Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 19:1-4
Romans 10:12-18
Matthew 4:18-22

Advent summons us to something new. In the midst of the old and familiar we are heralded to something new and fresh  in our continued waiting and longing for God. We are being called again to re-orientate ourselves toward God.  As we do this we shall in Word and Sacrament, through the drama of the Liturgy recall and  re- tell the story of our salvation, of God’s saving presence and activity among us.

Advent – bids us listen again as we read the scriptures with new ears and expectant hearts, to sing the words of  Advent with new voices, to listen to the old and familiar as it were for the first time.   In doing this we shall discover ourselves anew, even discover something new about God and others.  We may even discover ourselves hungry for more. Beneath the predicable commotion of this season associated with the preparation for, and in many ways the premature celebration of Christmas, can we hold onto the glory of Advent and look further than the immediate?  If we do, we might just catch a glimpse and a sense of things so ancient and so new. Things so intimate and so shattering that challenge, convict, confirm, even re-orientate us.

During the early part of Advent – we ponder the mystery of the Lord’s final coming,  and we are called to live in expectation of this.  This is best prepared for by living the  the new life we received in baptism.  The life new life of grace that unites us to Lord’s Paschal Mystery. As Christians we can be confident and bold enough to look to the future, our future and the future of the world and the society in which we live.  So much these days for so many people revolves around the immediate and the instant. This is so clearly manifested in the run up to Christmas – with its tedious and predicable diary – somewhere and from some place I hear the Advent voice calling us in the midst of all this, to wait, to hope, to long, to seek, to discover that which is more than immediate.  In the longer perspective of Advent we look to the end  or consummation of all things in him and through him, through whom all things came into being.

Advent shouts to us! wake from sleep, stir ourselves and leap into action.  Hold that image of the Potter and clay that we read about in the Scriptures today, a picture that Isaiah gives to another sleepy people “O Lord, you are our Father, we are the Clay, and you are the potter – we are the work of your hand”

Sometimes we are like pots, hard and well baked in our ways, unbending but very breakable -  remember that this pot of our earthly dwelling will be shattered by death!

When you contemplate a clay pot, what is its purpose?  It is to contain something. Are we not created and called to contain something?  We are, originally created and fashioned to contain the Divine Life – a life that was diminished by sin but not extinguished.  We have been re-created, resurrected in the image and likeness of Christ with all humanity. Now filled again with life, consumed by the new fire of God’s love and re-made in the fulfilment of resurrection. This earthly pot of our humanity once taken from the dust of the earth, is once again resembling the Creators original purposes.  All this possible because of the one through whom all things came into being was raised himself from the dust of the earth in death to a new and glorious life.  And not not only Him, the Creator of the stars, but also our fragile humanity he embraced in the wonder of the Incarnation. We have a little way to go yet but our faith and hope in God fuels and motivates us to continue the journey.

For many centuries Advent’s overall tone was one of sorrow for sin and penance. But in keeping with the tone of the Scripture readings for the season, in our day the tone of Advent is one of anticipation and hope, as well as one of repentance.
It is good to continually allow the Potter to be re-shaping us and re-moulding us, ever changing us from glory to glory. – During this Advent make some space and allow the Potter to gently re-shape you. Place yourself in his hands in the stillness and silence of your prayer, return to him in repentance, and above all delight that he delights to know and love you.  In doing this you become in all things more like his Son Jesus Christ for whom we wait with longing and great expectation.

Rev Fr I Hamer
Roath Saint Martin, Cardiff