Isaiah 64.1-9, 1 Corinthians 1.3-9, Mark 13.24-37
Today we begin Advent, the wonderful season of hope and expectancy. The word 'Advent' means 'coming' and during this season we look with hope to the coming of Christ into our world. We look to his first coming as the little child in Bethlehem, and to his second coming as glorious Lord of all. Two great Advent hymns which we are singing today express the longing for his coming, from two different places in the big story that the Bible tells, two different places of waiting expectantly, of longing for what God has promised.
First, 'O come, O come, Emmanuel', which we sang at the beginning of our service. This is an ancient hymn that takes us back into the Old Testament, before the coming of Christ, to the centuries of waiting for the Messiah, as the people of Israel longed for the coming of the one who would fulfil God's promises by rescuing them from all their troubles and bringing them into a glorious age of peace and joy.
'O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear....
O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.'
When we sing these words, we are BC, before Christ. We imagine ourselves as Israel waiting for the Messiah, looking ahead to the coming of Christ.
But we will sing a very different Advent hymn at the end of our service: 'Lo, he comes with clouds descending', written by Charles Wesley in the 18th century. Here we stand in a different place, firmly in the New Testament, after the coming of Christ, his death and resurrection, but still longing for a future fulfilment – the coming of Jesus Christ in glory at the end of history to complete the work he began in his earthly life, his death and resurrection:
'Lo, he comes with clouds descending,
Once for favoured sinners slain;
Thousand, thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia!
God appears on earth to reign....
Yea, Amen! Let all adore thee
High on thine eternal throne.
Saviour, take the power and glory:
Claim the kingdom for Thine own:
O come quickly!
Alleluia! Come, Lord, Come.'
We live in the in between times, in between the two comings of Christ. We recognise that Israel's longed for Messiah, foretold in the Old Testament, has come in Jesus, but we also recognise that the story of Christ is still incomplete. Christ has come and begun his reign, but his kingdom has not yet fully come, so we long for more – for the redemption, the transformation of this beautiful but broken world, and everything in it, including our beautiful but broken selves.
First let us go back to the Old Testament. In our reading from Isaiah 64 this morning, we heard an urgent plea for deliverance, that God will be present with his people, deliver them from their enemies, and save them from their sins: 'O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.' The people yearn for God to reveal himself as their God, that he will come and act and make manifest his power and might to all the nations. At the same time, they are only too aware of their own failures and sins: 'We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.'
God seems to have hidden his face from them, yet their hope is still in God. 'Yes, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter, we are all the work of your hand.' Their hope is not in themselves, but in God. They trust in the God 'who works for those who wait for him.' In other parts of the Old Testament, this hope is expressed in terms of the coming king, the Chosen One, who will bring in God's kingdom of justice and peace, restore that which is broken, and make all things right.
Last Sunday was the festival of Christ the King, and we focused on Christ as the king who comes in humility and exercises God's authority through the power of love and self-sacrifice. The heavens have been torn open and God has come down, here, among us as a human being, one of us.
In our New Testament reading today, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they have received the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We too have received this grace and we give thanks together, week by week, that God has acted in Christ, through his life, death and resurrection, and, in him, we are forgiven and drawn into a new relationship with God and with one another.
But while we give thanks that God has come among us in Jesus, we also acknowledge that we have not yet fully received all that we long for. The story is not yet over, and our hopes are not yet fulfilled. While we know God has come among us in a way that the Old Testament prophets didn't, yet we still share with them the yearning for the day when all things will be put right and all nations and peoples will live in justice and peace. Indeed, when we look at our world, with the ongoing misery caused by the Covid virus and other diseases, the anguish of those caught up in war or persecution, the dreadful inequalities and corruption of power, we may feel that yearning very deeply. But God's purposes will not be completed, and neither we, nor our world, will be fully transformed, until the coming of Christ in glory. In the words of one writer, 'we live in remembrance of what Christ has done, and expectation of what he will do.' In the meantime, we, like the Corinthians, 'wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
At his second coming, Christ will be revealed for who he truly is. On earth, Christ's kingly glory was hidden and only seen by those with eyes to see, but on that day his glory will fully and plainly seen by all. This revelation of Christ will herald the true revealing of all things. As Paul says later in this letter to the Corinthians 'When the Lord comes, he will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness, and will disclose the purposes of the heart'. Which of us does not tremble at the prospect of all the deepest secrets of our hearts and lives, all that we have hidden away from ourselves and others, all that we have sought to hide away from God, being brought into the open for all to see? On that day, the full and final truth of each person's life will be made known and we will not be able to justify ourselves. For as Isaiah says, all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth in God's sight. Yet, as Paul promised the Corinthians, God will strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus.
We will be blameless not because we can make ourselves perfect, but because of God's grace. Like the people in Isaiah's day, our hope is in God and not ourselves. God is faithful, and only he can cleanse us and declare us blameless in his sight. It is Christ, full of grace and truth, who is our judge; the one who died for us, praying 'Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.' In Christ, our filthy rags will be made clean, and, in the words of the first letter of John 'when we see him as he is, we will be like him.'
But our Advent hope is not just for ourselves but for the whole world; indeed, for justice, peace and restoration for the whole created order. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the bigger picture. The Bible tells the big story beginning with God's creation of all that there is and ending with his new creation, where everything is restored and made perfect. The story of Christ is key to understanding this big story: it is through Christ that all things were made; it is in Christ that God comes into his creation as one of us; it is through Christ that our brokenness and failure is healed and forgiven; it is through Christ that the hope of a new creation is fulfilled.
We live in the midst of this story; it is not finished yet. Our faith is a future orientated faith. We know the grace of God in Christ now, but we are also all too aware of the pain and anguish of the world, the brokenness, the violence, the suffering and evil which is evident all around us and even within our own hearts. We long for the final fulfilment of our hopes. Indeed, it is not only we who hope, but in the words of St Paul, the whole creation 'waits with eager longing... in hope that [it] will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God' (Romans 8.19-21).
The creation waits. Isaiah spoke of the 'God who works for those who wait for him'. Paul reminds the Corinthians that they 'wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Part of the Advent hope is waiting on God. This does not mean we sit around doing nothing. We are called to use all the gifts, opportunities, and time which God has given us to co-operate with the work of the Spirit in our world, to witness to Christ our king, and to live in truth and love as servants of his kingdom. But the Advent hope is a salutary reminder that the future of our world, the future of our planet, does not begin and end with human beings. Thank goodness. The idea that human beings are getting better and better and that as history progresses, one day we will be able to establish our own Utopia is an illusion. The Advent hope is firmly fixed on the God who acts to create, redeem and renew his whole creation. When our hope is fixed on God, we are free to work and serve and give with fresh energy and purpose, knowing that the future is shaped by Christ himself.
Meanwhile, we are to 'keep awake' as Jesus tells his disciples in our gospel reading. We may not know what is coming, but we do know who is coming to us.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Revd Helen Marshall