A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
(Isaiah 64.1-9; Psalm 80.1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1.1-9; Mark 13.24-37)
Today is a very special Sunday. It is the first day of the church calendar. This is the day on which we begin again our perpetual cycle of celebrating, rehearsing, and responding to the story, activity, and presence of God.
Advent, with all it’s echoes of New Year’s Day, is a beginning.
In recognition of this new season we have changed the colour of our church decor to purple. It symbolises our preparation, repentance, and expectant waiting. The other time we utilise purple is the season of Lent. Lent also has strong overtones of preparation and repentance.
The call of Advent is well placed at the beginning. It reminds us – from the very outset – that we are a waiting people. The church is a community dependant on, and waiting for, the action and activity of God. We do not rely merely on ourselves and our ideas. We depend on God.
Over the weeks leading to Christmas and beyond we will consider those heroes who waited well for the coming of the baby Jesus. As we do we inevitably find ourselves contemplating our own waiting in the face of Christ’s promised return.
Today we heard from Isaiah. This prophet desperately wanted to see God active and evident among the people of Israel again. His plea for God to ‘come down’ references the stories of old. Somehow the experience of his generation does not seem as direct, personal, and earth-shattering as the old, familiar, stories suggest.
Isaiah overflows with a holy discontent in the face of this. He wants to experience God’s presence, as he says, ‘so that the mountains would quake’. I sincerely hope you do too.
Isaiah also considers the coming of God that he is hoping and fervently praying for, it terms of ‘fire’. God’s presence can make dead ‘brushwood’ leap, dance, and burn. The useless become useful. He pleads with heaven to light a fire under Israel. God can make even these people – as fire can to cold, stagnant water – boil!
God changes things. God agitates. God truly is one who moves, shakes, and remoulds. The presence of God is what Isaiah’s ‘sinful’ generation needs.
And our generation differs little.
Isaiah certainly holds the people responsible for their actions. It is intriguing, however, that he also points to God’s behaviour: ‘you were angry and we sinned’; ’because you hid yourself we transgressed’, and later; ‘you have hidden your face from us and delivered us into the hand our our iniquity’. Isaiah goes on to remind God that we are clay and it is God who is the potter.
Isaiah could never be accused of passive waiting. His prayer is action, a hope-filled waiting. It is a plea for God to come down again. It epitomises the call, the hope, the priority, of Advent.
And so does our Psalm. Hear again the ancient song’s chorus:
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts:
show us the light of your countenance,
and we shall be saved.
It is a prayer for God to intervene and, as such, is an Advent prayer through and through. The only question is: Can we make it our own?
Paul, as he opens his first letter to the Corinthian community, emphasises the activity of God in the salvation that is being birthed among them. Paul is called ‘by the will of God’ and the Jesus-people who live in that city are ‘called to be saints’. Implied here is one who calls.
Paul goes on to express his thankfulness to God for the gift of grace ‘given in Christ Jesus’ . Indeed the community lacks nothing as they ‘wait for the revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ’.
Make no mistake. Here is another advent plea: God acts in Jesus, calls apostles and saints, equips them with everything needed, and then ‘will strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ’. God’s activity preparing us now for the coming of our Lord.
The passage fittingly ends with the assurance that ‘our God is faithful’. Wait in this knowledge and you will wait well.
Our gospel passage presents us with a comparison between our waiting and the waiting of a household temporarily without their head. We heard a similar parable a few weeks ago. It told how the faithful and the unfaithful wait differently. Some wait in obedient action and expectation of the master’s return. Some, like the talent-burying slave, wait in disobedient fear.
We can wait in genuine hope or merely ‘wait-and-see’. It is a world of difference.
Waiting is an important – even if at times frustrating – part of being human. We wait for busses, meals, checkout cues, political action, justice, and green traffic lights.
Each of these moments holds the potential to test our patience. They also, however, contain the possibility of us becoming more Christ-like. Somehow, I suspect I am better, humbler, and more aware of my inherent need of others as a result of waiting.
I hope each time you find yourself waiting during this ‘waiting season’ you are reminded of your dependance on the service, ability, and skill of others. It is well said that no one is an ‘island’. We need each other.
And we also need God.
As I consider these Advent passages I find myself aware of the interaction between our pleading for God to come and a sense of patience. I also see a coming together of God’s activity and our active participation alongside this call. God is active and we have a responsibility.
Perhaps these all too easily polarised realities form an axis where waiting becomes truly hopeful. A hope saturated waiting will brim with the type of patience that pleads for God’s presence. It will also be aware of the vital activity of God even as we give generously of our time and talent for the Kingdom of God.
I suspect that it is only as we learn to hold these aspects of our faith together that we encounter a truly Christian hope.
And so it is appropriate that we light the hope candle today. During Advent we prepare for and anticipate our encounter with God. We ‘turn around’ (repent) because – whether we are ‘awake or asleep’ (as we heard last week) we will one day meet the God of the universe ‘face to face’.
This is more an habitual apologising for our wrong. Perhaps repentance includes this. It also, however, involves a change of heart. We resolve, as we repent, with God’s help, to live lives aligned with God’s heart. They will be truthful, honest, just, peaceful, joyful, and loving. Anything short of this is a superficial, apologising, without change. It is ingenuous.
And it is, dangerously, religion in denial of the power of God. I suspect God is not such a fool.
I pray that this community, and you, will never be content with anything less than the very power and presence of the God who is truly among us. Advent’s urge to wait in hope for God’s action is our annual reminder of our need for God.
If people see anything in us, I pray that it is the living, intervening, and coming God who dwells here. There is need for nothing more and most certainly nothing less.
Perhaps the repetition in our Psalm can become your prayer for this Advent. It would not be difficult for you to learn it this week:
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts:
show us the light of your countenance,
and we shall be saved.
May we, for our sake and the sake of all we come in contact with this Advent, pray this prayer with the same passion and conviction that characterised the life and prayer of the great prophet Isaiah.
Amen.