ADVENT SUNDAY 2010

A note on the Readings for the first Sunday in Advent 28^th November 2010

by Gordon Graham

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Psalm 122

http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Advent/AAdv1_RCL.html

 

On Advent Sunday we begin a new cycle of readings. This year the Gospel passages (for the most part) come from Matthew rather than Luke, from which they were taken over the course of last year. But on Advent Sunday itself, the change is not so very significant. Whatever the year, this week’s readings are always powerfully apocalyptic – all about the end of time and the final judgment.

The modern world, I guess, has greater difficulty in believing in an apocalyptic end to time than people had in centuries past, and ‘adventism’ is generally regarded as somewhat extreme by the members of mainline churches Yet, there they are – readings from OUR Bible, appointed to be read this Sunday by OUR lectionary. So what should we think about them? How are they best understood?

The first point to emphasize is that, despite the frequency with which people have tried to predict ‘the end of time’, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is quite clear -- “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. In other words, all this will happen in God’s time, not ours. Secondly, ‘if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into’. Each of us has our own ‘end of time’ – the hour of our death. It does not matter when God brings the whole of history to a close if we have met the end of own lives unprepared.

Suppose with the inevitability of death in mind, we take the message of Advent to heart? What then are we to do by way of preparation? The Epistle for this week has the answer ‘You know what time it is now, how it is the moment for you to wake from sleep. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day’. The passage from Isaiah puts it even more simply ‘Come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!’ The ‘moment’ to make this choice is now.