Sermon at Parish Mass, the First Sunday of Advent 2015

Jeremiah 33.14-16

1 Thessalonians 3.9-13

Luke 21.25-36

Advent is a time when we take the long view. It’s as though we have been on a long hike and have reached a mountain ridge where we can see in all directions. We can look back behind us, where we have been. We see the mysterious depths of human origins, the first stirrings of desire for God, the Patriarchs and Prophets of Israel who announced God’s message. We see the long sweep of history and God’s purposes of salvation being worked out in spite of human sin.

And we see the culmination of that history, the mountain top of that journey, the coming of the Messiah, the entry of God into the world in flesh.

And we look forward to the far horizon, to the final fulfillment of God’s promises when the work of salvation is complete and all will be gathered in.

Looking both backwards and forwards we see times of darkness and tumult. This is the context of today’s gospel reading, where Jesus predicts tumultuous events. The focus of this actually is quite immediate: a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, if the Jewish nation would not abandon the path of armed revolution. A disaster that came to pass about 40 years after Jesus was speaking. The language that Jesus uses is a familiar prophetic style. “Earth shattering” signs, cosmic portents, were a convention used by the prophets of similar events in Israel’s past such as the Assyrian invasion or the deportation to Babylon.

But this immediate prediction of disaster  is overlaid against the longer vision of future hope. In the midst of these great upheavals and disastrous events those who have faith in Jesus have a sure hope. “The Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory reveals that he is the Messiah, the eternal and unshakeable King. This is true now. It was true then, even when the Roman armies were breaking down the walls of Jerusalem. But the time will come when the power and great glory of the Son of Man will fill all things and God’s kingdom of righteousness, love and peace will be all in all. The fulfillment of his redeeming work is certain. “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  

Faith in God’s promises is needed to give hope, especially at times of darkness and tumult. In this morning’s Old Testament reading Jeremiah promises the coming Messiah. But because this is a short extract we don’t see that he is at the same time predicting invasion, conquest and exile. He is a prophet both of immediate disaster and of ultimate hope. And the vision of hope is needed most especially in the times of deepest darkness.

In this in-between time, when  the Messiah has come but we still await the fulfillment of all things in him, there have been times of great darkness and tumult and disaster. Wars, plagues, the end of empires, persecutions. The message of ultimate hope is needed all the more in these times. I wonder what it was like celebrating Advent during the first world war, or the second. I wonder what it is like now for Christians living in North Korea or under the domination of the so-called IS.

And there is tumult, uncertainty and anxiety now, even for us in the comfortable West. It may be that the world situation will get much worse in the near future before it gets better. There is no promise that it won’t. But there is the assurance that the Messiah has come, that humanity has a Saviour, and that the redemption of the world is assured and is getting nearer every day.

Faith and hope need to be our watchwords for this time. And for faith and hope to be possible we need to be attentive to Jesus, to what he is doing in the world. We need to read the signs of the times in the light of scripture and centred on him who is the hope of the world.

Faith and hope are virtues. We’re not born with virtues, they are not like the colour of our eyes. Virtues are more like riding a bike. They are habits that we need to practice until they become part of us and we can then do them without even thinking. Faith and hope need to be practiced. They are how we need to live day by day, every day of our lives, until they become so much part of us that we practice them without even thinking about it.

When faith and hope have become habits in us, virtues that are second nature, they will be able to support us when cataclysmic things are happening in the world around us, and also at the times of tumult and darkness in our personal lives. Those dark times will happen. They happened to Jesus, so why would we imagine that they will not happen to us? It is in the dark times of life above all that we need the habit of faith and hope, of attention to Jesus and what he is doing in and through the present situation, however dark it may be.

Advent is a time of sobriety and watchfulness. It is no accident that it is the season of long nights, of crisp frosty air and rising before dawn. It reminds us that the Church in this in-between time is always keeping attentive vigil through the night, however long it may last. In our culture it is often the exact opposite, and here is a challenge to us as Christians to be counter-cultural. A colloquial version of the Bible called “The Message” renders Luke 21.34 thus: “be on your guard. Don't let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping.”

That is what “Christmas” has been reduced to in much popular culture. But faith and hope give a meaning and direction to culture that parties and drinking and shopping can never reach. From the mountain top of Advent we see God’s hope, God’s promises, God at work down through all the history and shipwreck of human sin. We see God’s promise fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah, his Son, sent into the world to be our Saviour. And we look to the  ultimate horizon of God’s saving work, when the power and great glory of his Son will fill all things. Therefore, even now, however dark the times may become, we “stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near”.