Advent Sunday

Sunday 29^th November – Advent Sunday

The church year starts on Advent Sunday and 2020/2021 is Year B which means in effect that most of our lectionary readings we hear on Sunday will be from Mark’s gospel. Last year was mostly from Matthew, and after this year they will be mainly from Luke. John’s gospel gets distributed fairly evenly across every season

Isaiah 64: 1-9. This passage expresses both hope and frustration so is a fitting choice for Advent, a season that lives with the frustration of hoping and waiting for a better world that is beyond our capacity of human beings to achieve. In the time it was written, the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon and the re-building of the Temple was a possibility but lack of progress or any signs from God were undermining confidence.  

1 Corinthians 1: 3-9. It is a shame that the lectionary compilers left out the first two verses because they set the scene for what follows – that we are all called by God. Paul is called by God but also the congregation are called to be Holy and they all “call” on the Lord Jesus Christ. Importantly they are all “called into the fellowship on his son Jesus Christ our Lord”. This is important because of the factionalism that has to be addressed further into the letter. Given that the factions were based on the use and abuse of spiritual gifts, Paul makes sure he emphasises that the gifts are a gift from God and not as a result of any inherent merit in the congregation.

Mark 13: 24-37

As previously discussed, Apocalyptic expectations are all set within a very brief future which is why the readers were told to “keep awake.” The spirit of the piece is expectation of a new world order under the control of Christ “the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven”. However this should not be read in isolation from the previous verses in which the emphasis is on not thinking that the end is near and as verse 32 says not even Jesus knows when the end will come but “only the Father”.

 

It would be foolish to maintain that the church is not affected by the clamour and emphasis put on Christmas by secular and commercial interests.

And because of that our own clamour in the church is increasingly directed towards an endless Christmas season – so much so that the Christian season of Advent that immediately precedes Christmas is in danger of being lost and ignored.

Advent is much more sober and reflective – indicated by the fact that the traditional colour for Advent is purple – the same as Lent- and we don’t say the Gloria in services because that is too celebratory.

The season is defined by hope tempered by frustration.

We hope for a healed and redeemed world where all wrongs are righted, where every tear is wiped from every eye, where Justice and peace roll down like a river, and yet as we look at the world we realise that by our own efforts this is as unlikely now as it has been unlikely for 2000 years.

Yet hope springs eternal in the human heart, that this is the future we are committed to and we dare not let that vision slip from our imaginations.

It says in proverbs (29:18) that “without a vision the people perish” so we have to keep that flame of hope alive in our hearts, and while we have to realise that the end game is beyond us, we nevertheless are as a community of love, agents of God’s love and grace in the world and we work towards that future regardless. We are people of the Kingdom.

One of the most profound verses in the Bible about the coming of the Kingdom is in Luke’s gospel (17: 20-21)

²⁰ Once Jesus^[a] was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; ²¹ nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.”    

The kingdom of God is wherever you are, when you are as Paul used to say “in Christ”.

A transformed Christ-consciousness is where the kingdom of God is on earth.

So where we are, we bring the love and grace of God into every situation we find ourselves.

Thus, the Kingdom of God has no boundaries or limits

When Christ’s consciousness becomes our consciousness He becomes the cornerstone of a limitless spiritual building – the body of Christ.

The hope and joy of Christmas – the realisation that “God is with us” is the basis of the Christian life – that is where the story starts – but Advent is where the rubber hits the road, when we are called to live out that truth that God is with us in our daily lives and we find that our underlying joy is tempered with unfulfilled hopes and expectations.

Hope and frustration undergirded by Joy is a pretty good description of the Christian life and it is the life we are called to live as Paul writes in his letter today.

Like the Corinthian church then and the church now we find we go down many cul-de-sacs, and we fail continually to consistently maintain the standard set for us – and we then continually ask for forgiveness.

Nevertheless, God has chosen to work through us – yes – us – to bring people a taste of the Kingdom in these between times. We do so imperfectly, we fail often, but as I say quoting St. Teresa’s words so often – Christ has no other body except ours to work through.

But we go on regardless because we have seen the end. The end is Christ as he is also the beginning. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, who was and who is to come, the almighty.

And while the going may be hard and difficult at times, hearing words like that from Revelation, we can just echo Peter when he says “Where else can we go. You have the words of eternal life”