Advent in Chartham

This morning I preached for the beginning of Advent. The readings were 1 Corinthians 1.3-9 and Mark 13.24-37

I began my sermon by making people wait – for quite a while and then invited them sit down and then make them wait for a bit more. I really enjoyed that and was wondering how long I could keep it going for – people afterwards told me they liked that! Then I went onto say:

We spend a lot of time waiting don’t we? – did you know that on average, a person spends 45 to 62 minutes waiting every day. Over a lifetime, motorists spend up to 6 months waiting at traffic lights. We spend 7 years waiting in queues and the amount of time a man spends waiting on a woman – varies on the woman! And when it comes to the NHS, it’s probably best not to go there!!

The Bible is also full of people who are waiting -

• Sarah waited for a baby
• Moses waited 40 years in the desert
• The prophets waited 1000 years for a promised Messiah
• Mary waited 9 months of her 14 years for the child of God
• Jesus waited – 30 years of creeping time, 40 days in the desert, 3 years of being misunderstood and 3 days in the midst of hell – all this waiting -

We all wait for the future with hope – we hope it will be better, bring us happiness, a brighter time – we expect something of the future – and in our gospel reading today we get a glimpse of what that future holds in Jesus’ own words – “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but this future sounds scary to me, but as we heard in last Sunday’s celebration of Christ the King, Jesus is set in place where all authority has been given to him and in the following verses Jesus tells us that ‘they shall see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he send out the angels and gather his chosen ones…’

This reading raises a question in my mind, and might raise one or two in your own, bur for me, I am left asking – why does the church focus on Jesus’ return at the beginning of Advent when we logically think about Jesus coming first as a child?

Jesus is warning his disciples to be prepared! Advent is the season of preparation – not just for buying presents and decorating the tree, but looking forward and getting ready for the return of Christ as well as the arrival of the Christ child. Jesus is calling each of us to wait – and this is a very high calling!

As we wait God invites us to join in the excitement and anticipation of keeping watch, just like the little boy in this year’s John Lewis advert, he is keeping an eye on the calendar day after day and in his watching and waiting he is getting more and more excited as Christmas day approaches! At the end of his wait we are all treated to the delight of seeing the boy not receive a gift but give a gift to his surprised parents!

That little boy is a good example of how we must wait and anticipate in the arrival of Jesus as a baby and as a King. As Jesus makes clear in verse 33, ‘be aware, be alert, keep awake!’

How can we prepare this Advent for the coming of the Christ child and Christ the King? There are three things I invite you to consider:

1. Live in these weeks in a spirit of simplicity – it may seem contradictory to the world’s spirit of seasonal indulgence and material gain but we have the opportunity to fast before the feast. Christmas is worth celebrating, but it doesn’t have to be preceded by weeks of the same. When all is stripped away what should remain is our focus on God. Bishop Stephen Cottrell, in his book, ‘Do nothing for Christmas’ says,

“Spirituality is not some vague feeling of goodwill towards the universe; it is the way our experience of God is sustained and expressed. If we believe that God has a concern for all the universe, then so should we. If we believe that God is concerned with those who have little at Christmas then so should we. Christmas is a time of crippling difficulty for many people who live below the poverty line and inhabit the shadows of our increasingly flash and affluent society. Somewhere, probably very close to here there is someone worse off than us. There is no room at the inn because we have booked out all of the rooms, how can we reorder priorities to make room for others?”

2. Live these weeks in a spirit of humility – as Christian people Jesus calls us to be a humble witness to the world pointing as John the Baptist did only to Jesus and what he has done for us. In Advent our pointing should reflect the humbleness of Christ, in the generosity of our love and our giving. Generosity is not measured by how much we give but how much is left over after all the giving. What is left over is the spirit of joy of Christ born as King and Saviour of the world, redeemer, lover and friend.

3. Live these weeks with a spirit of joy – where we find our hope and strength in our thankfulness for His faithfulness and because of His faithfulness we keep pointing others to Him as a witness, with the cloud of witnesses before us so that they may wait with us for the coming of Christ.

Throughout Advent if we choose to live in the spirit of poverty, humility and joy we are joining in the mystical journey of waiting with Mary as she waits; just as Christ is forming in her body, so we reflect on Christ being formed in our own lives, coming again to us, being born again in us.

Where is God waiting to be born in our lives this Advent?

As we wait on God, God waits for us.

Advent is not mere repetition; but it gives us an opportunity to be available to a further call inviting us to an ever-deeper fulfillment in our relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist’s cry of preparation and repentance is as loud and relevant to us today as it was to the first hearers over 2000 years ago. The invitation is the same and we are invited to respond to this calling – to live in simplicity, point others to Jesus and wait and prepare for the coming of Christ to our world. Amen.