Isaiah 2.1-5; Romans 13.11-14;
Matthew 24.36-44
+
The season of Advent
which starts today
is a wakeup call!
As St Paul puts it:
‘Brothers and sisters, you
know what time it is,
how it is now the moment for
you to wake from sleep’. (Romans 13.11)
Wake up,
Paul says,
to what it means
to live
as those who have put on the
Lord Jesus Christ.
What that way of life
looks like:
is honourable living;
not living
loose, aimless, lives
that have no purpose
or meaning
and that are not
caught up
in squabbles and envying.
Wake up!
The wakeup call of Advent
means we live
with our eyes open:
open to God,
in worship;
open to our neighbours
in kindness;
open to the needs of the world
- of justice and
peace -
in vigilance;
open to the signs of the kingdom,
in eagerness;
and open
to Christ’s coming again in glory
in faithful
attention:
awake!
With the call
to be awake
comes the call of many peoples,
which Isaiah describes.
What an invitation that is:
stirring;
compelling,
‘Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of
Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we
may walk in his paths.’
Going up a mountain
puts us on
a vantage point.
From a vantage point
you can see all round
– a 360 view –
you can survey what lies below,
and gaze up
unimpeded
to the heights, to the heavens.
The vantage point is where
the sentinel,
the lookout,
stands.
The sentinel, the lookout,
is the one who stays awake
while others sleep.
In the parable of the wise and
foolish bridesmaids (Matthew 25.1-11)
- which follows on, in St Matthew’s Gospel, from today’s
reading -
all the bridesmaids all fall asleep
and all wake
when they hear
the sentinel’s cry.
Yet only five wake prepared,
ready
to meet the bridegroom
when he comes.
That parable fleshes out
what we have heard
this morning.
The message is
wakeup,
stay awake
and be ready,
ready
for the Son of Man
who is coming at an unexpected hour.
It’s time to wake up:
to be looking outwards;
time to be prepared
with our lamps trimmed,
(in contemporary terms, to
have batteries in the torches).
Advent expectation
relies on us being awake,
awake
to the reign
of the Prince of Peace.
Advent wakes us up
to the claims of Christ
in his first coming amongst us
–
the Incarnation –
of which we say in the Creed:
for us and for our salvation
he become incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin
Mary,
and was made man.
Advent wakes us up
to another Gospel proclamation
articulated in the Creed:
and he will come again glory to judge the
living and the dead,
whose kingdom will have no end.
Advent wakes us up to
seeing,
knowing
and receiving
Christ, the Bridegroom
Now.
Today.
The sleeping Christ
in the manger of Bethlehem
was watched
attentively and adoringly
by Mary, his mother and her husband, Joseph.
Let us,
like Mary,
gaze longingly on Christ
who comes to us
in the breaking of the bread.
In this Eucharist we stretch
out our hands
to receive the Bread of Life;
may we also,
as the Advent hymn puts it,
prepare our hearts too
to receive him
when he
comes again in glory:
Let every heart prepare a
throne,
And every voice a song. (Philip
Doddridge 1702-51)
The prayer after communion for
Advent Sunday is also a good prayer before
Communion on Advent Sunday, so let us pray:
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.
Aman.
No comments:
Post a Comment