In addition to being the 1st Sunday of Advent, which makes it the 1st Sunday of a new church year, this is the beginning of a new month, which means we will be celebrating the sacrament of Communion.
The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Isaiah 64:1-12
- Mark 13:24-30
The Sermon title is New World In the Morning
Early Thoughts: A new year is beginning! New possibilities lie ahead! God is at work, doing a new thing,transforming the world!
The most familiar Advent themes are probably Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. But underlying and amidst those are also themes of birth and newness. At the smae time we celebrate those things in the midst of a world that so often seems to work against Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. How do we proclaim the promise in a broken world?
Well Christians have been proclaiming the promise in a broken world for almost 2000 years by now -- so we should know how to do that.
The reading for the 1st Sunday of Advent always feel a little bit out of step with the world around us. AS the world is ramping up for Christmas we show up in church 4 weeks before Christmas and hear words that don't sound very joyful or hopeful. Do we really want God to "tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!"? Where are the jingling bells and the bright lights and the sweet happy songs?
Advent is about preparing for a baby. Advent is also about preparing for the world to be changed. This is the Sunday when we will light the candle of Hope. Our hope is in fact that God will tear open the heavens. Our hope is that God will reshape and remold us (and indeed the whole world) as a potter would work the clay. Our hope is in the promise that the Reign of God, the Reign of Christ will break into our reality and a new world will be born. We share the hope shared by John of Patmos, the writer of Revelation, who saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old one had passed away (Revelation 21:1).
The world is not what we would hope it could be. Between inflation and interest hike, a looming (or already breaking) climate crisis, homelessness, opiod crisis, gang crime, racism, war zones around the world and so many other things hope might seem like a fool's bet. I think we are sometimes called to be fools.
Hope is rugged and ready for the fight. Hope is what leads up to look at the world as it is and keep looking for what it could be. Roger Whittaker once sang about a new world in the morning. He then reminded us that the morning is today. Dawn is breaking, a new world is being born, God is tearing open the heavens and breaking into the world. Advent is here!
And in that reality I do indeed find hope -- most days at least.
--Gord
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