1. Good Morning. Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the mediations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
So Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the Sunday in which we recall the hope we have in Christ.
As followers of Christ, we wait for His return. We lit our first Advent Candle to remember that as He once came to us in the humble manger at Bethlehem and gave light to the world, so He is coming again in power to deliver His people and to usher in the Kingdom of God!
We lit this candle this morning to remind ourselves to be alert and to watch for his return.
Advent is the time when the Church longs for the coming of the Lord!!! In this longing the Church looks in two directions - backwards to the Lord’s first coming as a child born to Mary in Bethlehem. But we also look forward to His Second Coming as Son of Man at the end of all time!
So these readings for Advent begin with a magnificent passage from the early chapters of Isaiah, the prophet whose writings will dominate the entire season.
The First Reading from Isaiah 2:1-5 gives us a vision of salvation, essentially a vision of peace, when the nations of the world, instead of going up against Jerusalem to attack it, will propose to each other that they should go up to “the mountain of the Temple of the Lord” to learn “the ways” of Israel’s God.
In response the people will hammer their swords into ploughshares – a marvelous expression of commitment no longer to wage war but to work together building a new order of peace. The appeal of such a vision at the present time hardly needs to be stated does it?
I loved our Psalm Response didn’t you? “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord!” This should ever be our exclamation as we come to worship God!
The Second Reading was from St. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. In it he reminded us “that it is the hour for us to awake from our sleep.” For Christ’s Second Coming will come like a thief in the night when we least expect it.
With Christ’s imminent coming in mind Paul calls us to;
“throw off the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light – to conduct ourselves properly not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, nor in rivalry and jealousy. But instead to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
The Gospel reading is a lesson on the future coming of the Son of Man. It addresses the sudden nature of this imminent time of fulfillment and of the need to be ready at all times for its dawning.
The primary message of the Gospel is: Stay awake! Be prepared! So St. Matthew points out the need for alertness, attentiveness; a disposition that is open to a change of heart.
This slogan would work very well in our times of the heightened alert status of Terrorist’s threats;
“Be ready! Don’t make excuses for being lazy and lethargic, sluggish and sleepy.”
What makes the Church focus upon the Second Coming of the Lord is the deep sense – arising out of the condition of our world – that the longed-for Heaven on earth which was inaugurated with Christ’s First Coming seems far from complete – but there’s this yearning – this deep yearning - in us for it’s completion! We yearn for the Second Coming!
In the saving events of Christ’s death and resurrection we have indeed been reconciled to God. In this renewed relationship we already enjoy the essentials of salvation. But as far as the outward conditions of our present existence go, we still have much to long for. The world in which we live is still a world captive to forces hostile to God.
We’re in the in-between time. C.S. Lewis called it the “Shadow Lands” for we stand in the shadow of the first coming as we longingly await Christ’s Second Coming!
We pray year after year, “Maranatha— which means ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come.’” . . . But taken from the Greek, as maran atha—two words— is more literally translated “The Lord has come.” Then the comings—past, present, and future—all live together in one, “long sigh of the soul.”
Can we stop for a moment and reflect on this “long sigh of the soul” as we walk through the Shadowlands of this life?
How many of us in this sanctuary can actually feel this long sigh in our souls as we see the tragic disconnect between the way we know things should be and the way things actually are?
How many of us have stopped hoping – stopped dreaming about our futures, our jobs, our marriages?
How many of us have stopped dreaming about the way things should be and have adopted a cynical, skeptical, suspicious, scornful, negative, scoffing or dyspeptic reaction to the world in which we live?
I’m not asking this to embarrass any of us – not at all – there were certainly times in my life when I had no sense of God’s presence and certainly no sense of His actually coming back to save all of us! Honestly, there were many seasons of Advent when I was so full of everything else that there was literally no room for Christ or any authentic thoughts about Him in my life. I suspect that that’s probably true of some or many of us right now in this Sanctuary.
Again, I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this to embarrass you or put you down - not at all! I’m simply recognizing what is. I don’t want to waste time finding excuses for this. The fact is that this is a season pregnant with emotions and expectations and a bag fully of other stuff.
Let’s face it – this season of Christmas is over stuffed with emotional detritus that would keep a rhinoceros belly-sick for a month!
But, as a Christian – I mean a real Christian - who has actually had an experience of the living Christ, you and I have a vital or at least muted sense of the magic of this 4 week season of Advent – don’t we? It reaches into our souls and reminds us to dream – to hope – to believe again!
I find myself encouraged by this first Sunday’s message of hope especially In our reading from Isaiah:
All nations shall stream toward it;
many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may instruct us in his ways,
and we may walk in his paths.”
For from Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and impose terms on many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
one nation shall not raise the sword against another,
nor shall they train for war again.
O house of Jacob, come,
let us walk in the light of the Lord!
These affirmations from the ancient past stir my soul – my hope! May capacity to dream great dreams. O Lord, could it be that this will actually happen?
This sense that most of us harbor that peace isn’t a dream but an actual promise – a real hope – an actual historical reality – sooner than later? O God – could this hope actually come about?
O Lord, let it be so!!!!
I found myself resonating to the very core of my soul with the Psalm response: “Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.”
I had images of all of us moving towards magnificent mountains where God was waiting for us! Some of us were walking slowly with walking sticks but all of us had the look of hope transfigured on our faces – this is the look of Advent – for carry the magnificent weight of this promise – that all will one day be very very very well and all of us will live happily ever after!
And- in light of this - it was easy for me to hear Paul’s encouragements to:
“Throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; Ah . . . to put on the wonder of Jesus Christ – the One who broke the back of all soul-numbing hopelessness and gave to us all HOPE! Beyond all imagining!.
Yes, hope is like a healing ointment applied to our souls that seems to heal us to dream once again. To shuck-off the heavy soul-weariness of hopelessness and receive the delightful weightlessness of renewed hope in our ultimate redemption.
To believe again in miracles that defy what we have come believe is reality. To dream again without boundaries – without limitations! That’s what this season of Advent brings to us all . . . if we’re open for it!
To dream again – to wonder at the wonderment of a Being who came and comes and will come again TO US! TO You – TO me! To redeem us from our brokenness and to restore us to our rightful inheritance!
May we dream anew!
Let’s pray! . . .
