Sermon on First Sunday of Advent- Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen, please do be seated. If you knew that his Majesty the King was coming to a dinner party sometime in the next month, but you didn't know when. How would you prepare? I imagine you'd want to be sure that you had everything ready at a moment's notice. You'd probably get up every morning and have a tidy, just to make sure that everything was ship shaped. If you were really organised, you might even try and set up some kind of early warning system. Perhaps you'd prime a couple of friends to watch the streets on the outskirts of Barnet so that they could give you a ring and let you have a couple of minutes notice to get your glad rags on and have a moment to collect yourself before he arrived. Whatever the details of the preparation I'm sure it would be a stressful month. You wouldn't be able to completely relax because at any moment you might be called into action. This kind of readiness is the advice Jesus gives to his disciples in our gospel reading. Jesus and his disciples have been touring Jerusalem ahead of the Passover and unbeknownst to all except Jesus, Jesus's arrest, crucifixion and death were fast upon them as indeed was the resurrection. Jesus was using these last days to give his final teachings, packing all the most important things he wanted the disciples to take away once he had resurrected and ascended so that they could have them for their task of running the church. Of course, the final preparation Jesus made was to give his disciples the Eucharist, the place in which they would receive him. But immediately before that Jesus focused on enigmatic apocalyptic sayings. This is in a sense for straightening. But of course, Jesus chose his words carefully. His actual teaching administrative, although he was 33 when he was crucified, his actual teaching and ministry only lasted three years. And in those three years he shared everything, needful for salvation. Nothing that Jesus said or did in the Gospels was wasted because he knew his time was short. An apocalyptic teaching that is, teachings about the end times or the second coming are difficult. Because they necessarily speak about something which hasn't happened yet. And as a rule, we tend to find these teachings or prophecies, as you might call them, very hard to believe, especially if they contain news that we'd rather not hear. The scripture is full of examples. Almost any time that the prophets spoke out against Israel or Judah over the thousands of years that the Old Testament spans, they were dismissed. They were even attacked for their words and told to be quiet. Their warnings that the people of God needed to amend their ways, or else find themselves at the mercy of their more powerful neighbours, were only ever accepted after the neighbours had attacked and moved in. The Gospels contain a similar theme. Jesus spoke openly about his forthcoming death by crucifixion long before it happened. But each time that he did, we're told that the disciples didn't understand. As we usually read the scriptures with a benefit of hindsight, it's easy for us as a modern audience to be judgmental of those who failed to understand warnings. How on earth could the people of Israel and Judah keep making the same mistakes. How did they fail to understand the warnings of Elijah and Isaiah with all of the prophets? How did the disciples fail to understand that Jesus was very clearly talking about the crucifixion? He said it time and time again. But of course, as an audience, we are pretty much guilty of the same lack of insight. We see, for example, how nations have largely ignored the warnings about the crisis of global warming. Even when we see the scientific prophecies coming true, errant weather patterns rising sea levels are more toxic atmosphere. We still can't bring ourselves as an audience to these modern-day prophecies to act as we need to. They're talking about something terrible happening in the future and we'd rather not hear it and so we don't believe it. So of course, Jesus' apocalyptic teachings is teachings about the second plumbing are frustrating because there are about difficult things that are hard to imagine using language we barely understand and there are about things that have yet to happen. That puts us in the same boat as the disciples during the Gospels. Like them, we are struggling to understand a teaching which uses language that we can only just grasp, making warnings about things that we can't quite imagine happening and which, therefore, we struggle to believe in. This can of course lead us to draw comforting conclusions about these passages to explain them away. Dr. Muddiman, for example, the author of the Oxford Bible commentary, concludes that Jesus in the passage we've just heard was warning his disciples about the forthcoming destruction of the temple. The words there will be signs in the Samm the Moon and the Stars taught a mutter man in interprets as great political manoeuvring. Perhaps Jesus was stalking about a forthcoming event of such political significance that it would amount to the changing of an age the end of one world and the start of another. Of course, this did happen. In 70 AD, the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and raised the temple to the ground after a severe insurrection against occupying forces. Most scholarship agrees that this passage is talking about that event. The destruction of the temple was earth-shattering. For the Jewish people across the empire, across the world, much as it had been the first time that it happened, when Babylon destroyed the temple. The temple was the place of God's presence. The centre of Jewish worship and ritual practice, it was their centre of being their place of gravity. Its destruction forced Jewish people to reorder their worship, to completely re-understand who they were as a people, and to this day the temple remains destroyed. That reordering is still happening. There is only a foundation wall standing in Israel, the wailing wall, the place of wailing in mourning. Dr. Muddiman’s interpretation, as I say, is theologically sound. Most scholars agree that Jesus was talking about the destruction of the temple. And it would be impossible to prove that Jesus meant anything else, aside from that event by his statements. And yet the words be alert at all times. I think suggest that Jesus meant something more than just the destruction of the temple. After all Jesus knew that his teaching would go beyond the first disciples and these words would have power and authority long after the destruction of the temple which happened during the lifetime of most of the people who were listening. He'd also promised throughout the Gospels that he would be returning in Matthew 22, 42, he taught, "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come." The belief that Jesus will come again is reflected in the Nicene Constantinople Creed, which we say every Sunday morning. He will come again in glory to judge the living and to the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. This season of Advent is one of two chances that the church gives us to consider Jesus' promise that he will return. These seasons act as a refreshing splash of water, waking us out of slumber. Keeping of slumber. Keeping awake as Jesus commanded is hard work. In the analogy that I used to begin this sermon; I talked about having to be ready just for a month for an unexpected royal visit. Of course, that alone would be exhausting. But what if the royal visit could happen at any point for the rest of your lives? It would be impossible to keep yourself ready. Eventually, the food you'd prepared would go off. Eventually, the floors would get dirty. Eventually, your other guests would go on holiday. And so instead of being ready at every moment, you'd have to make sure that you had periods to reset. To blow away the cobwebs that you had periods to reset, to blow away the cobwebs and bring everything back to water the way that they should be, just in case the king was coming. Jesus knew that keeping this alert for his second coming would be exhausting. And that's why he made a community of his disciples. He knew his followers would need each other as a church to encourage one another in maintaining readiness once he descended. Similarly, the disciples discovered the importance of community as they brought people into faith across the Roman Empire. As they drew people to Christ, they also brought believers together into community to worship and to study together to encourage and refresh one another. And so, the burden of keeping ready became a communal load. No individual was expected to be a follower of Jesus on their own because it's just not possible. It's too hard work. So, we read in one Thessalonians night and day, we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all just as we abound in love for you. St Paul writing to encourage the church in Thessalonica spoke of his vocation to refresh and encourage that church so that they could keep on going. He spoke of their need to love one another to provide refreshment for one another in preparation for and ensure in certain hope of the return of Jesus, which was a guiding principle throughout the life of the early church. Even when that church struggled in their faith, some poor knew that as a community the promise of Jesus' return would engage the community and encourage the believers. And part of loving each other, St. Paul taught, with St. Paul's sure that everyone in the community remained strong in the faith. And so, he talks about restoring whatever is lacking in your faith. St. Paul wasn't talking about having a community of self-righteous people who were judging each other. Rather, he would say that a community needs to understand that its success or its failure is corporate. Each person needs the love of the others to encourage their faith. Because the race is long and hard and we can't do it on our own. And so this is our vocation too, as St John the Baptist. In a few moments time we will proclaim as we do every Sunday that Jesus will come again and we proclaim implicitly that might happen at any moment. We don't know what it will look like. We will naturally struggle to imagine it because it's an apocalyptic message and human beings don't like those. But if Jesus were to return tomorrow, we can be sure that he would ask us how we as a church family had encouraged one another in the faith. And so, this advent, this time to refresh ourselves. Let us ask that question. How do we, how do you contribute to the faith of this community? How do you encourage the faith of your fellow believers? How do you help other people keep alert and how do they help you? Be sure and certain. Jesus Christ will come again. Be encouraged in that knowledge. Let us work together and encourage one another and restore whatever is lacking in our faith. Amen.