Merredin Uniting Church

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36.44

Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the start of the church year. This is the season when we begin the preparation for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But it is not simply a preparation for Christmas – that is the celebration of only one way in which Jesus comes to us.

He also comes amongst us now, in the every day – most notably in Word and Sacrament, but also in His constant Presence with us, for before His ascension He said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” We know the Presence of Jesus when we pray, when we need comfort, when we cry out to Him.

But Jesus will also come amongst us again, in the flesh, to judge creation and to bring the time of peace and joy which Isaiah so eloquently presents to us today.

“In the last days,” He says, “the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

We are in the last days; the end is coming – we can be certain of that. But when will it be?

Its not for us to speculate on the time – even Jesus said that only the Father know the time and hour. But we can be prepared.

We have been affected by several tragic deaths in the Wheatbelt in the last few months. Lives suddenly ended on the highway of life. There have also been those who, having lived their lives, long and as well as they were able, passed on from this world into the next.

Last Sunday afternoon a little girl, fell off the tractor her grandfather was driving. Not even four years old, she died under the rear wheel of the machine. It is a family tragedy.

When each of these people were born and growing up, living their lives, they had no idea when that life would end. We do not know, and more than that, we are not going to know.

As Jesus said in our Gospel text, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The desire to know the end is very much part of our society. People spend millions on psychics, tarot cards, fortune tellers and astrologists in order to get a glimpse into the future. I am not sure what the total spend is but a report in the London Telegraph this week (which, incidentally was covering the Eurozone financial crisis) said that Italians spend eight billion dollars a year on fortune telling.

If we know what the future holds, if we knew when the end would come, we would pretty much do what we like now, knowing that we could always do the rush at the end to get everything right at the last moment. We would know what to do with our savings, our possessions, our superannuation, our purchases …. Life would be a breeze.

The problem is that not one of us even knows if we will see today’s sunset.

In our gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus is speaking of the ordinariness of His coming. People will be eating and drinking, getting married, working in the field and in the kitchen.

He came in an ordinary way when He was born in a stable in Bethlehem. He comes in an ordinary way into our lives every single day – perhaps that is why we often do not even comprehend His Presence.

And He will come in an ordinary way when He comes again – two men working in a field, one will be taken and the other left; two women will be grinding with a hand mill, one will betaken and the other left.

And this tells us something about the way in which we should be prepared for the coming of Jesus – we should focus, not on the end times, but on the purpose which God has for us and the world right now.

Martin Luther said that if he knew that the world would end tomorrow he would still plant an apple tree today. Live your life as if it will never end, prepare your heart as if it will end in a few minutes.

If we knew when the end was near, the temptation would be to hole up in a bomb shelter and wait. We would create a fortress mentality, guarding ourselves against the enemy – the unbelievers, the homosexuals, the wicked, the drug addicts and alcoholics, the bikies … in fact, everyone who we do not agree with, because we are pretty sure that God doesn’t agree with them either.

Instead, however, God calls us to live in the midst of uncertainty. It is only in that uncertainty that we discover the certainty that Jesus Christ is in the midst of it with us.

When we stop trying to figure out “when”, we will have the energy to listen to “what” God is calling us to do today.

Advent preparation is about removing the “noise” from our lives so that we can see and hear the coming of Jesus amongst us today. Jesus spells this out very clearly in the next chapter of Matthew – the text we used last week.

In the Judgement scene of the condemned, they say to Jesus, “‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

Jesus often comes to us in the least of our brothers and sisters. In the form of those who we do not, in our assessment of ourselves, consider to be equal with us or deserving of God.

The danger is that we will miss His coming to us in the busy-ness of our religious preparing, or our self-righteous attitude.

If we ignore, or trample, our neighbours today we will not be ready to to welcome Jesus when He does come into the ordinariness of our lives today, or when He returns in all His glory.

We are to live in constant readiness – not in personal righteousness – but in attentiveness to the Holy Spirit who is always with us.

If this were your last day on earth, how would you spend it?

THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT…

If you aren’t spending it that way, why not?

As you know, I have been preparing and working out the plans for next year in our Parish. As I have been doing that I have become much aware of how much of what we are planning is about preparing to know Christ’s Presence with us now, and when He comes again.

Focussing on worship – do you realise how much of our worship is actually focussed on rehearsing our death? Each time we come together, we remind ourselves and encourage each other with the promise and hopes that carry us through the difficult time of death.

“This is a foretaste of the feast to come.”

“The Lord bless you and keep you.”

“The peace of the Lord be with you.”

And so much more!

Worship is not only about the adoration of God, it is also about community – these are the things of eternity.

We are also focussing on the Scriptures and Prayer. This is the communication of heaven. God speaks to us through His Word; we speak to Him through prayer. We need to know the language of heaven before we get there.

(Our family once flew into Paris from New York. It was a long flight that began in Los Angeles and we had planned to spend a few days resting up and seeing the sights before going on to Johannesburg. The problem was that the travel agent had messed up our hotel booking and it was the Mayday weekend and all of France had descended on the capital. There  was literally “no room at the inn”. And we couldn’t speak the language. We could speak English, Afrikaans and a bit of Zulu but those were all irrelevant to a Frenchman. Its going to be like that for us in heaven, unless we learn the language of heaven now through the Scriptures and prayer.)

And we are wanting to be more involved in outreach and mission – to be able to give water and blankets and Christ’s love to the least of these.

We are heightening our awareness of Christ’s coming. We are, as Paul says in our text from Romans, “recognising that the night is almost over and the day is nearly here.”

We are “understanding the present time, waking from our slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”

Yes, we are living in uncertainty, but that uncertainty is about things that really do not matter. Our certainty is built on the One who is with us and who will continue to be with us always.

Advent is about refocussing and regrouping. It is a time to take stock of our lives for living it well in the midst of uncertainty.

Christ came as a baby and we celebrate. Christ will come again, of that we are assured. Christ comes in our midst today, right where we are living at the moment.

And so we begin Advent – “preparing for the revelation of Jesus in the joy and sorrow, the laughter and the tears, the comedy and the tragedies of our daily lives here and now.” (Edward Peterman)

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