The season of Advent begins this day, resetting the clocks and calendars of the Christian year and of Christian worship. Not just a new season, but also a new church year begins as well.

From Advent to Advent we journey each year, ‘round the holy circle of time that moves into and through the life of Christ, his death and resurrection, and on through all the Sundays after Pentecost. We have completed a whole year now, through Christ the King Sunday, even our annual Stewardship campaign—though of course if your pledge is not yet in, you may submit it at any time when the Spirit moves within you and you are ready for that level of commitment. Now, it’s Advent, time to refocus, to slow down and begin to make room in our hearts for the coming of God’s Messiah, a birth that will change us and everything.

It was Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century who fixed these first four weeks on our Christian calendar as a solemn time of prayer, of repentance, of fasting—a time to prepare our hearts for the “adventus Redemptoris,” Latin for "the coming of the Redeemer." Advent is a very specific sequence of four Sundays designed to slow us down, focus our prayer, and tweak the yearning in our hearts.

Advent is the not-yet season, the season of preparing for the Christ, a season we nearly miss in our eagerness to jump ahead to the Nativity. Not yet the season of shepherd, of manger, of angel song in the still winter night, but the season of expectation and anticipation. It is a season of cleaning our glasses and perking up our ears. It is a season of signs and portents. It is a season of watching and waiting and longing.

Of course, it’s been Christmas for quite a many weeks already out there in the malls and the catalogues. Our lives in the “real world” in these weeks are full of rush and stress and often frenetic, frazzling busyness. And so, it is our hope that in the worship services of this four-week Advent season, each of us may find some space for reflection, for introspection, for seeking out and recognizing our deepest self. That the music and lighting and symbols and spoken words will carry us into a deeper place, to that place in the soul where our deepest yearnings lie, where our questions congregate, that in being clearer about our questions, it may be a bit more possible for the Advent scriptures and symbols to address what we really need and are really asking.

We rejoice in our beautiful new paraments designed and sewn by a group of you and in the changes Mike Eskridge made to our traditional Advent/Christmas furnishings, adding a new color this Advent, this deep midnight blue. Over the last many years, the larger church has been moving away from the penitential reddish purple color long associated with Advent, leaving that for the Lenten season, and marking Advent now with its own color, this deep, dark blue, color of anticipation and expectation. I have seen this color described as “the color of the night sky just before dawn.” It is a blue with a lot of black mixed in, yet luminescent, glowing with light about to be revealed.

As the light of Advent begins to lend a faint luminescent glow to the deep darkness of our night’s sky, awareness begins to dawn in us that newness of life is possible after all in our lives and in this world.

Movement and change are afoot in Advent, as earth prepares for the coming of the Messiah, in the birth and at the end of time as well. Hence, the strange-sounding Gospel passage we hear today, strong words designed to wake us up—indeed to wake up creation itself: "And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and foreboding of what is coming in the world. For the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory and when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads--because your redemption is drawing near."

Adventus redemptoris! The Redeemer comes!

For Luke, these signs in the heavens serve as detour signs--admonitions to change direction and behavior. A new kind of ethical and spiritual behavior is required of us in these end times. Change. Conversion. For this is the beginning of God's reign on earth. Look! See! Get yourselves ready!

In his Prison Meditations, written in Germany during the second World War, Father Alfred Delp cautioned: "Advent is the time for rousing. We are shaken to the very depths, so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves... We must let go of all our mistaken dreams, our conceited poses and arrogant gestures, all the pretenses with which we hope to deceive ourselves and others. If we fail to do this, stark reality may take hold of us and rouse us forcibly in a way that will entail only anxiety and suffering."

The advent of our God is awesome. It is not for the faint of heart. It is, however, most certainly for those faint from hunger, faint from terror, faint from grief, faint from exhaustion, faint from sadness and fear. Advent brings the promise of creation restored, the assurance of justice and peace. It is for all who harbor, just behind a cheerful smile, a pleasant demeanor, doubts and fears, unfulfilled longing and hope deferred.

The advent of our God makes real the promise of light for those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and for the parts of our hearts desperate for something to believe in.

Advent calls us to anticipate hope, to expect the unexpected in this world.

How, then, will the words of Advent speak to us this year? Can it still bring, even to us, in these days, in this place, true words of hope and promise? Can our hearts find in this season some rest, some nourishment, some new light?

It’s important that we not just go through the motions of preparing for the Savior’s birth. Advent yearning cannot be faked or feigned. It must be truly experienced, felt in each of us. The questions must be our questions, the search our search, the hunger our hunger. Advent is a season time to go deep within and try and give our own words to the deepest questions of our heart and soul. What are we yearning to hear from God? What do we ache to see or to hear or to know? What's the hardest thing to face in the dark of the night? What are we about to give up on? Where are we hoping that light may shine?

If you listen to radio, you’ve heard the Motel 6 ad that had Tom Bodette promising weary travelers: “We’ll leave the light on for ya!” We all so long to come home and find the light on, a host ready to receive, room and board to be shared. The season of Advent assures us that God is ready for us with the light on. And all we have to do is do the same for God. Leave a light on in our hearts. Expect this guest. Let God know we are longing for the Messiah to be born in anew in us.

The custom of Moravian Christians is to decorate for Advent and Christmas by the lighting of one candle in each window of the house. That’s all. It is a simple, elegant and poignant witness to this attitude of welcome and readiness. For in the same manner, you see, a candle must be lit in each “window” of our life. On each windowsill of our soul, one candle will open the darkness just enough to create space for insight, for vision, for calm assurance and peace. It will signal an anticipatory welcome of the guest, an eagerness for the new amidst the trappings of the familiar, our yearning for the Messiah to come.

I invite you in these next minutes as you prepare to come forward and receive this sacrament of promise and hope, to listen to your own heart and ask yourself: "What is my soul longing for in this season? What is my deepest need?” And, then, in your heart, light a candle to welcome in the Holy One.”

The First Sunday of Advent has come. The clock is reset. The candles are lit. Remember. Trust. Prepare.

Amen