Sermon for Advent 1

Sermon 1st Sunday of Advent

Text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. These four words are one way that people identify the advent candles, a sequence of emotions, and experiences that help us to be ready for the coming of Christ at Christmas. They speak through the whole of human emotion. This season I want to work through these four words using a reflection by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, pondering the meaning of Advent.

He starts:

“I suppose if you did one of those word association tests on 'Advent', the other word you'd come up with straight away would be 'calendar'. That's all that most people these days are really aware of where Advent is concerned. Advent is a time when you have calendars, and the Advent calendar is a countdown to Christmas, and it means daily sweets and chocolates.

It's a slightly thin and rather inadequate account of what has been for a long time been one of the most important and significant times in the Church's year - a time of waiting we sometimes say. But once we've said waiting, of course that's not a very attractive word. We're not a culture that's very used to waiting. 'Take waiting out of wanting' - that's a slogan that was very popular some decades ago - and it still governs a great deal of the way we behave. We'd quite like to have things when we decide we want them. And so waiting seems negative, waiting seems perhaps passive, unexciting, the boring bit before we get to the exciting bit. So if there is a period of waiting, getting ready for Christmas, we pad it out with the daily chocolate, to make sure that we're not feeling too miserable.

Well it's that kind of waiting that Advent is about. We remember in Advent the time of waiting before the birth of Jesus, and we remember that time of waiting as the Bible shows it to us as a time when people were indeed longing for something that would change everything, and yet at the same time not quite knowing what that something would be.”

He pauses and we will hear more in the future weeks. In our text from Isaiah for today we see a promise of Hope. Isaiah is written to a community in desperate need for hope. They have seen their kin to the north be conquered and dispersed by the Assyrian Empire, they feel pressure themselves from Assyria, and Egypt. In the midst of this pressure and a feeling of fear they are in hope for God’s protection, God’s interaction. A hope of God calling and returning all those who are lost to God’s midst.

The text is miraculous, in a wondrous change. When the people stream like water, it is not away from the mountain like rivers, but to the mountain of God. And not just some, but all nations. This coming promise is to all. In a period where they are being separated, thrown apart, dispersed, God speaks words of hope. Hope that no matter the powers of this world, no matter their swords, no matter what all will happen, God will bring all together.

We hear later in the call story of Isaiah that Isaiah’s call is not one of ease, but one of pronouncement of deep despair to this people. And so, in bringing a message of hope at the outset, the people of this world can know the hope that is the promise of God. It is a promise of hope not of might and destruction of enemies but of God’s bringing together those lost.

And that is what we ourselves are waiting for in Advent. Hope. We ourselves are lost, fearful, and overcome by issues of this world. But, I don’t think we hear the message of hope that is in advent as much as we should. We get into need it now mentality and over look the nature of waiting. Waiting is more than simple time spent frustrated that things are not happening. Waiting allows us to consider who we are, consider where we are, and what it is that we need.

The people addressed in Isaiah, the southern kingdom of Judah, feel like they should get whatever they want, through whatever means necessary, turning to other gods to accomplish this. That sounds rather familiar doesn’t it. We turn to other things in this world, put things before God, in the need to get what we want, not what we need, what we want as soon as possible. God tells these people that they will indeed get what they need, God’s call of togetherness, God’s call of hope, but they need to wait for it. And in their waiting they will find out that what they want is not what they need. What they need is only given through God.

We at times seek to jump straight to Christmas, and the secular, commercial world indeed does this. They jump straight to what we want, Ipads, cars, GPS devices. But none of these things will get us to where we need to be, in the midst of God’s hope for us in Jesus. We can search, drive, and navigate all we want, but only God calls us to the mountain.

For the true hope of all people, is not wealth, fame, or toys and gadgets, but connectedness. We seek to connect with our wealth, we think we will be connected through our fame, we seek to establish new methods of connecting through our gadgets, but it is only through God’s coming to us in Christ that we are truly connected, truly brought together on God’s mountain. That is our hope this advent season, that God will connect to us, allow us to wait and in that waiting begin to show to us anew what we have forgotten, that in all of this, it is God who matters, it is God that we need. But also knowing that in God allowing us to wait, we may find that what we need changes us. In Christ coming to this world, God changed the world, and I wait for God to continue to change the world, in fact I hope that change comes.

Let us pray,

God of hope, give us the strength to hear your calling, help us to wait, help us to know the joy that is in the calm, quiet of wait. Bring us to your mountain and join us to all who hear your call.

In your name we pray,

Amen.