First Sunday of Advent

Scripture Reading for Today:

Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

Isaiah 64:1-9

64 Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down! How the mountains would quake in your presence! 2 As fire causes wood to burn and water to boil, your coming would make the nations tremble. Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame! 3 When you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations. And oh, how the mountains quaked! 4 For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him! 5 You welcome those who gladly do good, who follow godly ways. But you have been very angry with us, for we are not godly. We are constant sinners; how can people like us be saved? 6 We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. 7 Yet no one calls on your name or pleads with you for mercy. Therefore, you have turned away from us and turned us over to our sins. 8 And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand. 9 Don’t be so angry with us, Lord. Please don’t remember our sins forever. Look at us, we pray, and see that we are all your people.

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

For the choir director: A psalm of Asaph, to be sung to the tune “Lilies of the Covenant.”

1 Please listen, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph’s descendants like a flock. O God, enthroned above the cherubim, display your radiant glory 2 to Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. Show us your mighty power. Come to rescue us! 3 Turn us again to yourself, O God. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved. 4 O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, how long will you be angry with our prayers? 5 You have fed us with sorrow and made us drink tears by the bucketful. 6 You have made us the scorn of neighboring nations. Our enemies treat us as a joke. 7 Turn us again to yourself, O God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved. 17 Strengthen the man you love, the son of your choice. 18 Then we will never abandon you again. Revive us so we can call on your name once more. 19 Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. 4 I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus. 5 Through him, God has enriched your church in every way—with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge. 6 This confirms that what I told you about Christ is true. 7 Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. 9 God will do this, for he is faithful to do what he says, and he has invited you into partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Mark 13:24-37

24 “At that time, after the anguish of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will give no light, 25 the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then everyone will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send out his angels to gather his chosen ones from all over the world—from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven. 28 “Now learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branches bud and its leaves begin to sprout, you know that summer is near. 29 In the same way, when you see all these things taking place, you can know that his return is very near, right at the door. 30 I tell you the truth, this generation[e] will not pass from the scene before all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear. 32 “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows. 33 And since you don’t know when that time will come, be on guard! Stay alert! 34 “The coming of the Son of Man can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. When he left home, he gave each of his slaves instructions about the work they were to do, and he told the gatekeeper to watch for his return. 35 You, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know when the master of the household will return—in the evening, at midnight, before dawn, or at daybreak. 36 Don’t let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning. 37 I say to you what I say to everyone: Watch for him!”

When the Dust Settles

by Jared Siebert

Author

New Leaf Lead Team, Writing Collective Author

Jared Siebert serves in many capacities in the Canadian Church. He founded an organization of missionary church leaders called the New Leaf Network and is one of Canada’s leading inter-denominational church planter trainers. But church planting isn’t the only kind of experience he has garnered. In his ministry roles Jared has had the opportunity to work with churches of all kinds from all over Canada. He has acted as a consultant in churches large and small, urban and rural, and new and long established. He has written a discipleship curriculum, a handbook on church planter training, and a Church Health workbook called the LifePlan. As a sought after speaker and consultant Jared is uniquely able to draw insight and inspiration from a variety of sources and bring that to the table as he helps churches move toward unity and the mission of God.

New Leaf Lead Team, Writing Collective Author

Isaiah's very powerful and poignant plea to God to split the sky, shake the earth, and settle the score is such an earthy and familiar request.

I’ve been there. Often.

Honestly, have you looked outside at the unjust state of the world lately?

People literally and figuratively get away with murder. All the time.

The rich devour the poor. Oppressors kneel on the necks of the oppressed.

Church leaders, who should know better, offer tangible support and explanatory cover for wrongdoers.

Crowds gather online and in- person to silence, gaslight, and justify the suffering of victims.

Most days the status quo feels eternal and impermeable. All attempts at change seem to end in frustration.

To make matters worse sometimes God appears to be sitting this round out. How is that God allowed to get this bad?

These are well-worn paths in my mind and heart. If you can’t tell, I am often cynical about the prospect of things ever changing. Judy Wu Dominick recently tweeted, “The hardest kind of cynicism is justified cynicism. It exposes the limitations of human love & power to transform our sin-sick world. But it reminds us of why divine love & power have to continually intervene—to bring revelation, deliver, save, & enable repentance & forgiveness.” Isaiah is good company for the justifiably cynical. I look forward to starting off Advent season every year with a fiery reading from Isaiah. Advent is a season about longing. Longing for a better world. Longing for a world that runs on justice and not the blood of innocence. It isn’t wrong to want to see the score settled. It’s a good place to start every Advent season with the question, when God gonna clean up this mess?

Because I so profoundly associate Isaiah with the sense of longing for justice each Advent it’s not hard for me to imagine Isaiah full-throated singing,

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease. (O Holy Night)

or belting out,

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight. (O Come, O Come Emmanuel)

I think Isaiah could round out any choir that wants to burn the whole house down with fiery Christmas carols. Even though Isaiah never got to see a Christmas himself, his prophetic demands for justice are what make Christmas so meaningful. His words are the foundation for Israel’s hope for a coming king. In today’s reading, Isaiah paints a powerful picture of a Zeus-like Yahweh: splitting the sky and cleaning the clocks of the ungodly with lightning bolts. Put that on your next family Christmas card. I dare you!

As Isaiah's prophetic imagination unfolds in this passage this beautiful revenge fantasy starts to falter as Isaiah has second thoughts. God meting out global justice is a truly terrifying thought. Be careful what you wish for. After the dust settles in his vision Isaiah asks who would be left standing? God’s people are as implicated in the injustice as anyone else. Well when you put it that way Isaiah, I’m so sure I want God splitting the sky anymore.

Many of my actions, truth be told, look best draped in slimming black and viewed from an off angle in a poorly lit smoke-filled room. In the searing holy light of God I’m as guilty as anyone else. If God gave out the kind of justice I would fall under God’s blows too.

My clothes are too soiled.

My intentions are too shifty.

My righteousness is too slanted and self-serving to ever hope to survive.

Straw men are unwise to cheer for prairie fires.

Realizing this Isaiah moves us along. A new image presents itself. That of the potter working with clay. In God’s skilled hands his people are shaped. This still involves God exerting God’s will. Clay left to its own devices never becomes a pot, plate or bowl. It requires a potter applying pressure but not too much. It requires shaping but not beyond the limits of what clay can do.

Zeus’ lightning bolts can only pulverize.

God’s hands can give shape.

Zeus’ method creates dust.

God’s work repurposes dust.

And this, as it turns out, is the way that God brings about justice in a sin-soaked world.

The work of justice begins first by being shaped by the hands of the potter.

It is a process of remembering and repurposing.

It is taking the willfully forgetful and misshapen submitting to being made into something new.

So now let’s consider the world we are reading these words from here at the start of Advent 2020. Something significant has already split the sky. No need to wish for it. It already happened.

Economic mountains are trembling.

The world has been brought to its knees by a tiny invisible Zeus.

Not only has it unleashed unprecedented death across the globe it has also unleashed a hell storm of vicious polarization.

We are people torn apart.

We are caught between competing views of justice.

To make matters much worse the church has gotten its clothes dirty and torn in the tussle.

Dressed in filthy rags few look to us as a source of moral courage or as a community of justice.

What do we do now?

Shall we try the hands of the potter?

Shall we turn to the one who can still work with the dust and dirt of this world and reshape it into something new?

Shall we remember God’s ways?

Re-submit ourselves to the true religion of care for the least of these?

Shall we allow our lives to be reshaped into the likeness of the one Isaiah longed for but never met?

Shall we enter into apprenticeship under the one God sent?

Thank you for reading the New Leaf Advent Reader, a collection of reflections from writers across Canada. If you are enjoying the reader, sign up to receive the readings in your inbox each day here: SIGN UP

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One of the ways we have been connecting online since the pandemic pushed us online is through our Learning Centre, a weekly interactive Zoom call on a topic with a Canadian voice of wisdom. For the season of Advent, we will be featuring a few of our writers and making space to reflect together on the Advent Reader articles. Join us for the interactive sessions on Thursdays at 1:30 pm (Eastern time) or sign up and view the recordings of the sessions afterwards.