FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT

1.       With this first Sunday in Advent we begin the New Liturgical Year. It is quite different from the one we will celebrate within a month’s time, when we begin the New Calendar Year 2005. Where has the year gone, so quickly. A friend of mine said to me, “I am just catching up on my credit cards for last year’s Christmas presents and this Christmas is already upon us again. The shops are telling us how to make Christmas 2004 merry and bring.

2.       Our Advent calls us once again to a spirit of anticipation, a spirit of expectation. One of the hymns that best express our theme is the CITY OF GOD.

Awake from your slumber, arise from your sleep

A New day is dawning for all those who weep

The people in darkness, have seen a great light

The Lord of all longing has conquered the night.

3.       Isaiah in the first reading is calling the People of Israel to be “awake” and return to the Mountain of the Lord. Isaiah would a be a prophet under Four Kings, each one worse than the former Under these Kings the people of Israel would be both materially and spiritually bankrupt. They would make alliances with the people of Assyria, adopting their customs, their traditions, their gods. Isaiah calls them to turn back to God. He calls them to return to the Mountain - a place symbolic, where God would be met. Moses met God on the mountain. It was there that he received the Ten Commandments. Now the people are called to return to God - and to the covenant made on the mountain.

4.       As we approach Christmas, both materially and spiritually what are we looking for. I am not a great music fan, but some years ago, Britney Spears sang a song in which she sung, “What do you want, what do you really, really want?” And this Advent we are must face the question: what are we truly expecting? What are we waiting in anticipation?

The teacher asked the children to write and ask God for what they really wanted. Little Johnny wrote, “Dear God I would like peace on earth like the angels announced to the Shepherds, but if I cannot get that, please send me a Red bicycle.”  What Johnny really, really wanted was a Bicycle and a red one at that.

We need not be afraid or embarrassed about our material needs and wants and desires. Some of them are necessary as the little girl who sang, “all I want for Christmas are my two front teeth.” The reason being that it is in our wants, needs and desires that Jesus comes to meet us.

5.       Jesus tells us to Stay Awake - be aware of your needs, wants and desires. It is through these well known and well trodden paths that God will come to meet us. That is the meaning of the Christmas Even. The “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” It is through our needs, our hungers, our brokenness that we encounter God.

Like little Johnny we too would like Peace in the World - in Iraq, in the Ukraine, in Palestine and Israel. But perhaps as in the case of his Red Bicycle we have to settle for peace and forgiveness in our own families. In thirty years of Parish life, I have known so many brothers and sisters who do not speak, do not call, to not even know what each other is doing. And I am not speaking of 5 and 10 year olds, but grown ups, adults who are children of the same parents and will not speak or call one another.

6.       The angels said to the Shepherds, I bring you good news. Later on Jesus would enflesh that Good News. Jesus would make the good news concrete, he would tell us that the Good news meant

          blind people could see, the lame would walk, the dead would be brought to life - and the poor would her the good news.

We are called to see beyond our sinfulness, our pettiness, our sinfulness - the generosity and caring and kindness of our Christian community.

Truly we need to be awake from our slumber and arise from our sleep. God left the comfort Zone of the Trinity. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God became vulnerable so that we could know what it meant to love in an infinite manner. We are called to rise above our finite way of loving: I love those who love me, and do good to those who are good to me.

7.       This is the message and challenge for us as we begin the New Liturgical Year. Haven’t we had enough of quarrelling, pettiness, bickering. Like the people in the time of Isaiah, it is high time that we return to the Mountain, to climb and get a better view, a view from the perspective of God. This is the new day that dawns - and as we will hear next Sunday also from Isaiah - we are clothe int he Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the spirit of Good Counsel and the Awesomeness of God. It is something that we can want, really, really want.