1 st Sunday of Advent - Come to rescue us!

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,

the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ

with righteous deeds at his coming,

so that, gathered at his right hand,

they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, 

who lives and reigns with you

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever.

(Collect of Mass)

Mt 24: 37 - 44

At this time of year shortly after our National Day of Thanksgiving and the famed “Black Friday” retail rush towards Christmas we find ourselves presented with the relatively short Advent season. This year due to Christmas being on a Sunday, we are blessed with four full weeks of this season of anticipation and preparation.

The liturgical color of purple you will see in Church may seem to put a temporary damper on the growing Christmas spirit of colored lights are shining ornaments.  While trees are decorated in public places and people sending electronic Christmas e-cards over the internet or still doing it the old-fashioned way by actually buying Christmas cards and writing in them. It is good to pause for a moment, think about the wonder and mystery of the approaching Christmas time and what it all truly means; that God the Creator would even bother to walk on this tiny planet, become one of us in the vast universe to do battle with the forces of evil and death out of love for us.  A love beyond what we can imagine.  Jesus enters undercover as it were, as a warrior ready to recapture his world. 

So in our Churches we see the more subdued color of purple and a wreath with four candles that are only lit gradually over four weeks.  No nativity scenes yet and the signs of Christmas out there in the marketplace are still to appear in all their beauty in our worship space.  To make matters even more challenging our Sunday scripture readings take on a more “not yet” theme.

If we listen carefully, we hear a tone of longing and waiting rather than here it is celebrating.  So, we find a tension between our faith and the secular world.  It’s Advent in our Christian faith but do we simply leave that at Church and get on with everything else that is Christmas when the Mass is over? If we do, we haven’t yet captured this time. Advent provides us that reminder and opportunity to spiritually prepare for the coming of Christ.

With the beginning of this new liturgical year, we have another opportunity for personal change. The mystery of God made human, the Incarnation, is truly an astounding belief. What scripture implies pretty obviously is that God deliberately of his own divine will chose a time in human history to insert himself among us.  He left the freedom of the spiritual world and accepted the limitations of his own creation. He chose to reach down, to walk the same earth we do, to get his hands and feet dirty and pierced by nails on the cross, to embrace human suffering and bring the good news of God’s desire to reorder all things and bring his kingdom will on earth in our midst. Jesus comes as the bridge healing the broken divide between God and sinful humanity under the power of the enemy who is ultimately Satan and his minions. God came to rescue us.

In other words, to say Jesus is our Savior is to look back thousands of years to a time when the ancient Jewish people heard the words of Isaiah in this Sunday’s first reading: “In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain . . . all nations shall stream toward it. . .”

In rich imagery Isaiah, the prophet of the Messiah, hundreds of years before the coming of the Christ, offers a divine promise that God will set all things right; that a broken world will be rescued, that, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise their sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.”

But the world around us has not yet become that “highest mountain” of light. For the ancient Jews they held on that God will eventually flesh out his promise. If God has created such a perfect world, what happened?  Why is everything so messed up? Because each generation needs to acknowledge their need to be rescued from sin and to turn to the Savior once again who is Christ Jesus.

So, the Gospel from Matthew this Sunday is rich with “be prepared” images.  We hear of Noah, aware of God's warning yet those around him who were simply complacent and imagined a never-ending life of satisfaction and pleasure.  While Noah was tuned in to the signs of his time, the voice of God in their midst, the general population was asleep.  Jesus states, “Therefore, stay awake!”  Be ready and watchful for the coming of the “Son of Man.”

What God has done to humankind when he sent his Son, our Savior, has offered us the power to make the image of Isaiah a reality. As Isaiah speaks today of a city where “the Lord’s house” is established as the “highest mountain.”  Jesus referred to his followers as a city on a hill where “your light” should shine for all to see.  He called himself the “light of the world” and that we should not hide our light “under a bushel basket” but the good works we do in his name become an inspiration to others and that by doing so we draw others to that mountain.

He said that we must “forgive our enemies” and be “peacemakers.”  Isaiah speaks of a time of peace and reconciliation between waring forces that will lay down their arms for the cause of peace and will “walk in the light of the Lord.”  Jesus told his followers to find non-violent ways to respond to violence rather than add fuel to the fires of hatred, division and fear. To imagine such a transformation in human history is to realize that we alone do not have that power, so we invite God to work in and through us.

The point of all this is that God is constantly at work in our midst and that in Christ Jesus, he has visited his people and invited us to a new way of life. Therefore, the warning against indifference and laziness in the Gospel is forever timely.

While we transform our homes, we can shine the light of good works to bring joy, the ornaments of prayer should be hung on our days this December and the tinsel of patience can shimmer as we slow down a bit and take time to reflect on who has fulfilled the hope of Isaiah and how we can play a role in making that seen in our world.

Christ is among us in our celebration of the Eucharist.  Grab this season of longing and hope. May we transform ourselves in his light so that the coming celebration of God’s personal intervention in human history will be different than last year.