Advent Sunday: Are you ready for Jesus?

Isaiah 51:4-11

Mark 13:32-37

This Sunday is Advent Sunday, the first day of the Church year and traditionally the beginning of preparation for Christmas. The word ‘advent’ means ‘the coming of an important event, person, invention etc.’ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 2007: p.22). The focus of Advent, therefore, is the coming of Jesus. Obviously, at this time of year we think a lot about the coming of Jesus at Christmas, over two thousand years ago. This is indeed a significant part of what Advent is about from a Christian perspective. However, there is more to this sometimes overlooked liturgical season. I want to approach the question ‘Are you ready for Jesus?’ from three angles.

Firstly, are you ready for Jesus to come at Christmas? What I mean is, are we in a place where we are able to truly focus on the real meaning of Christmas? Are we spiritually ready for Christmas and all its glory? You don’t need me to tell you how extraordinarily busy, hectic and stressful this time of year can be. Whether it’s buying presents, getting the food in, organising your time so you can do the full round of the relatives, attempting to steer family politics, Christmas is usually a whirlwind time for people. I heard this week about a couple of people in a supermarket who had a physical fight over a frozen turkey! We’ve managed to turn Christmas into something of a nightmare!! On top of all of this, there’s so much happening at church over the next few weeks. All of this stuff is great and can be wonderful opportunities to keep us focussed on what Christmas is truly all about, but sometimes we can even let everything going off at church overwhelm us.

The upshot of all this is that when Christmas comes, we’re not spiritually ready for the birth of Jesus. In our reading from Isaiah 51 we read, ‘My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations’ (v.5), and ‘Those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.’ (v.11). This is what Christmas is all about. God’s salvation and righteousness have come to Earth in Jesus. He came to heal and save the Earth. His gospel is ‘good news’, intended to bring liberation, life, gladness, joy, peace and hope. I believe that God wants us to be in a place at Christmas where can enter more deeply into the story of God’s love and salvation, and let it shape our relationship with Him and the pattern of our life. Instead, we are usually not ready to meet with Jesus deeply at Christmas. We’re too busy and/or exhausted, or perhaps distracted by the pain and loneliness that Christmas can sometimes bring.

Plenty of people weren’t ready for Jesus when he came.In the opening chapter to John’s gospel we read, ‘He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (Vv.10-11). We need to trust God that if we alter our priorities so that we put Him first over the coming weeks, he will help with all the other pressures and troubles we face. We need to be like Mary, pondering the events of Christmas in our heart (Luke 2:19).

Questions

  1. Do you look forward to Christmas or not? Why (if you feel comfortable to share this)?
  2. How are you feeling about the next few weeks?
  3. Do you normally find Advent and Christmas to be a time when you are drawn closer to God? If so, why do you think this is? If not, why do you think this is?
  4. Are you ready for Jesus coming this Christmas? What might you need to do to be ready?

Secondly, are you ready for Jesus to come into your life to live and work in and through you? As Christians, we know that God loves us unconditionally and wants to be first in our lives, in order that we have life in all its fullness and be givers of God’s life to the world. If you are like me, you long to know God increasingly deeply, to be transformed by Him into the likeness of Christ and to be used by Him to forward the Kingdom. Isaiah 51:9-10 says, ‘Awake, awake, arm of the LORD, clothe yourself with strength! Awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the water of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?’I want God’s arm to awake and work in my life, bringing salvation to myself and, through me, to others. This is what God wants too. He wants to part seas, as it were, in and through our lives. He wants things to be different, better, than they are now. He is always willing and ready to come in and release his love and power in our lives. The problem is that when God comes to us, we are often not ready. We are preoccupied by other things – work, family, health, school, money. We often tend to find it difficult to prepare ourselves for God to break in, in big and small ways, in the ordinary and extraordinary, and dwell and work within us. If we are not ready, then we much more easily miss God knocking on the door of our lives; or we hear him knocking, but don’t feel able to let him in, because have not prepared ourselves for his coming more deeply into our lives, and so we may be afraid of what he might want to do.

Mary was ready, you could say in a very literal sense, for Jesus to break into her life. She must have been a young woman of tremendous faith and close relationship with God, because when God called her to be the mother of Jesus, she was ready: ‘“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”’ (Luke 1:38). In contrast to Mary, Joseph at first struggled to grasp and accept what was going on. From what little we know about him, it seems that he was a good and gentle man of principle and faith. However, he took some persuading before he accepted that Mary’s child was God’s own Son and that God wanted Joseph to play the crucial role of being Jesus’ earthly father. Mary was ready for Jesus because she had developed a closeness with God which meant that she was ready for God to move in and interact.

Questions

  1. Jesus wants daily to be in our lives, working his transforming love and power in and through us. How does that make you feel?
  2. Are you more like Mary or Joseph? How might you become more like Mary?
  3. What might prevent us from being ready for Jesus to come to us?
  4. Are you ready for Jesus to come into your life more deeply? What might you do to be more ready for Him?

Thirdly, are you ready for Jesus to return again? The Second Coming is a difficult thing for us to grasp. The Bible is full of imagery to describe what that day will be like, but the truth is, we won’t know for certain until it happens. What we do know is that we cannot know when that day will come. It may be in our lifetimes, or it may not be for be for a very long time yet! Jesus simply tells us to be alert and keep watch for the day. I do not believe we need to fear Christ’s return. It will be the fulfilment of all that, as Christians, we live for. We don’t know for certain what that day will be like but we do know that after it there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no more death or grief or crying or pain (Revelation 21). Jesus wants us to be ready to present our lives and our lives’ work as an offering to God when that day comes. He wants to be able to say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23).

Questions

  1. When you think about Jesus’ return, what are your immediate thoughts?
  2. Do you fear the Second Coming or do you look forward to it? How do you think we should feel?
  3. Are you ready for Jesus to come again? What might you do to be more ready for that day?