Isaiah 2.1-5 ‘The Lord gathers all nations together into the eternal peace of the Kingdom of God .’
Romans 13.11-14a
‘Salvation is nearer to us now.’
Matthew
24.37-44 ‘Stay awake so that you may be ready.’
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Today’s readings are shot through with the word at
the heart of Advent, the liturgical season which we begin today.
And that word is ‘come’.
The word Advent, is from the Latin word ‘adventus’ meaning
‘come’ or arrive, i.e. that someone has ‘come’.
In the prophet Isaiah the word ‘come’ is an invitation:
Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the LORD…
That he may teach us
his ways
and that we may walk in
his paths.
O house of Jacob,
come,
let us walk
in the light of the
LORD... (Isaiah 2.3,5)
That coming is an invitation to join in the flow of
many peoples and nations to the mountain of the LORD which is the Holy
Presence, the Temple, of God.
In that presence, and not by our own efforts, God
shall judge between the nations and resolve disputes so that the vision of what
we know as the peaceable kingdom of God is realised: swords beaten into ploughshares,
spears becoming pruning hooks, where war is learnt no more.
So Advent is a time of invitation, a wonderful
invitation: come to meet the fullness of the presence of God and inhabit his
peaceable kingdom!
Come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
***
In the letter to the Romans the word ‘come’ is an announcement:
the
hour has come… (Romans 13.11)
Just as day comes when the sun rises and dawn
breaks, so the moment has come when our salvation is being realised.
And as our salvation comes - the saving presence of
Jesus Christ - so we are called to a deep change in our lives.
The coming of Christ, which has happened, calls us
to live lives of faithfulness and covenant, of sobriety, of harmony and appreciation
of others; willing the good of the other.
It’s a wry irony that St Paul’s description of how
the Christian is to live, is the opposite behaviour of many an office Christmas
party over the next four weeks or so.
And that’s important, in Advent as in all times,
that we don’t carry on living our lives as if there is no God, no anchor in
heaven or appreciation of the presence of the One Who Comes.
Christ changes how we live our lives: military weapons,
swords and guns are repurposed and interpersonal weapons, infidelity, lack of personal
control and jealousy, are transformed as we put on the armour of light.
So Advent is a time when we grapple with living out
the reality that ‘the hour has come.’
Already.
***
Yet, in the Gospel today, it is not a coming in the
past but in the future: he will come.
This is the future dimension of coming – the not yet
arrived type of coming.
Because it is in the future the coming starts a time
of preparation, expectation, anticipation.
There is an explicit warning: if you carry on with all
the social norms and conventions of your day, without being aware of what is to
come, then all you hold dear will be swept away, ‘as were the days of Noah.’
(Matthew 24.37)
Jesus describes the un-knowableness of the day and
time of his coming.
The future event of Christ’s coming is something we
cannot know so we are exhorted to stay awake and be ready.
***
So, our scriptures today give us coming – the adventus - in three dimensions: ethical,
moral and spiritual.
The invitation
to ‘come’ to the mountain of the Lord purifies our ethical acting: the
weapons we use against others are transformed.
Today our military weapons are as deadly as swords
and spears – which are deadly, as we know from the blight of knife crime – but our
weapons today kill on a scale way beyond what a sword and spear could do.
Coming to the mountain of God, to the peaceable
kingdom, means that we recommit ourselves to the paths of peace: in every aspect
of our lives, so that our aim is not to hurt or destroy, but to build up and
restore.
The announcement
that our salvation has come invites us to the moral action of how we are
faithful to one other: husbands and wives to each other; parents and children to
each other; friends and companions to each other, as befits those who ‘put on
the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 13.14).
May our aim be faithfulness to those to whom we are
committed, especially those to whom we are bound by vows and bonds of love and
kinship.
May it be sobriety in the face of a world
intoxicated by things that are not of God.
Then the preparation,
expectation and anticipation of the One Who Will Come invites our spiritual
response.
This is about using the time aright to lift our gaze
and open our hearts to welcome Jesus Christ.
It is, in prayer, reading of the scriptures and in our
worship, that we can rekindle the anticipation of the return of Christ and his presence
in our midst today.
For ‘he shall come again in glory to judge the
living and the dead’ (Nicene Creed):
so prepare yourself, with consistent, courageous faithful choices, for the
final encounter with him.
An Advent hymn says it nicely,
Let ev’ry heart prepare
a throne,
and ev’ry voice a song.
As the book of Revelation puts it:
He who testifies to
these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
(Revelation 22.20)
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