Collect
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Almighty God, as your kingdom dawns, turn us from the darkness of sin to the light of holiness, that we may be ready to meet you in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Post Communion
O Lord our God, make us watchful and keep us faithful as we await the coming of your Son our Lord; that, when he shall appear, he may not find us sleeping in sin but active in his service and joyful in his praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Jeremiah 33.14–16
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’
Psalm 25.1–9
1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
O my God, in you I trust; ♦
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies triumph over me.
2 Let none who look to you be put to shame, ♦
but let the treacherous be shamed and frustrated.
3 Make me to know your ways, O Lord, ♦
and teach me your paths.
4 Lead me in your truth and teach me, ♦
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you have I hoped all the day long.
5 Remember, Lord, your compassion and love, ♦
for they are from everlasting.
6 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions, ♦
but think on me in your goodness, O Lord, according to your steadfast love.
7 Gracious and upright is the Lord; ♦
therefore shall he teach sinners in the way.
8 He will guide the humble in doing right ♦
and teach his way to the lowly.
9 All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth ♦
to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.
Epistle – 1 Thessalonians 3.9–13
How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Gospel – Luke 21.25–36
‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’
Then he told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’
Sermon on Advent Sunday
Today we stand at the beginning of our preparations for the coming of the Lord God Almighty into the world as the incarnate Son of Man, the Christ-Child. His advent is heralded with such outrageous language and expectations – both religious and secular. Let’s just look a little into the language the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church uses about the Advent of Jesus at Christmas.
Both the classic and the apocalyptic prophets are quoted. Their words of expectant hope form the ground of our faith. We have sung, “All my hope on God is founded” many times in order to align our actions to the one command Jesus gave us to follow – to love our neighbours, friend or enemy, as we love ourselves. What a hope we have as God approaches us.
The classic prophets used imagery as we heard in the Jeremiah reading today, where he says, “I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David.” This sort of saying is parabolic, just like many of the sayings of Jesus. The prophet uses a parable, the image of a branch, to speak of a king. It is a very clear one-to-one equivalence which invites our imaginations to add leaves and fruit to it. Engagement of the hearer is required with their word, isn’t it?
These classic prophets took everyday things and raised them into consciousness – for instance, the pottery jug, beautiful at one instant while the next finds it smashed. Such a happenstance reminds us of our fragility and how ephemeral our faithfulness can be. Or the image of a woman, the base woman of the night, a scarlet woman over against the good wife, a woman whose rectitude redeems humanity. The woman who is the symbol of the kingdom of Israel, at one moment seen as faithful, and at the other a woman whose morals are questionable at the very best.
Commonplace images are the usual of the classic prophetic utterance. They draw us into a dialogue with everything around us, to see the world anew. We have to say that the world takes on an urgency when we see it through the prophetic eye. Human endeavours to satisfy frailty pale into insignificance: the faithful wife becomes a harlot; the beautiful pitcher becomes a handful of shattered clay shards lying in the dust. However, all is redeemed by realising that God puts everything into perspective. Divine love for creation revitalises each and every object. The prophets may be describing the loving father who punishes his children when they speak of shattering pottery, but they really do believe in the message of God dealing with his chosen people so radically. The prophets speak of a divine love we don’t usually understand. Probably because we have forgotten it.
There is an urgency in all the classic prophets, demanding that we put our lives in order, but in apocalyptic prophecy there is an even more cutting edge to this urgency. These latter prophets use a language that is very different – the imagery changes from the everyday which is energised by the urgency of conversion to a language of fantasy, for instance, beasts with four faces, figures with feet of clay and arms of iron and bronze, four horsemen, the sky turning to blood and those images are just from canonical books. There are many books that did not make it into our bible which have more blood-curdling images. So many images which confront our everyday complacency to drive us to the edge of reason – perhaps into the region of belief, if not madness.
The gospel reading speaks of outlandish human expectations in the more extreme language of apocalyptic imagery. Today we read,
‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.’
Don’t these words speak to our situation today? Aren’t these the signs on the earth? Greta Gunberg has pronounced about the harm being done to the planet, hasn’t she? We have listened to the news about the damage the weather has done during the last few weeks the world over – floods where there haven’t been any and so on. We hear daily about the wars being fought far away, the destruction armies and air forces are effecting on civilian populations. And we even hear stories about people destroying the lives of others with knives in their hands. All of this carnage dominates the news. The signs, these apocalyptic prophets say, are visible if we would but open our eyes to see.
The Book of Common Prayer was written in a time as perilous as those of the apocalyptic prophets. It was a time of political upheaval where people were summarily executed. There was no stability and people made decisions of convenience. The hopes of the people were exactly the same as in biblical times, that there would be peace and righteousness everywhere.
“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility.”
This petition from our Collect speaks of our earnest desire for the good, that works of light would be the only thing we could possibly do because of the coming of Christ.
The incarnation of Jesus should allow us to have the strength to change the world by transforming ourselves. We pray “to cast away the works of darkness” – we petition for grace. We know what is right, don’t we? We know what we should do to one another. We do know what we should do for each other, don’t we? Isn’t it clear what is good?
Jesus exhorts us, ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.’ Jesus speaks of “that day” – this is the last moment, when all will fall away and God will come in glory. That day is what all the prophets pronounce. There is no escaping that day. All creation will be judged by its creator. Can anyone stand on their own on that day? Have our lives been without stain? That is the question the prophets continually ask as they speak about that day, whether in the gentler language of the major prophets or the extreme of the apocalyptic. We now pray for strength. We should be able to see some of our contemporaries echoing these essential questions as they raise our consciousness to what is the right thing to do in our everyday lives. Whether it is the council trying to get us to separate trash for appropriate disposal or the anger of the people ignored for the whole of their lives over justice as in the Post Office scandal. We need to respond to the right, and speak for the truth at all times, just like the prophets. Let us remember – Prophets are all around us. Prophecy speaks at every moment – if only we were to open our eyes and ears. – Too often we are complacent and are “weighed down with the worries of this life.” Then people are caught out unexpectedly by that day as in a trap. I think the prophets speak radically, demanding our attention with their exotic language, language which causes us to wonder just what that day will be like and whether it is just around the corner.