What is Advent about?

Friends, today we come to the first Sunday of Advent. I have to be honest and say that Advent my favourite of the liturgical seasons. To begin with, it marks the beginning of the liturgical year. In this six-month period, we start by longing for the coming of Christ amongst us and then celebrate his birth at Christmas. We see the global proliferation of the Good Tidings foreshadowed in the arrival of the Magi at Epiphanytide. At length, we come to the penitential season of Lent and the darkness of Holy Week before we celebrate Christ’s victorious bursting from the tomb, his ascension into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the birthday of the Church at Pentecost.

But there is something about Advent that is special: the sense of longing and anticipation, conveyed in colour and hymnody, the tingling sense that, one day soon, the Lord Jesus will appear amongst us out of the darkness of the darkest night. Friends, try, by whatever means you can, to capture for yourselves some of the wonder of this Advent season.

How to approach Luke 21?

And this exhortation leads me to say something about the Gospel text we have just heard, Luke 21, verses 25-38. Why does the Church select this text for this Sunday - this text, which is all about apocalyptic signs in the heavens, distress among nations, people fainting with fear and foreboding and so on?

Firstly, we must remember that in Advent we look forward not only to the First Coming of Christ as a babe at Bethlehem, but also to his Second Coming at the end of history.

This observation helps us to understand the selection of this text. It is selected because it is taken to be about the Second Coming of Christ. I say it is “taken to be about the second coming” because this passage in context is clearly also about the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which would take place, in accordance with Christ’s words, in 70AD at the hands of the Romans. But it is legitimate, in my view, to see that, within Christ’s prediction about the destruction of the Temple, he is also referring to an event farther away in history, to the very end, to a vision of the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And it is this coming, this Second Advent, that the Church bids us turn our attention today.

The Meaning of History

I’d like then to make a couple of observation about Christ’s words. The first thing to note is that both the words of Christ and the content of the liturgical season of Advent remind us that our lives and all of history are moving in a particular direction, towards the second coming of Jesus, when he will return, as the Apostles’ Creed says, to judge the quick and the dead.

As such, the Christian view does not accept that history is a random series of chance occurrences. That it is, as Macbeth says, ‘a tale, told by an idiot, signifying nothing’. Rather, we say that history has a particular shape and purpose, and that we, as individuals can find a place within that shape and purpose. And, as a result of this, our own lives can take on meaning and direction: We are going somewhere. We are for something.

This contrasts with various post-modern and existentialist philosophies that say that meaning and purpose only exist insofar as we create them ourselves. That meaning and purpose do not exist in the world out there, that meaning and purpose can only come from within ourselves.

To the contrary, we say that we are born into the midst of a universe laden within meaning, purpose, and real direction. Rather than rejecting these things in terror and disgust, we embrace them as a gift: How good and pleasant it is that we do not find ourselves simply thrown into the midst of a meaningless and empty universe, but that we are invited by God to play our part within the great story of history!

Have No Fear

And this leads to my second observation, which is that the return of Christ is fundamentally good news. Indeed, it is great news. The best news that we will ever hear: all of the pain, suffering, evil, injustice, and death that plagues our lives is coming to an end with the Advent of the Returning King.

I was distressed this week to witness events in Parliament as MPs voted to progress a bill that would legalise the killing of terminally ill patients by medical professionals. The Church has consistently condemned and opposed these measures as an affront to the dignity of human beings made in the image of God and an opening of the door to the killing of a much broader range of people than the terminally ill, including the elderly in general, those with physical disabilities, those who suffer from depression, and even those who struggle with economic hardship. In the words of Bishop Graham Tomlin, it seems that, with this development, we as a society we have taken one step closer to the abyss. It is especially important to remember the message of Advent at times like these: though the world around us may seem to be dark and getting ever darker, the light of Christ will come. His Kingdom will be an everlasting Kingdom of justice and righteousness. And the folly and sinfulness of man will finally be overruled.

This is why Christ tells his disciples, when they see the signs preceding all of these things, to “straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

Again, we are bidden by Christ to have a fundamentally different perspective to the world that does not know him.

He tells us that there will be “distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the seas and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world” (Luke 21:25-26). There have been in every age those who predict the imminent end of the world and the same is true of our world today.

Some of these concerns are quite legitimate and we can of course recall plenty of disastrous events in the past, both natural and manmade, that have wrought immense destruction to us and to our planet. But one thing that we can be sure of, if we trust the words of Christ, is that neither climate change nor nuclear war will bring about an end of the world and our total annihilation. This is because history is held in God’s hands and because He will decide when it is over.

Therefore, we ought not to fear as the nations fear, but we are to lift our heads with confidence and prepare ourselves with joyful expectation for our final end which is to be with Christ.

Realign Your Hearts This Advent

Finally, then, a word of application. I have mentioned both the First Coming of Christ as a babe at Bethlehem, and his Second Coming at the end of history. There is yet a Third Coming, a Third Advent, that I would like to draw our attention to today, and this is the coming of Christ to us, to live within our hearts.

The first question to ask you then is this: Have you made a way for him? Have you swung wide the gate of your heart that Christ may enter in? Friends, don’t delay. All are bidden by Christ to come. There may be practical steps that you need to take – baptism, confirmation, maybe something else – but don’t worry about that at this moment. Rather, resolve now that you want to know Christ and that you want him to come and dwell in your heart. He will most certainly respond.

Secondly, let’s listen to the words of Christ: “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weight down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life…But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that are to take place and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34, 36).

I’m just coming back after having a week off. Living near town, I often walk in for various reasons. It seems to me that “Christmas” has come particularly early this year – even more so than usual. The world cannot wait to launch itself into an intensified cycle of consumerism and gratification. I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of people that we see out there in the street are simply unable to imagine that life could be any other way: distracted by technology, satiated by an endless supply of food and drink, sozzled by immense quantities of alcohol.

This is not to say that everything that is celebrated by the secular world at Christmas is evil – far from it. But it is to say that Christ wants to redirect our focus: he cautions us against drunkenness and dissipation – that is the frivolous wasting of our resources through overindulgence in sensual pleasures. He tells us not to allow the cares of this life to weigh us down. Instead of these things, Christ says, stay awake. That is, be spiritually alert. And pray that you may be ready to stand before Christ when he comes.

And so I’d like to challenge you at this point to examine yourselves and to examine your lives. The first thing to say is that you don’t have to celebrate the Advent and Christmas seasons like everyone else – in a mindless blaze of consumerism, anxious busyness, and drunken debauchery. Rather, use the Advent Season to carefully realign your hearts so that, when Christ appears at Christmastide, you may be ready to receive him.

There is a really practical element here: Do you have a way of prayer? Do you have a rule of life that helps you throughout your day and throughout your week to realign yourself with God? Maybe it’s something that you need to learn for the first time. If so, there is a new world of spiritual life for you, waiting to be discovered. As Anglicans, we are uniquely blessed with a liturgical heritage that can be claimed by each one of us in the practice of saying Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. But there are countless of other ways that we can come into the presence of God on a regular basis and get to know him better: meditative silence, the contemplative study of Scripture through lectio divina, the use of wonderful prayer apps like Hallow and Ascension, spiritual books that by great saints who help us to lift our hearts and minds to God, even television shows like The Chosen which depict for us an imaginative retelling of the Gospel stories.

We have such an abundance set before us that really there is something for everybody. So my exhortation for you today is: Use It! Not because you have to but because you get to, because Christ bids you open the doors of your heart to him so that he might fill you with joy and peace and so that you might receive as a gift a sense of purpose and direction for your life.

So, that’s my exhortation and challenge for you today friends: whatever else you use it for, use the Advent season to realign your hearts to God and to prepare yourselves for the coming of Christ – his Great Adventus – this Christmastide.

Amen.