Advent Sunday

 Isaiah 64: 1-7   Mark 13: 24-37

Today is Advent Sunday – a time of hope and expectation and joyfully looking forward to Christmas.

But have you been keeping up with the news? Covid continues to claim lives – in the UK, across the world.. and our politicians are trying to work out how best to respond. We long to get life back to normal, to see businesses re-opening, and people meeting and hugging, to be back together physically in our churches. We long for someone to sort this out properly. And who knows what other burdens we are each carrying. Maybe we even pray for God to come and sort it out for us.

Our world is really not all that different from the world that Isaiah was writing for in the passage we heard. The book of the Bible we call Isaiah was written by about three different prophets in three different times – towards the end, the part we heard is the third Isaiah – and he is speaking to God’s people at the time when they have returned to Jerusalem after being taken captive and exiled in Babylon for over 50 years.

Now the people are back – but after 50 years you can imagine the city is in a terrible state, people are at each other’s throats, they don’t know what to do, their hopes have been dashed, they are wondering whether God really cares about them.

Does that sound a bit familiar?

So what is the word of hope from Isaiah? It is the word ‘Yet’.
We all fade like a leaf…
There is no one who calls on your name..
you have hidden your face from us…
YET
O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter; 
we are all the work of your hand…
Now consider, we are all your people.

I might be being fanciful here but I think Isaiah asks important questions and then answers them.

We all fade like leaf.. yet we are the work of your hand
There is no-one who calls on your name.. yet you are our Father
You have hidden your face from us.. yet we are the clay and you are our potter.

When we feel fragile, we need to remember God holds us in his hand
When we feel that no-one hears our cries, we need to remember God our Father is listening
When we feel that we don’t know God’s plan, we need to remember that he is shaping and forming us and our word from the beginning of time to this moment.
Life is complex and difficult and stressful YET we remember we are all God’s people.
Isaiah encourages the people of his time and he encourages us to look back and remember and find hope in the God who is always with is as creator, Father & sustainer.

In our gospel reading we heard Jesus addressing the disciples in rather gloomy imagery, too. Is there good news for us in this?

Jesus is talking at a time when Israel has been invaded by the Roman army – and is still occupied. There are taxes to be paid to Caesar, warnings of death by crucifixion for those who resist Roman rule, wranglings for power between different political and religious groups. Jesus is not speaking in easy times.. and he warns his listeners that there will come days of suffering and darkness before God finally sets all things right.
Jesus, too offers hope – but not from looking back and remembering, this time, but by looking forward with expectation.

Jesus doesn’t offer a word, he offers an image. From the fig tree learn its lesson… when you see it putting forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.
I’d like to show you the fig tree I’m lucky to have in my garden.

It may not look much now, almost all the leaves have gone ready for Winter. But if you look closer (the second photo)…you see the bud is already there. I think Jesus knew very well that even at the hardest time of year the promise of next year’s growth is there. From the fig tree learn its lesson – life may be hard now, but soon – in a few months there will be a time of growth again. The buds of that growth exist already.

Jesus invites his listeners and us to see in the sign around us the fact that God is already at work – and to look forward to a time when new things will happen. “Keep awake”, says Jesus – do not despair, but look for what God is going to do.

Today we will celebrate communion together.

When we take the bread and wine we look back, and remember that in Jesus God came to us, died for us, and rose again to be with us always.

When we take the bread and wine we look forward, we see in this meal a foretaste of the banquet of God’s kingdom – when all will be fed, all ills righted, and love will conquer all.

When we take the bread and wine we keep awake, to see what God is ready to do in Advent, in us, through the coming of his mercy and grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.