The First Sunday of Advent
First Sunday of Church Year
Sunday 3 December 2017
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Isaiah 64:1-9 (NRSV)
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
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This is an urgent cry for divine intervention and deliverance. The prophet sees so much that is troublesome. Isaiah longs for God to act, to save the people, even those who do not deserve such intervention. It's easy to understand why the prophet has such a longing. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear what occurs daily in the world, it is easy for us to sound very much like Isaiah. Our cries are even more passionate when we know and are convinced that God can act and can do better things for us and the world than we can desire or imagine. Jesus holds before us the vision of the day when sin and death and all that is rooted in this brokenness will be no more. Advent holds that vision before our eyes. And so we cry, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!"
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Fr. Timothy Alleman
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