Advent.

(I Corinthians 15.24)

The turning of the year for the Christian church is

·        not New Year

·        but Advent.

Hectic Christmas preparation means Christians only think of birth of Christ.

But there are other Advent themes

 - the end of time,

·        the Day of Judgement,

·        the Christian longing for the Second Coming of Christ

-          a tension between the "already" and the "not yet",

·        the urgent notes to "watch" and "wake up",

·        prayer that God will not delay.

·        The Lords Prayer itself is an urgent,

·        Advent prayer. O come, O come Emmanuel!

St Paul wrote of the "groaning and travailing" of creation.

·        There is a longing for an End that makes sense of it all.

Human beings are made for ends.

·        Only at the end of lives can obituaries be written, and the whole life seen in some kind of perspective.

·        And when the End is known there is a judgement on what life is about, and what it is to be human.

Unlike the wheel of life of some Eastern traditions the linear sense of the Jewish and Christian scriptures give time a significance and history a meaning.

The very first verse of Genesis speaks of

·        a beginning,

·        a shaping moment of creation.

·        The Bible ends with a vision of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth.

·        At the centre of that new creation is set the lamb of sacrifice.

·        There at the heart of God's life is the face of Christ

-         in whose life God emptied himself, identifying completely with his creation,

-         redeeming all time,

-         so that every human life might find there a grace which gives meaning and its purpose.

When the Christian Church speaks in language of Messsianic expectation of the Christ who will come again in glory,

What it affirms is there will be a final triumph of the love made known in Christ.

That is the horizon of history and the End for which Christians long.

·        The king dying in love on the cross is the king who at the end will establish his domain of justice, love and peace.

The God who judges is the God who loves us to the uttermost.

Advent gathers hopes and longings and focuses them on Christ, from whose self-giving love all things owe their origin, and who is Omega, the End as well as the Beginning.

Luke 1:68,Zechariah father of John the Baptist:

      God will visit and redeem His people.

Promise from the beginning.          

Not out of blue, but promised long ago.

Most of the history of this world is:

·        battles, treaties, kings, presidents,

·        social changes, development of science and technology.

But certain events are beyond the scope of science and history:

Beginning: Steven Weinburg's  book:

`First three minutes'

·        Beginning of time and space.

End - sky rolled up like a garment.

·        End of time and space.

Also - middle of history:  

The Creator and Judge comes to visit us

- take our sins and pains to Himself and                            redeem us.

New creation - started in resurrection of Christ - embraces the cosmos

This also beyond science and history.

·        Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

The last prophet to announce his coming:

·        John the Baptist.

Who are you?

`Voice of one crying in the wilderness ...'

Why wilderness?

            Root of Israel's experience of God

                        - wandering in Wilderness.

            Abraham, Jacob, Moses.

In the Promised Land

            - must not forget.

      My father was a wandering refugee ...

We too must not forget that

            we do not have an abiding place here.

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A voice cried ...

Edward Munch's famous picture

`The Scream' -

·        A man holding his own face in horror.

·        He said he sensed a scream passing through nature.

Frightening wilderness of our modern world:

Modern weaponry, death by starvation, barren wastes of drug addiction.

But there is another cry:

`The Lord is coming' Repent and believe the good     news.'

Advent - first and Second Coming of Christ.

Disciples asked: When will your Second Coming be?

Jesus answers with another image from the wilderness:

`Where there is a carcass - there the vultures                        gather.'

When the world seems without life and hope .. then...

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Prepare a way in the desert.

Israel's witness - with all its faults - was a preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

·        Church's witness today must be a preparation for the Second Coming of Christ.

·        Your life and mine must show that we have a hope beyond this world.

·        If we set our hopes on heaven we can be of real use on earth and gain heaven.

·        If we set all our hopes on this world - we will find no purpose for life and be in danger of forfeiting heaven.

We are caught by this tragedy, either by

-         sheer selfishness or

-         by following ideologies that say they can build heaven on earth,

-         but have ended up sacrificing lives of 10s of millions of lives.

So if all our hope is for this world, we damage this world and lose heaven.

But if we fasten our expectations on the new creation

-         our lives will bring genuine benefit to this world and

-         we will attain heaven after we leave this world.

We cannot solve the whole world's problems

            But nor must we sit back and say:

                        `God will do it'.

The world must know by our love, truth and justice, that the Lord is coming,

-         so that many hearts will be ready for that great day,

-         when His kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is done in heaven.

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