And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. (Romans 13:11-12)

Today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the season of Advent and the starting point of the new ecclesiastical year. It originated in the fourth century and was universal by the twelfth.

Advent is the beginning of what is called "The Christian Year". The holy season of Advent presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the first coming of Christ and to prepare, not just for Christmas, but for the second coming of Christ as Judge at the Last Day. Every Sunday Christians profess their faith in the words of the Nicene Creed that Christ will "come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end". This season, if it is not to be forgotten amidst all that prefigures Christmas, is an opportunity for us to reflect upon the 'Last Day', theologically described as eschatology, that is, the last things concerning the return of Christ. Traditionally the Church has taught and preached concerning the 'Four Last Things' during the season of advent: death, judgment, heaven and hell.

What makes today different from the secular New Year's Day is that there is little of the typical "out with the old, in with the new" that attends that holiday.

If anything, Advent is about renewal, not replacement. In the Old Testament Reading we hear the prophesy of the Messiah appearing at the temple. Note that he is coming to "purify" not destroy and that he is coming to "restore" an acceptable offering "as in former years".

In the Gospel we have the actual event of the cleansing of the temple by Christ.

In our epistle, we have a "call to wake up for this coming day of the Lord."

If anything, our Christian Advent is a promise of continuity, not innovation while we prepare for the Lord. As the Church, we plan to read the same lessons this year and to pray for the same things this year that we did last year. In fact, we will repeat the patterns of teaching, prayer and worship which have ongoing two thousand years. Even our "Christian year's equivalent of New Year's resolutions," found in this morning's proper from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, are the same resolutions that Christians have made every year since events of the life of Christ on earth when Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven.

Does that mean that we are stuck in some kind of "rut"? No. We believe that the revealed truth of God in Christ is "the faith once delivered" and cannot be improved upon. By the standards of the present age we are declared to lack imagination and our religious observances are deemed boring because we have no plans to change what we believe and what we hope for from year to year. But the modern world operates on the basis that the material world and the human race have an infinite supply of years ahead of them. And if that were true, their concept of ultimate reality would be right.

Advent, however, operates on a different premise. The name "Advent" itself is a play on words, since the Latin "Adventus" means simply "a coming." The Church, however, uses it to refer to not one, but to two comings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

On Advent Sunday we look back to the climax of history, as far as the purposes of God are concerned, to the incarnation and birth of the Son of God, made man by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. Specifically we look at the sign of His coming which is His appearance at the Jerusalem temple. These events lead directly to the atonement of Christ on the cross, and His death, resurrection and ascension.

That was the First Coming of Jesus Christ and ushers in the reign of Christ as He sits at the right hand of the Father. However, the world is allowed to go on as the Church begins to evangelize waiting for that day, when Christ shall come again.

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ, then, is that time at the end of time, when he comes in glory to judge the world, the "quick and the dead". This Second Coming represents no change in plans on the part of God, no surprise ending, no "new thing" at all, except that Jesus Christ will announce "The End" of all human struggles and the beginning of eternal blessedness for the resurrected and redeemed, who in God's grace and mercy will do even better than living "happily ever after." This eternal kingdom of God is the true "world without end" – the reality of a changeless God whose mercy never fails and whose rule and authority cannot be overturned.

Let us begin with something Our Lord said about himself: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12).

We have to understand that the first Christians took this saying as more than a nice bit of poetry. They understood the difference between life with Jesus and life without Jesus as the difference between day and night, and they lived in a world without electric lights in which the night was dark indeed and a time of hidden crime and terror. Thus, St. Paul could write, as we heard earlier, "…now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we [first] believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light."

The coming of Jesus Christ is to the world as the coming of the rising sun is to a new day. He is the sunrise of the day of the Lord, in whose light all the decent things of human life have their proper place and opportunity. For this reason, St. Paul continued, "Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying" (Romans 13:13). Some things belong in the darkness because they belong to the darkness: carousing, infidelity, wrong actions and desires of all kinds, gossip, backbiting, griping about others, or lying in our beds sleepless because of covetousness, the desire to take what rightfully belongs to others. Christians should "walk in the light" and live right now as if the light of Christ has come again for in judgment on the last day.

The first Christians saw the history of the whole world from the fall of man until the coming of Christ as one long night of death, danger, and temptation. But it was still a night of promise, since God had promised his Son. We know these things as facts, since they are stated in one of the first prayers of the New Testament, the prophecy that the Holy Ghost gave to Zacharias at the birth of his son John the Baptist. We still say this prayer as the Canticle Benedictus in the Morning Office: And thou, child, shall be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us; to give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death (BCP 14).

That old word "day-spring" means "the dawn," and the first coming of Jesus Christ was the dawn of salvation upon the world. The Second Coming, likewise, is no sunset, but the second dawn that puts an end to the night of waiting for the details to be sorted out and brings with it nothing but light forever. Those who love that light and wish to live in it will join in Christ's light forever. Those who love the secret and deadly things of the darkness will have their own place, too, with the devil and his angels in that darkest of all places, hell.

The Coming of Christ was as real to the first Christians as the sunrise, and they looked for the coming day of the return of the Lord on the final day as the best day of their lives, as the dawn of the eternal day of their life with God. Those Christians were so sure of this they even began the custom of aligning churches so that we face the East, where the altar and pulpit are, as the place where the sun will rise. That is still the tradition of the Universal Church.

We need to be as sure of the same sunrise of the Light of Christ, the Light of the world. That time will come as God wills, but in the meantime, God's Church reminds us every year of the reality and trustworthiness of the promise of light in Advent. The Light has come. The Light will come again. And when that light comes, we must belong to it or endure an eternal darkness. We begin, then, with our new Church year, the lessons, prayers, and discipline that will prepare us for light eternal.

... Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light...