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Sunday 27th November, 2011 First Sunday in Advent

Sentence
‘Heaven and earth will pass away,’ says the Lord, ‘but My words will not pass away.’
Mark 13:31
Collect
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which Your Son, Jesus Christ, came to visit us in great humility, than on the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal through Him Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 64: 1 – 9

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people.

Psalm 80:1-7 & 17-19

Hear, O shepherd of Israel, You Who led Joseph like a flock: You that are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine out in glory
Before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh: stir up Your power and come and save us.
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved
O Lord God of Hosts: how long will You be angry at Your people’s prayer?
You have fed them with the bread of tears: and given them tears to drink in good measure
You have made us the victims of our neighbours: and our enemies laugh us to scorn.
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved

Let Your power rest upon the man at Your right hand: on that son of man whom You made so strong for Yourself
And so we shall not turn back from You: give us life and we sall call upon Your Name
Restore us again, O Lord of Hosts: show us the light of Your countenance and we shall be saved

Epistle 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.


GOSPEL Mark 13: 24 – 37

Jesus said “In those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth: this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: he leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’”

© New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
Copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission. All rights reserved

NOTES ON THE READINGS ………

Old Testament
It has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: there is nothing in religious history of any country or culture that even begins to parallel the Jewish line of prophets and their writings. Mind you, any reader needs to understand that Hebrew prophecy is no star-gazing future-predicting stuff, except in a strong but minor way. It is perhaps understood best when seen in terms the attempt to understand what God is saying to Israel in its history then and there, and where God is aiming to take Israel – at the point in history at which the prophet was speaking. The whole business is essentially down-to-earth, and focusses on matters of justice and compassion. My best description of Hebrew prophecy is the activity of the various authors to look back to see where Israel has come from, and what has happened, to see where God is taking them from there.

In this particular and vivid passage, it might be easy to assume that Isaiah is looking for some sort of miraculous Divine intervention to provide solutions to all of Israel’s problems, political and social. At the time of writing, Israel would have been in exile in Babylon, or on its way back from there: and the huge issue would have been of reconstruction of nation, faith and temple. In the wake of the Indonesian and Sri Lankan tsunami of late 2004, or the Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf States of the USA, or the Queensland and WA floods of 2010 -2011, the enormous task of rebuilding can be visualised even by those not in the thick of it. It is all so heart-breaking and vast.

One of the magnificent insights into the whole ‘God’ business shows up in this brief passage, where Isaiah writes of there is no God apart from You, Who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him. In most religions, past and sometimes present, God is perceived of as both utterly distant and completely disengaged from the usual daily grind of life or as the one to be manipulated by correct rites rituals and mysteries. The Hebrew Faith had never seen God in that way, and could point to all manner of events and situation where God ‘got His hands dirty’ for the sake of His people.

So Isaiah – like us in the Season of Advent – should look for some sort of coming of God into our midst, to point the way, once again, to where real and lasting life and values are to be found. That is big enough agenda for anyone these days, is it not?

Psalm

This Psalm would appear to be either Exilic or post-Exilic, a time of great stress for Israel which was recovering from the harsh experience of first losing their homes and land, and then returning 70 years later to rebuild. The whole business was traumatic as you might imagine, and quite something of a learning curve. It was from the Exile that the synagogue arose, as an alternative to Temple for worship. And much of our modern approach to worship, with hymns, readings, prayers and sermons, stems from that harsh experience.

Epistle

It may well be a sign of my cynicism, but I implore those who would go off with the fairies here, that, after reading this intro to the Corinthians, that you also read on. This flowery language sits rather strangely with the hugely important issues that Paul deals with, in writing to this Church. In other words, it needs to be said that, whilst this may be the language of hope, there needs also to be an air of reality as well.

Please notice the important thing: that discipleship of Christ is designed to lead to a maturity of personhood. This maturity is not just for the individual but for the group, the congregation, the community, the Church – and then for the world of people around them. One of the narrowing things that may ensue from blameless is that it may be taken somewhat personally and individually. Once again, the important outcome is maturity.

GOSPEL
There is a strange capacity of Christians somehow to fail to see the wood by missing the trees. Some denominations seem to focus almost exclusively on what we call the Second Coming, whereas I have a more than sneaky suspicion that the Biblical emphasis lies quite elsewhere.

When Jesus required His followers to observe the situations surrounding them, was it a question of ‘keeping their noses clean’ or was it for something more significant? It strikes me that, in this gigantic struggle between truth and falsehood that the People of God need first of all to recognize and follow truth -- at whatever cost. That is the real issue. In other words, Jesus was – in a quite typical Hebrew manner – making sure that His followers understood that in front of them lay a period of great turmoil, as evil battled with good, and that they needed to understand very clearly where the right and true priorities lay. It is by the silence of good people that evil triumphs. God is involved in the struggle, as the Cross indicated. And God’s method of dealing with that issue is illustrated in that Cross. But He does not solve all the issues and problems for us, otherwise we would remain as ineffective incompetents!

Notes for a Sermon

If I had five dollars for every time someone, worried about the ‘way things are heading,’ asked me what I thought of the likely outcome for people, expressed their wishes that something or Someone somewhere would shake the living daylights out of everything, and bring more than a little peace and sense into life, I’d be rather wealthy. As I rework this material (October 2010) the Adventists are offering what they consider to be the Biblical approach to the huge issue, and the Christadelphians seem rarely to consider any other matter. Where does the truth lie? When we are faced by crises, big and small, we humans do long for some sort of suitable closure or resolution do we not? You could probably add a huge and long list to the sorts of situations in your life where you would love to have some fulfillment. You may well dispute the perception that force and war solves no issues at all but rather escalates them.

Can you now better understand the longings and yearnings of the prophet when he put the words together that are our OT Lesson today. Isaiah was possibly in Babylon, expecting a return to Israel even if it meant one hell of a lot of hard work. He longed for a beginning to the action. He was aware of the fact that God was perfectly capable of bringing it all about, for had not JHWH brought Israel out of certain slavery and annihilation back in Moses’ time, with a strong right hand and an outstretched arm? Isaiah – it has to be said – was right in the middle of a huge crisis for Israel, and had been for 60 years or more. When will it ever end?

The Gospel for today is looking in a very similar direction. In this apocalyptic section of Mark’s Gospel – interesting to have it here in Advent, before Christmas! – there is another taste of a sense of doomsday and crisis, and shivers down spines. It is the sort of attitude that comes to the surface whenever people face an uncertain future. I have found it rather interesting to see how, for two or three decades now, the movie industry has produced quite a number of scary-scenario films. This is because the subject is a live one for many, many people; and it also provides something of a vicarious thrill where the audience can feel involved in something scary, and still go out from the cinema and have a nice hot coffee before going home to their warm and safe bed. But real life is not like that, for real life produces some real challenges.

There, it seems to me, lies quite some of the unreality that underlines so much of today’s view of life. It is a push-button one, where huge problems are expected to be erased simply by pressing the delete key. And when that does not happen (because life is more real than that!) people come apart and seek some sort of solace in depression and isolation. Is this all that the Faith has to offer?

Notice in that OT lesson that Isaiah saw some of the genesis of such times as being the responsibility of ordinary humans. ‘No one calls on Your name or strives to lay hold on You, …… You have hidden Your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.’

It may sound all far too old-fashioned to talk of sins these days, but I reckon we need to have a whole new and fresh look at what the old Bible has to say on this subject. It is not a matter of me having dirtied my pure soul by sinning. It is very much a matter that if I disregard and turn my back on the old verities of justice, truth, compassion, integrity and love, then I am disconnecting myself not only from reality but also from YOU --- let alone God! And the more I do that, the more relationships disintegrate, personal, social, national and even international.
The answer to these huge problems is NOT to look for some small or big ‘m’ Messiah who will do it all for me. The answer to the issue begins with me, and you, and each other individual person, to make the move back to truth, to integrity, to God! The reason for the shift back is not to avoid repercussions; rather, it is so that life and people become significant and valuable once again. When Isaiah (or anyone else in Old Testament or New) looked to the God Who rescues His people from the folly of their own making, they did not expect some BIG GURU to come and do it for them. In fact, Isaiah himself, in his absolutely remarkable series of Servant Songs, saw ever so clearly that, when God is at work, it is invariably with human input. There is ever the Abraham, the Moses, the David, Mary, Jesus, Peter and Paul. You and me.

So do not go looking for an escape route. Start wondering how and where the change can begin with you.

As we celebrate Advent, celebrating the Lord Who comes among us, please stop long enough to see that when He does come, it is not with some sort of whirlwind, whiz-bang answer to amaze everyone and take their breath away. He comes in the quiet stillness of our conviction to follow Him into the enormous challenge that He puts in front of us. This is one of the reasons why Jesus disappointed the Jews of His own day, and continues to disappoint others.