E ven before the peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders began last Tuesday, the naysayers were already predicting failure. Former U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David Miller, commenting in The Washington Post on the power that Hamas and Iran, who were not invited to the summit, will have to scuttle any of the summit’s accomplishments, concluded with a comment that was typical of the sentiments most experts expressed: “The balance of power,” he said, “is not in favor of peacemakers but in favor of the troublemakers.”

       Hasn’t that always been the case? When Isaiah painted his God-inspired vision of a time when nation would not lift up sword against nation, the balance of power was with the troublemakers then too. Given the sorry history of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people, there is indeed little reason for optimism. It has been one of the hallmarks in the negotiations between the two parties for the past forty years. No one really expects anything to come of it, so they hold back their full participation, and thereby doom the proceedings to failure from the very start. We can only hope that things will turn out differently this time, but we have little reason to be optimistic. As another observer commented, if you expect failure in the Middle East, you will rarely be disappointed.

       There is a difference between Advent hope and political optimism. Political optimism is the belief that we can work things out on our own through our own best efforts. On that basis, it is surely pragmatic to be skeptical. Advent hope, on the other hand, is grounded in one of the deepest convictions at the heart of biblical faith: that war, violence, poverty and oppression are not God’s will for humankind. It is on that basis, not any optimistic view of Israel or its neighbors, that Isaiah can imagine a time when the people of the world will beat their swords into plowshares and learn the ways of war no more. This will happen because God will bring it about. Advent hope is grounded in the promises of God. The season of Advent, therefore, is about awakening ourselves to imagine a world made new by the promises of God.

       So the theme we have chosen for this season of Advent is “Dreaming of a World Made New.” Dreaming is something that we associate with sleep, but the sort of dreaming we are called to do in Advent is an activity that requires us to be wide-awake. We need to be awake because so much of what takes place in our culture during the Christmas season is intended to lull us to sleep. Against the despair that comes from living in a world enmeshed in poverty and war, our consumer culture invites us to numb ourselves to the pain of the world with the promises of the latest gadget at Best Buy or by a nostalgic retreat into an old-fashioned Christmas that never was. Against such despair, and against the seductions of our consumer culture, in Advent we are invited to open our eyes and see the world as it really is, and then with prophetic imagination to dream of a world made new.

W alter Brueggemann suggests that what the church must do during Advent is to change the subject. Of all the seasons of the church year, this is the moment when the church is most counter cultural. I don’t know if you have noticed the trend as much as I have, but the dominant trend in television advertisements in recent years has been toward increasingly expensive luxury items. It is now no longer acceptable to simply buy your loved one a nice scarf or sweater. Now you are supposed to buy diamonds, or a luxury automobile, or a big screen TV. It was bad enough when expensive cars were advertised as a symbol of status and power, now they are being marketed as a deep expression of love. You don’t have to read very far into the gospels to recognize how far that message is from the story of Jesus’ birth.

       So instead, we dream with the prophets, of a world where “they shall beat their swords into plowshares… nation shall not lift up sword against nation… the wolf shall live with the lamb… the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom… the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped… the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing… they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away… and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD.”

       Brueggemann notes that the prophets uttered such outrageous visions during the Babylonian exile, at the precise moment when Israel was most tempted to give in to despair. The prophets countered despair with poetic dreams of a world made new. He writes:

       The important point is that the poem is outrageous and unreasonable. It invites exiles to sing against reality, to dance toward a future not even discernable, to praise the faithful God who will not be held captive by imperial reality. The singing and dancing and praising is an act of hope, a betting on God’s capacity for an inexplicable future. It is the sort of hoping serious, baptized people must always do, always against the data, with trust in Gods promise.

       What is supposed to happen in this act of hope? Surely such a poem will not cause Babylon to retreat. Surely we know of no magic that will stagger empire. The hoping of the poet was, however, another intent. Its purpose is to destabilize the present. Its intent is to break open the present system of domination for the sake of human possibility. Its purpose is to counter despair and to remind the exiles that they are children of a different trust, a trust in God’s sovereign future not governed by empire.

       He continues:

       So who is left to hope [in our own time]? Only the baptized, only those who regularly enter a zone of alternative possibility that is not rooted in present technology, but in gifts yet to be given, in promises yet to become visible, in gifts and promises guaranteed by God.

S o, there you have it: the best definition I have come across of what we are attempting to do in worship during Advent– to “enter a zone of alternative possibility.” That’s what we mean by “dreaming of a world made new.”

       We are doing that in two ways in these four weeks leading up to Christmas. The first is by receiving a series of special offerings. Each Sunday, in the hymn following the sermon, you are invited to bring a special offering to the tree. Today, our first special offering, in honor of World AIDS Day yesterday, is to Food & Friends, an organization founded in 1988 in the basement of Westminster Presbyterian Church, that now provides more than 1,000 meals a day to people living with AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. Today we are invited to sympathy baskets that Food & Friends provides to family and friends following the death of a loved one. This is but one small way through Food & Friends that we help provide love and support even as we dream, with the prophet, of the day when “everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 35:10).

       The second way we are invited you to “enter a zone of alternative possibility” is by inviting different members of the congregation each week to share their own dream of a world made new. Each week Ashley has lined up two people, one who will share during worship and the other in our weekly “Updates.” She invited them to dream, with such questions as, “What needs to be ‘born’ in your life? What would a ‘you made new’ look like? What are your dreams for yourself? How do you want Pilgrims to be made new this coming year? What are your dreams for Pilgrims? What needs to be ‘born’ in our world? What would a ‘world made new’ look like? How would the world be different than it is right now? What is the role you might play in shaping your dreams for the world? What role does Pilgrims play in making those dreams come true?” In listening to the stories of your fellow church members, it is hoped that you will awaken your own prophetic imagination, as you too dream of a world made new.                             ✞

       To read Pilgrim’s Advent Dreams, see: www.churchofthepilgrims.org/adventdreams.html