First Sunday of Advent

Lectionary: 1

You know the time;
it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.
For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed;
the night is advanced, the day is at hand.

I rejoiced because they said to me,
“We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
And now we have set foot
within your gates, O Jerusalem.


I love this season of expectation and anticipation. Christmas is cut and dried in our culture, and too often in our churches. Advent still belongs to the Church; it has some sense of mystery. 

I rejoice because they say to me, "We will go up to the House of the Lord." 
The house of Advent is built not of wood, steel or stone, but of moments, hours and days. We enter it with song; "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and "On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry." 

Unlike the House of Saint Nicholas, "where the children are nestled all snug in their bed and Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled down for a long winter's nap," this is "the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." 

We should, "Stay awake, be ready, you do not know the hour when the Lord is coming." 

We do not want to be found soporific with Yuletide satiety; rather, we should be hungry. My mother never let us eat before lunch or supper. She said we would spoil our appetite. That is never truer than during Advent, when ten thousand voices urge us to "EAT! EAT! Manga, manga!" 

Today's gospel should be familiar to us. We hear stories from throughout the United States and the world of sudden, overwhelming tragedies. In the middle of a shopping mall, a gun owner cuts loose and murders people; in the middle of an open plain a tornado drops out of the sky and demolishes a small town; on a distant shore the ocean suddenly rises up and swallows ten thousand people: "One will be taken, the other left." It happens without rhyme or reason; it is senseless and yet it happens. Why were they killed? Why was I spared? 

We don't know when or whence a tide of woe might come upon us. Will it be natural or man-made? Will it be preventable or unforeseeable, financial or personal? Will it be an accident, a sickness, chronic or acute? The wintry darkness reminds us of our fears. 

The Lord will come to save us. We need salvation and only God can save us. 

We don't need more stuff. Advent joyfully assures her children, "You are safe within my house, my prayers and my confident expectation."