Advent Sunday, 30th November, by Fr Jack

Isaiah 2.1-5
St Paul to the Romans 13.11-end
St Matthew 24.36-44

Some big picture themes to notice as we begin Advent. And Advent is a very appropriate season to zoom out and see the big picture, after all.

We have begun a new Church Year, so we have begun a new lectionary year. The readings given for each day of the year at Morning and Evening Prayer and the Eucharist work thematically, weaving a New and Old Testament reading and a Gospel reading together, and across the days and weeks (day by day in minute detail and Sunday by Sunday slightly zoomed out) trying to cover, the big themes of Scripture, give us the key people, and cover most of the Bible. This happens over a three year cycle. We have just left Year C, and so we begin again with Year A today.

As for the Gospel readings, Year A is principally St Matthew. So we will hear a lot from him in the next 12 months. Year B is mostly St Mark, and Year C mostly St Luke. St John is spread across all A, B and C years, with lots in B, because St Mark’s Gospel is so much shorter than the others.

What does that matter? Because we live the cycle of the Church Year, going deeper and deeper in the character of the seasons and feasts and saints, and the lections (the readings) become the fabric of our lives day to day and week to week. They illuminate and underline, they provoke and stretch us.

And that brings me on to my second big picture theme. Israel. As in Isaiah today in the first reading and the heart-wrenching lament of the Advent Prose, also from Isaiah. In Advent the readings speak lots about ‘Israel’ and ‘Zion’. Those words are politicised and contested today. They always have been, our history and our faith cannot escape the human communities in which they have been lived out. But, when Scripture uses words like Zion and Israel, they are not referring to the modern state of Israel, or modern political ideas of Zionism in its various forms. They are referring to God’s Promised Land of life, hospitality and peace. A promise longed and lived for on earth, and consummated in the coming Kingdom of Heaven. We can hear this ‘Israel’ as a promise and hope made all the more poignant and important because of the sadness of that region on the other side of the Mediterranean in our own time.

As I say, the Scriptures are there to illuminate and underline, to provoke and stretch us, to comfort and to challenge.

And, just you wait, St Matthew will do plenty of that in the year ahead. St Matthew, we think, was writing for a religious Jewish audience in the Early Church. He wrestles again and again with the local religious elite, shaking them down from their ivory towers. St Matthew’s Jesus speaks way more about judgment and hell than any other Biblical author, and he doesn’t restrain his tongue!

So, preparing ourselves for all this in the Lectionary Year A ahead, we do well to hear St Paul today - wake up! Put on the Lord Jesus, get your life ready!

But what are we getting ready for? Well, Isaiah tell us: The promise that in days to come, when Jesus comes again His house, established on the highest heavens, will be a home of peace and justice and life for all creation. Spears to pruning hooks, swords to ploughshares. That image that is not just a lack of war, but a place of fecundity and abundance.

We long for that promise today, and we live towards it, carrying on our hearts in prayer at this Eucharist people in Sudan and Ukraine and the Middle East and everywhere that God’s Kingdom feels so very far away.

That is what we are being told by St Paul to wake up to. That is what Jesus tells us to keep awake for in today’s Gospel. Get with the programme! The greed and ab-use, the fear and violence that holds sway in so many places must, urgently, be put behind us. And we must live towards the coming of the Risen Christ.

Those are fine ideals, and nice words. But, let’s be practical. You and I cannot stop the war in Gaza or Ukraine or anywhere else. You and I cannot turn the tables on economic systems that perpetuate growing chasms of inequality of labour, living conditions and pay across the world.

Well, actually, some of us can. There are powerful people in this church, and in our networks, and we can encourage and help one another to make real change.

But, putting that to one side, no I cannot convince major governments to stop investing in fossil fuels. But that doesn’t mean I stop doing my little bit. Just because thousands of people are murdered across the world every day, does not mean I can do the odd little murder and not worry too much. The call of the Gospel on ours lives to wake up and live in the light, is not only if everyone else thinks it’s a good idea too. It simply is.

So now we’re getting to the point, with which I’ll finish. Sort your lives out. I’ve never said that in a sermon before! And the idea of saying it made me laugh when I wrote this!

But actually, yes, why not. Sort your lives out. Advent is exactly the season to look again at what belongs to the light, what belongs to the promise of the Kingdom. What in our lives is exactly the stuff by which we are being made more and more ready to meet Jesus and help others to step joyfully into His new creation?

And, likewise, doing a little pruning: what doesn’t? What spears and swords do we need to reshape, or dump altogether.

Advent is a pilgrimage from darkness to light. What holy habits, what topics of prayer, reflection or reading, what actions, what intentionally cultivated dispositions, what sacrifices or fasts, what anything will help you and those around you live towards the light over the next four weeks of Advent?

The world is dark in these December days to come. We’re not even at the shortest day yet, and the nights are still lengthening for 21 more days. And it is precisely here that we stand at our firmest in the promise of God’s hospitality, in the Israel of the Promised Land, where every kind of sword and spear (every kind of death), has been transfigured by the Babe of Bethlehem, into tools for life and springs of Living Water (abundant life in every way). Jesus is on the move. The Bridegroom is coming, let us go out to meet him.