The Second Sunday of Advent, December 7, 2025

Advent is a season of hopeful expectation, the season of clear-eyed realism and hopeful anticipation. The times are always troubled, yet Advent inspires hope that life can be different, that the lion and lamb can lie down together, children play safely, food be plentiful, and all God’s children, and the non-human world, live in joyful harmony. The Advent spirit proclaims with the spiritual that “trouble don’t last forever.”  A way will be made where we see know way forward and we will discover the courage and strength to clear the obstacles to God’s realm embodied in our lives.

The future is both open and relational, and aware of God’s dream for creation, we can with Martin Luther King proclaim, “we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”  God’s moral and spiritual arcs of history aim at justice, and that lure of God’s aim gives us hope to persist despite the challenges of our time.

Isaiah 11 proclaims an “impossible possibility,” the emergence of a world of peace and justice, a realm of Shalom in which all God’s children flourish, and enmity is overcome by lovingkindness. Isaiah visualizes harmony of the human and non-human world in which there is a preferential option for the poor and an institutional, economic, and political bias toward justice.  Echoed by Whitehead twenty-seven centuries later, Isaiah proclaims the call of Shalom to mature religion, beyond self-interest and transactional religion to global and generous faith.  God is not out to get us, nor do we need to surrender our agency to a divine or political potentate. Isaiah charts a polestar arising from the interplay divine call and lure and human agency and hope.

Isaiah’s words in his own time of trouble seemed impossible then and appear impossible today.  Yet we cannot give up hope.  As Harry Emerson Fosdick, prays in the hymn, “God of Grace and God of Glory” – “save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore.”

The impossible possibility of Shalom and Wholeness that lures humankind forward and challenges the church to become a place of possibility, even impossible possibility, to change the world.  The gospel of process theology reflects the Advent vision of hope – an adventure of ideas and spiritualities that call us forward to shape the world we want to see, the emergence of the world God inspires us to embody.

Continuing the theme of the prophet Isaiah, the reading from Psalm 72 imagines a world of rulers for whom Justice reigns supreme and the use of power is guided by care for the vulnerable.

Paul’s prayer for the Church at Rome could easily be pronounced for our congregations, living in uncertainty about their future and the future of the nation.  “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant that you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is glorified in our unity of spirit that embraces both Jews and Gentiles, friends and strangers, insiders and outsiders, old timers and newcomers. “They will know we are Christians by our love,” and our lovingkindness and welcome are beacons to a world filled with chaos and hopelessness. The apostle is well aware of the temptation for diversity to lead to division, and is equally adamant that we seek spiritual maturity which takes us from individualism to community and self-interest to sacrifice.

Such unity gives glory to God and promotes the Good News of Jesus.  Yet, such unity is challenging then and now.  The Christian church is as politically divided as the nation.  Preachers who speak of God’s love for all persons or affirm the prophetic message of Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount are accused of substituting politics for prayerfulness. Progressives like me struggle to find any unity of spirit with our conservative Christian neighbors, many of whom explicitly or tacitly believe that Trump is God’s chosen one and that faithfulness to Christ means deporting undocumented residents, stripping the LGBTQ+ community of human rights, championing free market capitalism, and promoting economic policies detrimental to planetary survival. While these Christian kin are God’s beloved children, I find that I have more in common with Buddhists and Hindus, not to mention justice-oriented agnostics than politically and doctrinally conservative Christians.  I wonder if there is any area where we can work together or acknowledge our common faith in Jesus, since it also appears we follow different visions of God, Christ, and salvation.

At the very least, I must pray for my conservative Christian kin and look for God’s presence in their lives, though hardly in their politics or theology.  I can challenge their theology and politics without condescension or hate.  Even if I struggle to pray for their well-being, or the well-being of political potentates, I can ask Jesus to pray for them. Despite divisions in the church, still we covet Paul’s prayer: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

As to the Gospel, wouldn’t it be humorous to begin the sermon with John the Baptist’s words, “You brood of vipers!”  There are times that call for prophetic denunciation and John felt that these shocking words might awaken the economically and educationally privileged Jerusalem citizens, the righteous ones who had the leisure to take a day off to hear the “celebrity” preacher.  The realm of God is near, and we need to wake up, turn around, and change our ways.  Repent, for God is on the horizon and we need to be ready when the realm of God bursts forth.

John the Baptist’s vision lacks the grand spirit of Isaiah, but the goal is the same, pruning away everything that stands in the way of experiencing God fully in our lives and our communities.  Once again, the scriptures call for spiritual maturity, and the recognition that not only do we need to change our priorities but that the economic and social structures upon which we depend for our stability and comfort need to change.  Imperfect as we are, we must strive to live as if God’s realm is here and now, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Advent in our troubled times calls us to creative transformation and creative transformation challenges us to look into the mirror of our lives and society and embrace an alternative vision, modeled the voices of the prophets and John the Baptist.  While working to achieve the “best for that impasse,” reflected in God’s aim for the present moment, we must look toward the far horizon of God’s Shalom.  We must be agents of adventure and God’s companions in healing the world, joining actuality with impossible possibility and choosing to live in God’s realm in the chaotic turbulence of our times.

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over eighty books, including Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; Messy Incarnation: Meditations on Christ in Process; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries; and the soon to be released Three Wise Wisdom: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna. He can be reached at www.brucepperly.com.