Advent 1.2025

If you’re not part of a church that observes the season of Advent, or if you do not know what the lectionary is, this might seem like “insider” language. I encourage to click on the links below that provide some background to each.

Advent (both Protestants and Roman Catholics observe)
Revised Common Lectionary

The first Sunday of Advent surprises us each year. Just as we’re thinking about Christmas lights, decorating the tree, and lighting Advent candles, the Gospel throws us into talk of the end times. Matthew 24 reminds us: “Keep awake…for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

Why start Advent with warnings about Jesus’s return? Because Advent has always been about waiting for Christ’s coming — not just the baby in Bethlehem, but the promised renewal of the world.

Watchfulness With Purpose

This passage isn’t about predicting timelines or fearing the future. It sits in a larger teaching where Jesus emphasizes what matters while we wait: justice, mercy, and faith. It’s a call to stay awake to the mission, not to panic over signs.

Unfortunately, these verses were pulled out of context and used to promote rapture theology — an idea rooted not in ancient Christianity, but in the 1830s. Popular media turned fear into a storyline millions consumed, focusing Christians on escaping the world rather than transforming it.

Author Tom Sine warned in 2001 that if followers of Jesus don’t communicate a compelling vision of hope, fear-based religion will dominate the imagination of the church. Nearly twenty-five years later, we see how right he was. Anxiety and political alarm have discipled much of Christianity in America more than the Gospel has.

What Jesus Really Calls Us To Watch For

Jesus’s message isn’t to look for threats — but for God’s arrival in ordinary life. Advent watchfulness means being present, alert, and faithful right where we are:

• Watch for justice breaking into systems of harm.
• Watch for the vulnerable, and respond with compassion.
• Watch for hope in unexpected places.
• Watch together as a community rooted in love.
  

Isaiah gives us the vision: a world where swords become plowshares, enemies find peace, and we learn war no more. That’s what we stay awake for.

Awake to Hope

Advent isn’t escapism. It’s engagement.

We are not waiting to be “left behind” or whisked away from a broken world — we are waiting for transformation. We are waiting for the One who tells us to love enemies, welcome strangers, and serve the least. Advent calls us to live now as if Christ might arrive in the next person we meet.

So as we enjoy the lights, the music, and yes — the chocolate calendars — may we also remember what this season prepares us for:

• Not fear.
• Not predictions
• Not the downfall of our enemies.

But the arrival of Christ’s peace, slowly dawning into a weary world.

This Advent, may we stay awake to hope.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come.

*The above is an abridged version of a sermon I delivered on Advent 1, November 30, 2025. It has been converted to a more readable version for a WordPress post.