Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness”
Adventus Christi. The Advent of Christ. What does it mean? It means the coming of Christ. Advent celebrates the coming of God towards us in Jesus Christ. One of the Advent questions asks “who is this?” who comes. In the coming of Christ we learn the meaning of the coming of God towards us.
The mystery of Advent is wonderfully captured in today’s readings. Paul talks about the law, explicitly referencing the Ten Commandments understood as fulfilled in love, a love which has to do with our “cast[ing] off the works of darkness” and “put[ting] on the armour of light”, even more “put[ting] on the Lord Jesus Christ”. It marks a transition, a turning from darkness to light, to our lives as lived in the light of God’s Word and Truth. The Gradual Psalm prays that God will turn us as well as “turn[ing] again and quicken[ing] us” and for what end? “That thy people may rejoice in thee.” Advent is about the turning of God towards us in Jesus Christ.
What does that mean? It means that there is at once joy and judgment, even the wrath of the angry Christ! There is joy in the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem but, in the wisdom of Thomas Cranmer in the sixteenth century, instead of ending the passage with the response of the multitude who answer the question “Who is this?” by saying “This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee,” the reading continues with the story of Christ’s “cast[ing] out all them that sold and bought in the temple”, “overthrow[ing] the tables of the money changers”, and berating all who heard him with the words: “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The contrast could not be greater between the joyous cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David” and Christ’s words of anger and rebuke at the betrayal and misuse of the temple, the house of God, and the things of God. Yet that is exactly the point of the Advent.
There is joy and there is judgment. The joy is in the judgment. God cares enough to turn to us! Why? Because he seeks our turning to him. It means that we have to confront the works of darkness which stand in such stark opposition to the light of Christ. How do we begin to turn and be found in the turning of God to us?
