Year B Advent I Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37

Finally, Advent is here. A new Church year has begun. If we were in our church building, our altar hanging would have been changed from green to purple which is the liturgical colour of contrition. Advent, which was once a penitential season, now a solemn season, has definitely arrived. But how odd, you must think, that the Church considers the days before Christmas to be “solemn”, and why, you may ask, is the first half of Advent very much about the end of time?

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence----”

The book of Isaiah, from which our first reading comes this morning, is a compilation of the work of three separate prophets. The first lesson this morning is from Trito-Isaiah (3rd Isaiah), and is a prayer composed by the prophet in the name of a people, the Children of Israel, who long for God’s action. Their mood is the gloomy despair of abandonment.

During the long exile in Babylon they had nurtured a hope, highly encouraged by the prophet of Dutero-Isaiah (2nd Isaiah). Their hope had been that the manifestation of God’s forgiveness and favour would be the reinstatement of the land and the monarchy which had been taken from them and overthrown when they were captured and lead away. But this does not happen. Their hope is not fulfilled, and, instead, they are bitterly disappointed. Where, they wonder, is the God they long for?

“When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” They look back in time, reminding God, and themselves, of all the mighty works once done on their behalf, but then, “You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” They acknowledge that they have sinned, and are unworthy of the goodness they once experienced from God.

If this was all that this lesson contained, it would be terrible, but it would be within our realm of experience. All of us know only too well that sinking feeling when something we’ve anticipated for a very long time falls through, or doesn’t fulfill our expectations; the gift that was hardly what we expected and certainly isn’t what we want, the proposal at work that isn’t accepted, the promotion that doesn’t come through, the pandemic that throws our lives out of sync and ruins our anticipated holiday traditions. We take a deep breath, brush away the tears and go on, reminding ourselves there is always a “next time”.

It’s different for the Children of Israel. There isn’t going to be a “next time”, a second return from exile. If it were us, the cold hand of despair might grip our hearts. But, though all appears dark and drear, the Children of Israel make a choice, not to despair. Instead, they sound a note of hope and conviction, a note of faith, that the Lord their God will not abandon true believers. “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

Like Israel, we begin Advent in the dark. It is cold outside, the days are short, and stress levels are high. If you ask most people what is happening in their lives right now, they will tell you how they are attempting to cope with the limits, restrictions, and tensions of the pandemic while still looking forward to the holiday season. Occasionally someone may even mention that they are beginning to joyfully anticipate the upcoming birth of a baby named Jesus.

The pandemic has left us in a situation not unlike the Children of Israel in Babylon, awaiting that joyful moment when the stress ends, a vaccine becomes available and – oh yes – Christmas arrives. We need to be cautious! Like Israel, the moment we anticipate may not turn out to be what we are expecting. Hopefully the vaccine will bring an end to the stress of the pandemic, but what about the baby, whose birth we are waiting to celebrate? Will that be what we anticipate?

What we tend to forget is that that baby has already been born. He came into this world, as we reckon it, a little over 2000 years ago. What we are doing with our Christmas celebration is looking backward, and as we well know, looking backward isn’t what being Christian is about. Advent season, in the secular world, may be the time of preparing for festivities celebrating Jesus’ birthday. In the Church, however, the first half of Advent is a time to consider the Truth. That that baby will come again, and we are meant to be ready, in faith, to receive Him.

Unfortunately, while most of us are good at getting ready for Christmas, we’re not at all good at preparing for the second coming of Christ. It’s not encouraged or even noticed by our society, and it’s not really in our human nature. What we’re good at, is numbing ourselves as much as possible to things that may prove to be unexpected or unpleasant, and looking for the good stuff – for what makes us smile.

Thus, we concentrate on the joyous, and discount the fact that there are many suffering souls who do not share in our wealth, our plentitude, and our happiness. We drop our dollar in the Salvation Army kettle, but prefer not to think about the people the money serves, the homeless, the hungry, the children who may receive no gifts for Christmas, who may, in fact, not even have a parent who will be home and sober on the day.

We don’t want to think about them, because we can’t imagine what we can do for them, and because it’s such a “downer” to do so around an otherwise upbeat and delightful season. We want to welcome the baby, but we don’t want to be responsible for Him, to take care of Him, to love Him, once He gets here. However, loving, caring for, working with, and serving Jesus is what our faith is all about.

What happens to us around the holidays is scary, because our absorption in self, in our plans, our shopping, our holiday, far from boosting our faith totally obscures from us the Truth. And that Truth is that this Jesus, whose nativity we celebrate, will come again to judge the living and the dead.

“Jesus said, ‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.’”

The second coming will happen, and it’s not going to be covered in tinsel and twinkling lights. It is the faithful that Jesus will call to Himself. When we are selfish, concentrating only on our wants, our needs, our projects, faith is lacking. Faith to be true, to be real, has to be a giving love. Love and faith go together. They complement each other. The most frightening thing is that nowadays most people don’t know they have lost their faith. We walk past Jesus every day, and never see Him.

It is Advent, and we must be watching and waiting for the coming of Christ. That person, the one you least like, the one who most repels you, is Jesus, reaching out to you for love. Our terrible problem is that we no longer know what compassion is. We no longer know other people. If we did, if we understood, if we saw who it was, we would immediately love them and place ourselves at their service. Jesus doesn’t “test” us on rare occasions, every now and then. Jesus is always there, always reaching out.

Advent is a time of preparation. It is a time for deepening, or – perhaps -- awakening, our faith. We need to be ready for Jesus. Not just as He came to us in the past, a tiny baby in a manger, and not just when He returns in some future time, unknown, undisclosed. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” Every time you ignore a beggar, a friend you are angry with, a family member who annoys you – you have missed the Lord. ‘

It is the solemn season of Advent, and now we have a better idea of why it is solemn. We must take the warning seriously. “Keep awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” It can be now, today, this minute. Repeatedly Jesus presents Himself to us. Will we be too preoccupied with ourselves and our personal issues to notice, or will we look with the eyes of faith, see His face, and respond?

Let us pray:

Dear God and Father of all, we praise you for your infinite love in calling us to be a holy people in the kingdom of your Son Jesus our Lord, who is the image of your eternal and invisible glory, the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, and the head of the Church. Grant us the faith, we beseech You, to see His glory in every face we encounter, that we may serve Him and honour You in all we meet, in the Name of Him who loves us, and seeks only our love in return, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen