FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT: Year A.

2. Dec 2008

Isaiah 2:1‑-5. Psalm: 122 Romans 13:11‑-14 Matthew 24: 37‑-44

1. Three beginnings! It is a bit confusing to have three New Years in five months. We had the New School Year begin in September. We have a new liturgical year beginning to today and the new Chronological year on 1^st January.



However the New Liturgical year begins with “The end”. We have the “Eschaton” or the last thing. We speak of the End of time, the Day of the Lord, the contrast between day and night, light and darkness. Strangely enough this mediation does cause fear, but it encourages hope, excitement and a sense of wonder. From my personal experience, I found it is important to carve out a time of quiet, a space of sacred to be alone with the Lord to savour these riches.

1a We begin with two visions from the Prophet Isaiah. One is a vision of the End of Wars and the Fullness of Peace. However, this Vision is not one that will happen in our lifetimes, but only at the end of time. The Picture of George Bush holding the hands of Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert in a victory sign of peace is only a mirage. The conviction, that we will have the ‘fullness of peace” in our own time, will only end in disappointment. Still, we have to journey along making every effort to bring about peace.

1b The second vision is the turning of weapons into ploughshares, and spears into pruning forks. The bad news is that no human programmes can achieve this because this will only happen when Christian, Muslims, Jews and others will “walk in the paths of the Lord and follow not the ways of the wicked” (psalm one). The good news is that God will achieve all this in spite of us. The Kingdom of God will be established on the Day of the Lord. Then will justice flourish and the fullness of peace be achieved. But it will be by the work of the Lord, and so as one theologian says, the theological accuracy of the hymn “let us build a City of God” is probably highly debatable. Only God can do that, but God wants us to be involved in the work of Salvation. Hence the need to stay awake as Paul says in the second reading. Stay awake, be alert for the Day of the Lord is at hand.

2. Paul contrasts day and night, light and darkness. It fitted in with the language of his time. The present age of his time was one of sin and evil. However a “new age” was to come. It would be with the advent of the Risen Christ. However, if we fast forward to 2007, the “new age” and the Golden compass are considered to be the language of the false prophets with hidden agendas and misleading messages. However, given the short attention span of our present generation even major events like Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami and the Hostage taking at Hilary Clinton’s election headquarters hold our attention for not more than a day. However, once the Church bans something, everyone wants to read the book or see the film that few knew even existed.

2b Paul tells us stay awake, be alert for the Day of the Lord is near. Paul was ambivalent and perhaps even mistaken about the Day of the Lord. He and the Christians of his time thought that the Day of the Lord was just around the corner. There was a sense of dread, excitement and tension. It was something we experienced in the final months of 1999. We stored up water and food and flashlights for the end of the world. Nothing happened. Even Jesus seems to have miscalculated “there will be some standing who will not taste death until the Son of Man come again to judge the world.”

However we are still here today in 2007 going into 2008 and the end of the world has not yet come. And so Paul began to speak of the Day of the Lord as being the End of the world. It was not our own personal and individualistic salvation, ie. For each one of us each passing year would make us “another day old and deeper in debt.” (Sixteen tons). Paul spoke of the Day of the Lord as being the consummation of History, the end of the world/universe when the Kingdom of God would be established.

3. In the gospel, Jesus advises us to be awake and be alert of the Day of the Lord. Now if we read Matthew 24:15-28, Luke 21:20-24; Mark 13: 13-23 we have the Day of the Lord coming as a day of horror. There will be wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes, plagues, famines and floods, sign of great distress in the skies. We seem to be experiencing that each day: only last week there were earthquakes in New Delhi, India and Georgetown, Guyana. Now these are not California where earthquakes seem to be part of everyday life. There are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and rumours of war in Iran. One can go on.

3a However, the Gospel paints a picture which is just the opposite. The Day of Lord will be just another ordinary day. And Jesus gives us two parables to illustrate this ordinary day.

First: it will be just another day as in the story of Noah. People were going about their business, even marrying and giving in marriage, when the Flood came upon them unexpectedly. The recent movie: Evan Almighty is precisely such a story. People questioned Evan’s sanity when he predicted a flood and all they could see were blue skies and a dry land, made drier by draught.

Second: people would go about their ordinary business. Some would be ploughing in the field, women would be grinding their corn. One would be taken and the other left behind. So the advise was be Alert for the signs that the Day of the Lord was at hand. It was not an atmosphere of fear and worry, but rather one of hope, excitement and wonder.

4. The story is told of Gautama Buddha. When he was dying, someone asked him

“Are you God?” “No,” he said,

“Are you a messenger of God?” “No.”

“Are you a prophet, a messiah ?” and he said, “No to all those questions.”

So finally some disciple who was a little frustrated kind of shook him, and said, “You’ve got to tell us who you are before you die.” And he merely said, “I’m awake, I’m awake” The message of being Alert, being awake is not a Christian monopoly. But if we think so then much will be demanded from us because much has been given to us.