Sermon
30th November 25
During Advent we will light the candles on the Advent wreath. As we will do that, we will remember all those people who were looking forward to Jesus coming into the world. We will start around 4,000 years ago with the Patriarchs; we will celebrate the prophets from the first millenium BC, culminating in that eccentric character John the Baptist. Finally, on the Sunday before Christmas, we will remember the heavily pregnant Mary making the long journey to Bethlehem.
The history of the human species suggests that once people were able to cope with the essentials to maintain life such as food, shelter and warmth, their thoughts soon turned to questions about their existence. All sorts of gods emerged, often based on animals such as the great Egyptian pantheon, or of human-like figures such as the gods of Ancient Greece and Rome. Keeping the gods happy was seen as important for survival, even to the extent in some cultures of human sacrifice.
Within the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, we look back to the so-called Patriarchs: folk like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph: of whom we read in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. Whether they existed as actual people, or are composites of different oral traditions (which would explain why there are several name changes) doesn’t really matter. Either way, we are looking back to the first half of the 2nd Millennium BC.
Most of us were brought up with those wonderful stories about the Patriarchs beginning with Abraham and Sarah making that long journey from what we would now call the Persian Gulf, round the fertile crescent through Mesopotamia named after the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now modern Iraq, all the way down to Egypt, before returning to settle in Canaan, that is modern day Palestine.
We read of Abraham being sent to sacrifice his son Isaac, but being stopped at the last moment: perhaps by the realisation that God did not require human sacrifice. We remember stories of Jacob cheating his brother Esau of his inheritance, and of Joseph, with his coat of many colours, finishing up in Egypt where his dreams led to great stores of food being made ready before the years of famine.
These great men and women, the founders of our faith tradition, were struggling to know more about God and, whereas they certainly wouldn’t be looking forward to the coming of a Messiah in the sense that later generations would, they were groping to know more about God and yearning for Him to reveal more of himself to them.
In that sense, we can put them first on our list of those looking forward to the birth of Jesus, as we now light our first candle. As we do that, I will say a prayer, then we will sing the first verse and chorus of the song that you will find on the back of your service cards.
Amen
God of Abraham and Sarah, and all the patriarchs of old, you are our Father too. Your love is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of David.
Help us as we prepare to celebrate his birth, to make our hearts ready for your Holy Spirit to make his home among us.
We ask this through Jesus Christ, The Light who is coming into the world.
Light the Advent Candle one.
Now the waiting has begun,
we have started on our way:
time to think of Christmas Day.