The Real Advent

Sermon  291115 – Advent 1

Every year I make the same mistake, and I really should know better by now.

We reach the first Sunday in Advent, and in my mind I assume that the lectionary, the set readings for each Sunday in the church year, is going to be pointing us towards Bethlehem. Surely this is where it starts to get Christmassy! The tree’s up – the banners are up – the purple pulpit fall’s out - the advent crown’s here. Bring it on! 

So it’s always a bit of a rude awakening to find that the readings for today seem to have more to do with the end of the world than the baby in the manger!

But as usual there is a method in the Lectionary’s madness – and when you look at these readings more closely, you discover that the themes they deal with are exactly what we need to be thinking about in Advent.

Waiting for God. Our Need of God. His Love for the World. His coming into the World. That’s what today’s passages are all about. And that’s why some wise person long ago pencilled them in for this time of year.

So what about these readings?

Well, a few moments ago we sang these words: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here”.

And although they were written centuries after Isaiah’s time, they sum up the cry of his heart perfectly.

Isaiah’s people – God’s chosen race - have been exiled in Babylon. God’s city –Jerusalem- and the Temple that graced it, have been burned to the ground.

“So where is God in all of  this?” he asks. “Where are the promises God made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? Didn’t he promise to bless King David’s line, and always be present in the Temple that Solomon had built? What now for the people of God?”

And in his distress, he finds himself thinking back to the great stories of Israel’s past, like the story of the Exodus. Times when God seemed to intervene in miraculous ways. And he pines for God to do the same in his day and age.

“Why don’t you tear the sky apart and come down? The mountains would see you and shake with fear. They would tremble like water boiling over a hot fire. Come and reveal your power to your enemies and make the nations tremble at your presence!”

And if you listen carefully you can hear the frustration coming through: – if you’ve acted this way in the past, God, why don’t you do the same now? Can’t you see that we need your help more than ever?!  Come down and show the nations who it is we worship; terrify them into submission!

I don’t know about you, but I imagine Isaiah standing there, looking up to heaven with his hands raised  - waiting for an answer. Almost demanding an answer.

And an answer comes, but not in the way he expected. Because in the silence that fell once he’d stopped shouting at God, a profound realisation came to him.

He’d been asking God to reveal himself so that the nations would waken up to who God really is. In truth, it was Israel who needed to waken up.

Why were they in exile in the first place? Because they’d stopped following God!

V5: “You were angry with us, but we went on sinning. In spite of your great anger we have continued to do wrong since ancient times”.

“No-one turns to you in prayer; no-one goes to you for help. You have hidden yourself from us and abandoned us because of our sins”.

What started out as confrontation becomes confession – confession to the compassionate God to whom Israel belongs, and whom Israel has too often forgotten.

“You are our Father, Lord. We are like clay, and you are like the potter. You created us, so do not be too angry with us or hold our sins against us for ever. We are your people; be merciful to us”.

Isaiah started out with both eyes fixed firmly on the past, demanding that God would deliver them with the fire and thunder of old. But what he and his people needed wasn’t to invoke the God of the past; it was to rediscover him and worship him in the present.

Now hold onto that thought for a moment, and come forward almost three millennia to the year 1975. And the end of the world.

Now if you weren’t looking carefully in 1975 you’ll probably have missed the end of the world, but that’s what we were promised was going to happen by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Now you know these folks – you’ve probably had them at your door, and they’re nice people. But there are a couple of things you need to know about them. Firstly, they’re not just another branch of the Christian church. They might look that way because they use the same language and they seem to know their Bibles, but they’re not. Dip into their teachings and you’ll discover that they deny the trinity and the divinity of Jesus, two of the cornerstones of orthodox Christian faith for nearly 2 millennia. Might look like a church, but they believe some quite different things.

Secondly – you might not know this, but when they go door knocking it’s not all for your benefit. It’s something they’re obliged to do by their church and they believe it’s part of the way they work their way to heaven. So don’t give them too much credit for being altruistic when they go out chapping doors in all weathers. The truth is, it’s as much for them as it is for you.

But I digress – we were talking about the end of the world! In the late 60’s and early 70’s the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society – in other words, the Jehovah’s Witnesses – started predicting that the world would end in 1975 because according to their chronology that year marked exactly 6000 years  since Adam and Eve were created.

Publication after publication built up huge expectation among their followers that everything was drawing to a close and Jesus would return towards the autumn of 1975

People sold their houses and their cars because they thought they wouldn’t need them any more. They left their jobs so they could give themselves over to evangelism and outreach. Young people didn’t take up scholarships they’d won to university or college. What was the point? Jesus was coming back!

And of course, 1975 came and went with no sign of the end times, and precious little in the way of apology or explanation from the Watchtower. Small wonder 30,000 disillusioned people left the organisation or were expelled from it over the next year.

I tell that as a cautionary tale before we get too far into Mark chapter 13, because it’s undoubtedly one of the most difficult passages to understand in the whole of Scripture, and we need to take a deep breath before we plunge in and try to make sense of it.

For one thing – the language in Mark 13 is apocalyptic. When Biblical writers want to paint a picture of some great cosmic event, like the day of judgement, they push language to its very boundaries. Stars fall from heaven. The moon no longer shines. The sun itself grows dark.

Now we know that stars can’t fall from heaven; for one thing they’re billions of miles away and even if one decided to fall to earth, it’d burn us to a crisp before it got anywhere near us!

So I don’t think we’re meant to take these images literally – what Jesus is saying is that the things that are going to unfold will be of such importance that the whole of the cosmos is going to be affected by them.

But what is it that’s going to happen? Is this all about the end of the world and Jesus’ return, or does he have something else in view?

Well if you go back to the beginning of chapter 13 you’ll find that this whole conversation started because Jesus told the disciples that one day soon the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, just as it had been in Isaiah’s time.

“When will this happen?”, they ask. And he tells them – in those days there will be wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes and famine. Men will betray one another and children their parents. Something called the Abomination that causes Desolation will be seen standing in the place where it should not be.

It couldn’t sound more like the end of the world. But actually, when you read your history, you discover that these things have already happened. They happened within 35 years of Jesus’ death!

In 66AD the Jews rebelled against the Roman occupation. Rome responded by sending forces to quell the uprising. Different Jewish factions struggled for supremacy among themselves and much blood was spilled before the fighting even began.

The Romans besieged Jerusalem; mothers were forced to eat their own children to survive. And when the Imperial troops finally broke into the city in AD70, they set up the Emperor’s Standard in the Temple, thus placing a pagan idol in Israel’s most Holy Place.

Those who were able to, fled to the hills leaving a city and Temple once more in flames. It wasn’t the end of the world. But it was certainly the end of their world. The world they had always known.

A new age was dawning, and with it a new covenant – without temple, and without sacrifice.  The Jews, though still God’s chosen people, were no longer the centre of the story. Christ was the centre of the story – and any man woman or child from any race, tongue or creed who owned him as Saviour would receive the Holy Spirit and become a Temple of the Living God.

Jesus has become the centre of the story, drawing all the peoples of the world to himself. And woven into his discourse in Mark 13 is the promise that one day he will return to restore all things. That’s part of our faith – the belief that history is going somewhere – that there is a final end, a day of reckoning when each one of us will have to answer the question “what have you made of Christ?”

But Jesus himself says “don’t try and guess when that day’s going to happen”!  

“No-one knows when the day or hour will come – neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; only the Father knows. So be on watch; be alert, for you do not know when the time will come”.

Can you see from that that there’s an equal and opposite error to the one Isaiah made?

Isaiah wanted God to come as he had done in the past, and ended up nearly missing him in the present.

And folk who get caught up on the return of Jesus are missing the point too. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future. Our task is to stay alert and go about the work he’s given us in the present moment.

Advent is all about now. We remember the story of Jesus birth, the build up, the waiting; and we anticipate his return and the consummation of all things.

But the time in which we meet him is now. There is no other time. The past has gone, the future is never ours to hold onto. This is the moment of crisis. This is Advent.

Don’t miss the hard edge of Christmas in the sentimentality of the season. The child in the manger is none other than the coming King who will one day return to claim his own and call us to account for the lives that we’ve lived.

And today is his Advent. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” says Jesus in the book of Revelation. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me”.

That’s the real Advent. Christ coming into our lives in the here and now.

So this year, I want you to try and see beyond Mary and Joseph; the stable, and the manger; the grumpy innkeeper and the wise men with their strange gifts.

It’s true that Christ came to them, 2000 years ago. That’s what we celebrate at Christmastime. But he also comes to us; this very day; this very moment. Seeking entry into our lives.

What will you be doing when the knock comes? Losing yourself in a past? Dreaming of the future? Nodding off when you should be about your work? Keep Alert! Keep Watch! Because that’s what Advent is all about.

“No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin. Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in”.

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.