As we enter Advent

From Rev Dr John Squires
Presbytery Minister - Wellbeing

This Sunday, we start a new church year. Each year begings with Advent, a season of four weeks of preparing for the joyous celebrations of Christmas. The Gospel reading offered by the lectionary for the first Sunday in Advent (24:36–44) seems a strange place to start a year of Matthean stories about Jesus. Why begin Advent with an apocalyptic passage? And yet, the injunctions of this passage seem to sit neatly with the opening words of Jesus in this Gospel: “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (4:17).

These words echo exactly the message of John the baptiser (3:2) and point forward also to the demands that Jesus makes throughout his public ministry, culminating in the calls to “keep awake” and “be ready”, because “you do not know on what day your Lord is coming”. The opening message of Jesus is clearly echoed in this later apocalyptic speech.

David Cassian Cole is the founder and executive director of Waymark Ministries CIC. He is known as Brother Cassian. He writes about a custom in the early centuries of the Celtic church, for Advent to stretch for 40 days (mirroring Lent, the 40 days of preparation prior to Easter).

Cole writes, “It is believed that the 40 days of Advent were split into three sections, colloquially termed the three comings of Christ. The first is the incarnation, what we all focus upon at this time of year; the second is Christ coming into our lives; the third is the coming of Christ at the end of all things, as depicted in the book of Revelation. The third coming of Christ is that which comes at the end of all things, and through this period the Celtic Christians examine their own lives, not in a self-judgmental way, but in a positive self-reflection to see whether they are ready and prepared, in the way they are living, for Christ to return at any moment.”

https://www.brf.org.uk/celtic-advent/


So we are offered these words from the final long sermon of Jesus as the introduction to the year of Matthew: a reminder of the claim that God holds authority of the creation as the one who will determine “the time”, and that “about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (24:36), a call to “keep awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (24:42), an exhortation to “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (24:44).

Those phrases set forth the attitude that is required, in being open to the coming of Jesus—an attitude that is quite appropriate for Advent, that is essential for personal faith in Jesus, and that is fitting for the whole year of reading and pondering stories about Jesus, in this “book of origins”.

See more at https://johntsquires.com/2022/11/21/on-reading-scripture-during-advent-starting-with-the-end-matt-24-advent-1a/ and

https://johntsquires.com/2022/11/22/on-reading-scripture-during-advent-drawing-from-the-ancient-prophecies-isaiah-2-advent-1a/