First Sunday of Advent A.

How appropriate it is that the first words we hear from Scripture on this First Sunday of Advent are: “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” Because, as we begin yet another journey through the Church’s year – a journey that will take us once again through Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and all those Ordinary Sundays of the Year we have just completed, right back to where we are today – what we are all called to be is men and women of vision in the midst of the world. But what does this mean? What is this thing we call vision? What is a man or woman of vision like? Well, a brief look at Isaiah’s life will help us answer these questions.

As most of you know by now – I have certainly said it often enough – the prophet Isaiah lived in the eighth century BC during a time of great upheaval for the Jewish people. He saw the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, a fierce pagan people from what is now part Iraq part Iran, and the great question of the day was how to save Jerusalem from the same fate. Politicians argued about whether they should defy or appease the invaders, but Isaiah opposed both of these solutions. Convinced that the weakness of Judah came from its moral depravity he was able to see beyond the immediate political crisis. He could see possibilities that others could not see and looked forward to an entirely new future for Jerusalem, one in which, as we heard today, swords would be hammered into ploughshares, spears into sickles, nations would not lift sword against nation and there would be no more training for war. His whole preaching is filled with poetic images like this, many of which, like these, have become part of our language. But the truth is that even Isaiah did not fully understand what he was saying. What he was able to do, however, was envisage something new. He knew that things did not have to be the way they were or the way they had always been. He could see beyond the present, what seemed the only option to others, and it was this that made him a man of vision, a vision, the fulfillment of which, even now, lies in the future. And that is what we, as men and women of faith, fed and nourished each week by the Word and the Eucharist, are called to be for the sake of all those with whom we share this particular moment in history.

But what is it we are called to see beyond? What is God inviting us to see that others cannot see? Well, the simple answer to that is that, as men and women of faith, we are called to recognize the signs of the Kingdom all around us and help others see the futility and inadequacy of so much that passes for accepted wisdom in our modern culture. And much of this is familiar to us given that we often reflect together on these things. There is, for example, the way we so often today reduce truth to what we think it is or, worse still, what we want it to be. But truth is not just what makes sense to us or what we can understand, and we are called to show the world this by our constant openness to the truth that comes from God, the truths of faith, the truths revealed to us in Jesus. To do that is to be people of vision.

And then, of course, there is consumerism, that most profound of all illusions which drives our society today, the illusion that, if we can only acquire more and more material things, we will find the happiness we crave. On Friday, Pope Benedict published an Encyclical letter, his second, on the subject of Hope. And one of the things he says is that when people have travelled the road of consumerism and materialism, seeking happiness in possessions and finding only disappointment at the end of that road, we have to be ready with an alternative vision, one which offers genuine happiness and fulfillment. And that alternative is the Kingdom of God which Jesus tells us to seek above all other things because it alone can satisfy us.

And then there is the way we relate to each other. Faced with the same tendencies which afflict us today, the tendency to divide the world into friends and enemies, rejecting or even hating and making war on foreigners or those whom we perceive in some way to be different from ourselves, Isaiah, in a passage we will hear next Sunday, looks forward to a time of harmony when, again using the language of poetry, the wolf will live with the lamb, the panther lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion cub feed together and so on. And in a world dominated by social divisions between rich and poor, wars and conflicts between nations and the xenophobia which is rising up everywhere in the face of a mass movement of people which is the flip-side of globalization, we are called to embrace an alternative vision based on equality and be signs of it in the world.

But there is a problem about having this kind of vision, an inevitable consequence of being able to envisage something new, something different, and it is this: the further ahead you can see, the longer your vision, the less likely you are to live long enough to see it fulfilled. The vision of Isaiah, three thousand years later, is still in the future. In our own time many visionaries who laid the foundations of Vatican II didn’t live to see it and the same is true in many other walks of life. I often say to priests who are frustrated at the depth of resistance to change in the Church that the real challenge is to be able to live with the fact that our hopes will not be fulfilled until fifty years after we are dead. After twenty two years in St Matthew’s I can see my own vision for the parish unfolding, but only very slowly. And even when our vision is realised, it is never the way we imagined it.

And so, to be men and women of vision involves both trust and patience. As we come here each week we must, as Jesus says this morning, stay awake. Only the Spirit of God can open our eyes and minds and broaden our vision. That is why we come; to hear the Word of God, be changed by it and become more and more like the one we receive in Holy Communion. Because ultimately it is his vision we are talking about, not our own.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Men and women of vision, the prophets in every age, have always been persecuted or rejected in some way. Often they have been considered dangerous or even mad because they dared to imagine a situation different from the one people were familiar with and so never thought of questioning. And so we pray for men and women of vision in the world and in the Church today that they will continue to challenge us, even when we don’t like it………………………….Lord hear us

Without people of vision who could imagine something new, the human race could never have made the progress it has. The instinct to resist change and keep things the way they have always been is deep in human nature and is even necessary to maintain stability in society. But we also need those who can see beyond the present and open up to us new ways of thinking. And so we thank God for visionaries in every age, especially those in the Church who laid the foundations of the Second Vatican Council, even when our response is reluctant and slow……………..……Lord hear us

Men and women of vision are also desperately needed in the world of politics. If swords are to be hammered into ploughshares and spears into sickles; if nations are to stop lifting sword against nation and there is to be no more training for war, then we need leaders with the vision to break out of traditional ways of thinking and embrace a radically new way of doing things. And so we pray that God will raise up such leaders in the world today……..………………….Lord hear us

Today both the Jesus and St Paul tell us to stay awake. And so we pray for the grace to do this; to be always alert to what the liturgy calls ‘the signs of the times’ so that we can respond to them in a faith-filled and discerning way. And on this First Sunday of Advent we pray for the grace to come her each week over the next year with minds and hearts open to hear the Word of God and be changed by it, until we become more like the Jesus who comes to us in Holy Communion…………. Lord hear us

The danger is that, when we come back to this point in the liturgical cycle next year, we have made no progress and find ourselves in the same place we are now, having failed to enter deeply into the realities we celebrate . And so we pray that this will not happen to us. We pray that the coming year will see us entering more deeply than ever before into the story of Jesus birth, death and resurection and that, by doing so, we will become more effective witnesses to him in the world……Lord hear us

In the weeks before Christmas we will all be bombarded by the phenomenon we call consumersim. Advert after advert will tell us that, to have a happy Christmas, we must spend more and more money buying more and more things. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see through this lie so that our enjoyment of the Christmas season is heightened rather than diminished…...…………Lord hear us