Sermon Based on:- Matthew 24. 36-44; Isaiah 2. 1-5; Romans 13. 11-14
Preached on :-First Sunday of Advent 01.12.19
Today is the first Sunday of the liturgical calendar and we now enter Year A of the three year liturgical cycle. You will now notice that our Gospel reading for most Sundays will be from the Gospel according to Matthew. The liturgical calendar begins with the Advent season.
Over the course of the four Sundays before Christmas we will focus on Hope, Faith joy and peace, as we enter into the time of celebration of Christ’s birth.
Now turning to this first Sunday of Advent we are reminded and encouraged to ‘WAIT’. On an everyday basis we wait for many things. We wait for a bus or tram because we expect it to arrive, even though we cannot see it coming but we hope it will come. The period of Advent fills us with the same hope for the Second Coming of Christ which will bring all God’s plans for the world to completion. As we wait in hope for the Second Coming of Jesus, we are conscious of the fact that God is present with us while we wait for the fulfilment of God’s plans.
The words of Jesus in the Gospel today express the mood of this early part of the Advent season,
“Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
Matthew 24:36-44, an appropriate text for the first Sunday in Advent, being a discussion of the return of Christ and the events that will accompany that return.
Waiting is the hard part. We are not used to waiting these days! The constant pace and demand of life, especially through electronic media makes us increasingly impatient and intolerant of having to wait. Sometimes, I am not happy if my computer screen does not instantly spring into life on demand!
Advent is about watching and waiting for the coming of God the Son to complete his work, but doing so in activity and hope. On this ADVENT SUNDAY we are reminded by our scriptures that, though the world seems bleak and broken at times, God is going to complete the job he started in Bethlehem on that first Christmas, and continued in Jesus’ death and mighty resurrection at Easter. Advent is about the sure and certain hope that God will finish what he has started, that truth and justice will triumph in the end. And, that God wants you & me to be a part of bringing that future about.
What are your hopes and dreams at present – for yourself, your family, your church, for after death? Our lives are full of hopes: worldly, natural hopes, important and trivial.
Advent Sunday calls us back to our hopes and dreams in Christ. Are we complacent in our spiritual waiting, or active in pushing forward the boundaries of the Kingdom of God as his disciples? So here we are on Advent Sunday 2019 called to renew our hope in the Lord who still comes to us now, every minute, every moment, calling us to watch and wait and join in with his work in the world. Waiting in Advent hope is not about inertia and leaving it all to God. “For we are co-workers in God’s service” (1 Corinthians 3.9).
Yesterday, was St Andrew’s Day, the day on which we celebrate that lesser known apostle. Andrew was not one to hang around inactively. He was always bringing people to Jesus: his brother Peter, the boy with the loaves and fishes, the Greeks who wanted to see Jesus…… He didn’t just sit there and wait! He watched, waited and responded to Godly opportunities.
Advent is a wake-up call to the Church to watch and pray, but not to stop there, rather to see what God is doing and join in. A static Christian is like a stagnant pond, having little value, use or beauty. Stagnant ponds smell: so in a spiritual sense do stagnant Christians! The message of Advent is to reject stagnation and complacency.
We learn from our Gospel reading this morning that Jesus could come at any time. He could arrive at this very moment, or he could be delayed for several millennia. There’s just no telling. As he told his disciples,
“But
no one knows of that day and hour,
not even the angels of heaven,
but my Father only.”(Matthew 24:36)
That makes the waiting doubly hard, and it can lead us to ask, “Is he coming, or not?”
The answer lies in the gospel reading for this morning: “Yes, he’s coming … at a moment when you least expect him.” So, look for the sign of Noah. That’s your cue to knowing that the end is near and that our honoured guest is at the door.
What, exactly, is the sign of Noah? It may not be what we think. In the Old Testament, the story of Noah and the great flood was brought on by the sinfulness of the world. Genesis 6:5 says,
“Yahweh
saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil
continually.” (Genesis 6:5)
The picture that comes to mind is that of wholesale immorality, lewdness, debauchery and hedonism to the max.
So, we might think that the sign of Noah has to do with the decadence of the world around us and its preoccupation with sex and violence and every form of lewd behaviour – that if the world is truly going to hell, it would be a sure sign that the Second Coming is near.
But no, that’s not what Jesus said. He said,
“For
as in those days which were before the flood
they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day that Noah
entered into the ship…”(Matthew 24:38)
The fault is not that people are doing these things, but that they are so caught up in the routine of daily living that they take no thought for their spiritual lives. Their problem is not ‘gross sin’ but ‘secular indifference’ – ‘apathy about God. As far as Jesus is concerned, it’s not the people’s sinfulness that is the problem, it is their complacency, their relative ease and comfort.
Our Epistle reading this morning is brief but extremely rich passage, And, Paul tells us that as Christians we are all “morning people.” The time is just before dawn, the sky is brightening, the alarm is ringing, day is at hand. It is time to rouse our minds from slumber, to be alert to what God is doing in the world, and to live in accordance with God’s coming salvation.
Paul is saying, don’t just sit there, but join in with God. So what is God calling us to do between now and Christmas? There is no settling in the Christian life. We are not called to be sleepily religious, but to be faithful and adventurous for and with Jesus.
In one of our Tuesdays Bible study; I was reminded of the fact that God has double vision for each one of us: God sees us as we are and as we can or should be in Jesus.
We are living in the “last time” – that is, the time when so much of God’s work of redemption has been completed. Christ has come; and His sacrifice for the sins of humanity has been made. His gospel has been taken all over the world. There are still specific places here and there where it hasn’t yet reached; but for the most part, it has circled the globe. And now, nothing remains but the soon coming of our Lord. These truly are the last days – the final stages of God’s redemption program.
Every day we live, the coming of Jesus is one day closer than the day before! How motivating this should be! I believe it was what motivated Paul to write the words of this morning’s passage.
“For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near”. Our salvation is nearer – in what way? The Lord’s return is nearer. Than we first believed. Every day brings us closer Think of how much time has gone by since we believed!
Advent summons us to be a people of hope who wait for the Lord’s return & to work to bring about His kingdom.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen