Advent Sunday
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Readings: Jeremiah 33: 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3: 9-end; Luke 21: 25-36
Welcome to Advent, which, someone has said, is “a rich mix of politics, prophecy, prayer, perseverance and holiness.” Politics – yes. One of the messages of Advent is that Jesus comes to save. In the time when Jesus lived and preached, with the Jewish people under Roman occupation, that message was political.
The old prophets had been foretelling that time for centuries. A typical passage of prophecy is set from Jeremiah today, chapter 33, verses 14 to 16: “The days are surely coming…..when I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” And this righteous Branch will execute justice and righteousness, and Judah and Jerusalem will live in safety. Again, it’s a political message: promising a better time than now.
But the gospel reading from St. Luke today doesn’t suggest a better time on the face of it: signs in the sun and moon; nations confused; the roaring of the sea; the powers of heaven being shaken. It’s much like a passage we heard a fortnight ago about the end time. But St. Luke changes the tone dramatically; “Now when you see these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads; because your redemption is drawing near.”
Advent is a puzzle, and it may even have been to Jesus. He says, “Truly, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.” He could have thought the end-time was very near, or he might have been saying that his own coming and appearance on earth itself was a sign and a time of judgment.
So there is this ambiguity about Advent. We approach God, who is our Redeemer, but also our judge. We come in the knowledge of our sinfulness, but also in the belief that he ‘has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
The equivocal nature of this season is expressed in the rich treasury of Advent texts, both ancient and modern. And the Collect for today is one of the jewels of the Anglican liturgy. During the year, we recite some quite new prayers, but also some from the original Prayer Book of 1549. And today’s collect is the very work of Thomas Cranmer himself. The collect holds together the two principal aspects of Advent. It reminds us that Jesus Christ came to us in great humility, at Bethlehem, of course. Walk into any of the shopping malls in the next few weeks, and I suspect it will not be in the forefront of people’s minds that Christ came to us in great humility. But then the collect moves us on. It starts off by asking God to give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and to put on the armour of light – ‘that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty…we may rise to the life immortal.’ Once again, I doubt our shopping mall customers will be considering the advent of the ‘last day’ – unless it is the last shopping day before Christmas. Having said that, many people will have been reminded that the ‘last day’ is coming to us all with the debate and parliamentary vote on the Assisted-Dying Bill – when and how they might approach their last day. Our predecessors learned about what are called the ‘Four Last Things’: that is death, judgment, heaven and hell. These may have seemed more urgent matters in mediaeval times when life expectancy was so much shorter than in our own day, but everyone faces their own last day, however you think of it, so it is appropriate that Christian liturgy forces us to face the reality of death and what follows it. As St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
So this collect encourages us to prepare for the last day, as we anticipate Christ’s first coming ‘in great humility.’ In the short reading from 1 Thessalonians today, St Paul is encouraging his new converts at Thessalonica, and is praying that they stay constant in their faith, and that he may have the opportunity to see them again and correct anything that might be amiss. His prayer is that they will use their time to prepare for their final meeting with God. If we were to read on, we would detect great urgency in his message, which they took seriously judging by the later correspondence with them. It seems that they had stopped doing all the usual things to concentrate on Jesus’ second coming.
We may not spend all our days thinking about that ‘last day’, but we are challenged every day to act out our faith in readiness and expectancy. Isn’t there an old religious slogan ‘Look busy – Jesus is coming!’ Cranmer, in his timeless collect, might re-phrase that and urge us to ‘put on the armour of light.’ And we are faced with the decision-making associated with the appearance of Jesus every day – the present-day Advent. We make those decisions when we decide how or if to help the needy; the homeless; how to support the weak; whether to give our backing to this charity or that movement designed to improve people’s lives, or the future of the planet. You’ll remember the ‘sheep and goats’ passage in Matthew’s gospel: the disciples ask – “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or needing clothes, or in prison, and did nothing for you?” And the reply came, “Truly I tell you, what you didn’t do for any of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you didn’t do for me.”
Many people would say they see Advent as a preparation for Christmas, but of course Jesus won’t be born as a baby on 25th December. But we prepare for the remembrance of his birth and come face-to-face with the significance of that event. And that happens every day, in all that we do and decide on and in the way that we choose to live our lives.
As we review the average day, we might well have cause both to rejoice and to regret. To rejoice in what is good about life, about God’s love for us; thankful for times of happiness and for any good deeds done. To regret our faults, and failings, sins of thought, word and deed, opportunities for good missed.
Advent reminds us of both these sides of our relationship with God. We’re promised a Saviour – that’s good news; we’re reminded that one day we shall face the Saviour. So, says Jesus in today’s gospel passage, “Be on your guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly.” I don’t look out from my pulpit on a Sunday and see pews of people showing signs of dissipation and drunkenness; but what Jesus is saying is that we should not seek to avoid the truth of the present time, or to take refuge in life-styles that may give quick gratification but solve nothing. One writer this year says that “to dissipate is also to squander, scatter or fritter away – time, money, energy or resources – and we are all guilty of that, both in our personal and economic life.
It seems to me, though, that Advent comes at just the right time this year. The gospel talks about people fainting ‘from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world’. Certainly there is a great deal of anxiety around, and people are fearful of the world situation. Anxiety, feeling unsettled, sensing the loss of control of things, fears for the future: these are difficult things to live with. And with so much talk about climate change recently and the very future existence of the planet, it is little wonder that so many people feel deeply ill at ease.
Now for Christians, Advent speaks to us on three levels. We hear the old prophecies that looked forward to the Messiah’s arrival. We hear the warnings of what is to come if we’re not ready, and those predictions of the end-time, which we associate with Jesus’ return. But in the meantime we acknowledge that Jesus comes to us every day and meets us in our dealings with other people and the situations we face.
In the gospel, he says that we must be alert at all times, praying for the strength to escape all these things, and to stand before the Son of Man. Maybe in our context ‘all these things’ are the anxieties, the fears, the external pressures that bear on our lives. But he also lays the challenge for us to distinguish between what is of lasting worth in life, and what plays no part in living a life in readiness for the Kingdom.
So as we journey through Advent with hope, may we spend time reducing anxiety, increasing our reliance on God through prayer and watchfulness, standing up and raising our heads in trust, and praying for our troubled and frightened world, that all people will come to the knowledge of God and of his good purposes for the world.