inspiring features.  The heart is one of them.  It’s one of the first organs to form and from the first heartbeat to the last, this fist sized ball of muscle never relaxes for a moment.  It just continuously pumps life giving blood throughout the body every minute of every day until the body fails due to disease, injury, or the simple wearing out of old age.  So ingrained is this purpose that the heart will continue to beat even when separated from the body.  Being disconnected, the heart has nothing to send blood to, but that doesn’t stop it from trying.

The heart of Israel was cut off.  It wasn’t that the heart had failed or was somehow defective.  It was that the Israelites, through their selfish lifestyles and their crass idolatry were trying to tear their own heart out.  They sought to replace it with something they thought would work better, but they are refusing to acknowledge their mistake.  Separated from the source of life, they are slowly dying.

Advent is the season that looks forward to the coming of Christ in the flesh.  It is a season a preparation.  It is a season that acknowledges that, without Christ, we would be lost.  Dying men, dying women, a dying creation, look to the surgeon to restore life to our bodies.  Dead and lifeless, there is nothing in is capable of saving ourselves.  We are powerless and without hope.  Since we can’t come to him, he comes to us.  The surgeon, the healer, sees that we are cut off from life.  His life isn’t corrupted by sin.  He doesn’t worry about death.  His heart works just fine.  

In order to restore our bodies to life, he gives us his own.  His blood brings life into us and we live again.  He gives his life, his blood that we may have life.  As long as we remain connected to him, he lives in us, lives for us.  In that sense, life rolls downhill.  

The irony of sin is that we continually try to throw off authority, we constantly strive to be the biggest dog on the block, but it’s because there is someone greater than us that have any hope of life and salvation at all.  Advent is the season where we take a look at the world around us and see how death is the order of the day.  We die.  Everything around us dies.  We are disconnected from the source of life.  We can struggle to take control of it all we want, but we are dead, helpless, powerless, lifeless.  Advent is the time when we look up.  We look up in humility and repentance, knowing that if we are going to be saved, it isn’t we who go up to seize life in our own hands.  It is Jesus, the one who is the resurrection and the life, who comes down to us.  He restores us and makes us whole again.  The gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation come to us not because we contribute anything to them, but only because Jesus comes down to us to rescue us.  

When God speaks to the Israelites in Isaiah 2, he tells them that there will be a time in the future when his people won’t look up with disdain or jealousy.  They’ll look up with joy because they know that the God who is enthroned on high actually loves them, loves them enough to sacrifice everything for them and does so willingly.  God tells them that there will come a time when they will rejoice at every opportunity to go up the mountain, because they know this is where their own life comes from and it is a privilege to know that God chooses to be connected to us.  We are connected to the source and so we have the privilege of coming to the source, to the God himself and we are welcome there.  We are welcome because we are not dead and lifeless.  We live with his life and we rejoice that we are able to share it together.

This is what we look forward to in Advent, being brought from death to life.  We await the coming of the only one who can save us from death.  The beauty of Advent is that it gives us time to reflect on who we truly are.  The Law, with its demand for perfection, shows us that we are dead in our trespasses and sins.  Yet God continues to love us in spite of what we have done to ourselves and to the world he made.  Advent gives us an honest look at ourselves and the need for God to come down from the mountain if we are to be saved.  

It also gives us an honest look at the world and the people around us.  We cannot give life to others, anymore than we can give it to ourselves.  But, we must also be careful to not hinder and impede the work of Christ.  God’s people in ancient days kept the life to themselves, like applying a tourniquet to their own arm, they prevented the life given to them by God from flowing out to the world.  They refused to share the message of God’s grace and his promise of life and forgiveness.  The same God who loved us enough to come down the mountain to save us also wants to save all of those around us.  Advent is the time when we prepare for Christ’s entrance into the world and reflect on why he would do so.  He comes to give his life to those who are dead, to you, to me, to the world.   Look forward to Christmas and the coming of your salvation.  Share the news with those around you who still look without hope for their salvation.  Look forward to ascending the mountain here, we who have been given life through him are continually renewed and refreshed by him as we gather around his throne and receive his body and blood for forgiveness and life, living out in miniature what will one day be true for eternity.  Tell those around you that their savior comes and that, as people restored to life by his blood, we will say together, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.”