• Isaiah 63: 16-17, 64:1, 3-8
• Psalm 80:2, 3, 15-16, 18-19
• 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
• Mark 13:33-37

Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and a new liturgical year is almost under way. The important thing that we have to remember is that Advent means “coming” or “arrival”. The Christmas displays have been in the shops for some months now, and you probably heard “book now for Christmas” for the first time back in August. But the feast has yet to come, and our task is to prepare for the Lord”s coming.

Part of that preparation will be to realise the extent to which we are utterly dependent on God. In the first reading for next Sunday, this is taken to extremes, and the prophet is complaining against God, asserting that “you are our Father, our redeemer”, but almost in the same breath demanding to know, “why do you make us stray from your ways? Why do you turn our hearts from reverencing you?” Just like us, all too often, the prophet demands a spectacular intervention, “Tear open the heavens, and come down, let the mountains tremble before you”, before lapsing into an appropriate recognition of guilt, “You are angry, and we have sinned…we are all withering like leaves”. And this leads in turn to the recollection, once more, that, “You, YHWH, are our Father; we are the clay and you are the potter”. That is where we have to start, as we wait for the Lord”s coming this Christmas.

The psalm is likewise written by someone utterly convinced of our dependence on God, “Shepherd of Israel, hear us…you who are enthroned on the cherubim”, and the psalmist even asks God to “come back” (the word can also mean “repent”!), “and look down from heaven”. Then comes a promise, which we shall do well to make our own, this Advent, “never again shall we stray from you”, and a recognition that we cannot do it on our own, “Give us life, and we shall call upon your name”.

The second reading likewise carries an invitation to focus on the Lord. It is from the opening verses of Paul’s first surviving letter to the church in Corinth; now these Corinthian Christians had been getting rather above themselves, thinking that they were enormously spiritual; and when that happens, you take your eyes off God and focus on yourself. That always leads to trouble. Gently, therefore, Paul invites them to concentrate on God, wishing them “grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. “Grace and peace” are God’s gift, not something that we can provide for ourselves; “grace” is God’s unconditional love, which, as Paul had become intensely aware, is lavished upon us regardless of how “good” we are.  Then Paul starts to give thanks, and the complacent Corinthians will have expected him to show gratitude for how spiritual they had become; but not a bit of it! His thanksgiving is “for the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus”, and for the fact that “you have been enriched in all rhetoric and all knowledge”. The Corinthians had been thinking that this “rhetoric and knowledge”, two ideas that are constantly stressed in the letter, was all their doing, so they will not have been very impressed by Paul’s language. And so it goes on, Paul emphasising, with a touch of relish, one suspects, how the whole thing is the gift to them of God and of Christ; and that there is more to come. Our passage then ends with “God is faithful”, something that the Corinthians needed to hear.

The gospel for next Sunday is a very short one. It comes from Mark’s “Little Apocalypse”, which might be talking about the end-time, when Christ will come again, or about the Fall of Jerusalem; but either way the invitation to us is to concentrate on God, and that means to “stay awake”, and not be found sleeping. The point is that this world is God’s, not ours, and our task is to be ready to return it to him when he comes.