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Sermon - The First Sunday of Advent (B) - 30th November 2008
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7 nd 8am
Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, Mark 13:24-37
During Advent the voices of the prophets come through loud and clear. In preparing us for the coming of God in human form. What better wake-up call than Isaiah proclaiming that “we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth”. Just what we want to hear on a pleasant Sunday morning, as part of the good news that is proclaimed and pondered in church.
Advent means preparing ourselves to celebrate not only the birth of Jesus but his second coming, an event, which does not lend itself to nostalgia or glad carols. When Isaiah tells us that even our good intentions and actions can be worthless in God’s sight. However, the good news is that we are all in this together, both good and bad alike.
The prophets provide cold clarity about what it means to be God’s people and what our responsibilities are to each other and to this awesome God. How remarkable that God refuses to give up on us. How amazing that even after we have had tears “in full measure”, this is the God to whom we pray: “Come, save us”. This is the God who has promised to come to us.
How often in extremity have we prayed something like, “Give us life, that we may call upon your name”, making an rash promise to use our lives to better purpose next time, to resist the temptations to sloth, anger, pride, greed, malice and everything else that would deflect us and diminish our better selves.
1 Corinthians is a mirror to Isaiah, as Paul also addresses what it means to be God’s people, specifically those who are members of the body of Christ. Who knows what might happen if all of us, the strangers, friends, enemies and indifferent parties who make up our congregations on a Sunday morning could say could say to each other “I give thanks for you” to each another, at the peace and discover that we mean it?
Isaiah’s “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down” is the cry of a people who realize that they’ve made such a mess of the world that only God can set it right. This reflects a truth of personal experience that it’s only after a crisis, with the stars falling from our sky and the ground shaking beneath our feet, that we see clearly, that we remember what is worth caring about and what is not.
The prophecy of Mark does not make comfortable reading, speaking as it does of the fading of the great lights in the sky one which life on earth depends and times of distress. However, it comes with the promise that, at the end of it all, Jesus will come in glory to gather all those he has chosen, from the four winds, from the ends of the earth, to the ends of heaven.
The community for whom Mark was writing was under persecution. They had fully expected the Second Coming any day and faced with the martyrdom of friends and relations and living under the threat of their own, must often have wondered why Jesus delayed. Had he not said that he would come before the passing of a generation?
It is no accident that apocalyptic literature and its reminder that God acts across history and in supernatural ways, finds favour among people who are socially and politically under siege. The fierceness of beasts and the violence of the cosmic and natural disasters give language and image to how intensely terrible the world can be. Advent waiting is an invitation to solidarity with all that groans under the birth pangs of the new creation.
“From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed .” This is a God who not only carries the power of the heavens; this is a God who “works for” those who wait, who work for justice and above all, who remember!
These are Advent words: come, wait, remember. The poverty of love is filled in the humble act of deference to the one who will come. The awakening to possibility is ignited through the impregnation of divine love in human form. It takes patience and humility to wait for the God who “works for” us.
The people of God need constantly to be reminded that God is faithful. This memory evokes trust. God’s faithfulness, not ours, is the bottom line of such trust. It was Jesus himself who commanded the Advent message for the ages that we are to “Stay awake! ... And what I say to you I say to all: Watch”
Advent calls us to watch for the coming of the faithful one. Wonders of salvation and justice will be worked for those who wait and cry out for God to join with them in the solidarity of love.
This sermon prepared using material from. www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3281, the Christian Century Foundation, www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&week=B_Advent_1 and www.wellsprings.org.uk/weekly_wellsprings/year_b/sunday_33.htm