The First Sunday of Advent 2022

The word advent means “coming” or “to come” and Advent is that season of the Christian year when we prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate Christ’s coming at Christmas and Christ’s coming again in glory.  We acknowledge that in some sense we are living in between those two appearances of Christ.  We are waiting – celebrating and giving thanks for what God has already done in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and anxiously awaiting what God will do when Christ’s Kingdom comes in its fullness.  As we seek to be the Church, the body of Christ, in this liminal space we are called to wait expectantly, to be prepared, in order that we might receive Christ whenever and however he comes to us.  The prophet Isaiah reminds us that we wait in hope because the day is coming when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.  In the birth of Jesus that new day has begun and that changes everything.