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Sermon for
Advent 1 - Morning Service
Romans
13.11-14
Matthew 24. 36-44
Is there light
at the end of the tunnel?
As 2016 approaches
the final month of the year, it is tempting to review this extraordinary
year and wonder if the light is ever going to come? It has been
momentous year full of surprises - not all of them good ones
if I am honest!
So here we
are - at the start of a new Church Year - Advent 1 - sitting
if not in darkness, then certainly in the chill of winter and
waiting desperately for light and life and warmth to return.
So who here
has started writing their Christmas Cards? What! It isn't even
December yet!... Never mind, well done you. And have you found
it easy to choose what cards to use? Even more importantly, have
you yet bought your stamps and are they religious ones? A friend
of mine has tried and been much annoyed to find that they seem
again to be in short supply in her part of the world. The local
post-offices tell her they have to take what they are given -
they aren't allowed to specify if they want religious or secular
stamps.... Well, maybe if enough of us demanded them, the post
office would have to print some more???? Get asking!
But what -
instead of the Baby, Mary and Joseph etc., if our cards were
all about the second coming? We might think twice about sending
those out to our friends and relations! They would hardly contain
a cosy, comforting message about a baby and gifts.
Instead we
might get a surprise - as Matthew tells us - or warns us. Something
is coming for which we are - probably - totally unprepared...
and I don't mean unexpected family guests on Christmas day!
What Matthew
is on about is nothing short of the end of the world as we know
it and the judgment of all that humanity has done or not done...
not a comforting or sentimental thought is it?
Here in Advent
we are not about looking back to some cosy Victorian/Dickensian
image of the perfect Christmas, but about looking forwards...
And the light at the end of the tunnel may in fact be that of
an express train racing towards us!
It is quite
one thing to pray, "Your kingdom come", but quite another
to welcome the King who comes to divide and rule and send his
angels to sort out the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the
goats, to take one - and leave another...
It may sound
a bit comical and far-fetched now, but then? Will we long to
be taken? To be among those who have made Christ King, those
good and faithful servants who have taken their cross and followed
him?
And what of
the rest? Our child, friend, colleague. The busy, the bored,
the sceptical - what of them?
We can only
tell them the old, old story; not just the baby talk - nativity
and kings, camels and shepherds, but the epic tale of the one
who was, and who is and who is to come ...
The day that
is surely coming - maybe to which we are indeed nearer than when
we first believed, - when God will be seen to be God, dictators
will be humbled, experts confounded, the proud most reluctantly
abandoned and the rich sent empty away...
And, when he
comes - however he comes - where will he find us?
When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?
Let's work
at reclaiming the Christmas story - the whole story, the one
that takes in not just Christmas but extends to Easter and beyond.
Advent is not just about Christmas shopping... are you ready
for the coming of the King?
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