Advent is the time of waiting, the time of the watchfulness, for as the gospeller says in the passage from Mark we heard; ‘Ye know not the hour.’

The Gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest of the Gospel records, it may have been written as soon as forty years after the events of Jesus life. And the other gospels that survive are all later still, so its interesting to consider what reason there could have been for not writing any account of the events sooner?

Scholars think it was because the first Christians simply didn’t think it was worth recording. They knew that the second coming (or Parousia) would signal the end of the world when the beginning of the new Kingdom of God was imminent, as Jesus himself had said it would be, and so what would be the point of books?

It wasn’t until the realisation that this belief in the End was unfounded that it occurred to Christians like the writer of Mark that there would be a value for later generations in knowing the story.

But of course the idea of the second coming has persisted and is important to some readings of the New Testament which take it quite literally.

The prophesy of Messiah, the anointed one, was essential to the Judaism of the period and its foremost spokesman was Isaiah. It is Isaiah whose wonderful poetry is full of the yearning for an emmissary from God who would bring oppression and injustice to an end, Isaiah who longed for freedom from the oppression of the Babylonians – and his wishes struck a chord with those who, five hundred years later in the 1^st century, hungered for freedom from Rome.

Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?  The watchman said: The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come  says Isaiah …

and Mark has Jesus say:

Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is… what I say to one I say to all – Watch!’

Luke quotes over 75 percent of Mark in his version of events, but Luke places a very specific reference in his account; he has Jesus begin his ministry by going to the synagogue in Nazareth and reading from which book of the Hebrew Bible? Isaiah.

‘And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me , because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favourable year of the Lord…He reads from Isaiah 61 and he says to them – This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears.

We can miss something very important if we are not careful here, if we fail to obey the instruction and ‘Watch! Be aware!’, He says this day this scripture is fulfilled not, “it will be fulfilled when my work is accomplished”, or even “it will be fulfilled when I leave here”, he doesn’t talk about a future event or another time but he says it is now fulfilled. And this has a profound implication for all ‘end time’ teaching, the teaching of the second coming that comes in all the centuries of Christian teaching afterwards. That ‘end time teaching’ is called eschatology, the last things, or the end of time, and the sybolism of ad-vent (from the Latin before the coming) is the time of the waiting – for the second coming, but as plain as can be Jesus says in Luke ‘it is already here, it is fulfilled in your ears’.

Jesus puts into the ears of those who hear, the responsibility to make the prophesy real. To real-ize the Kingdom now.

To give it an (almost) contemporary comparison I think it is a little like the Christmas song by John Lennon: “War is over – if you want it”

This idea of the second coming in the present moment, goes by the technical name of a realised eschatology, the second coming begins whenever we are able to realise (make real) the teachings of Jesus, to embody his teaching and make the teaching a reality…

The time of advent was once a time of fasting just as important as Lent, a lean time to penitently await the festival, something very alien to our sensibilities today.

I think that there is something we can recognise in the ‘signs of the times’ if we are able to obey the instruction to ‘watch!’

I saw a festival of greed and impatience unfold on my tv screen last night, something the newscaster called ‘Black Friday’ – which has been foisted on consumers by unscrupulous advertisers and retailers. If you were lucky enough not to hear about it – it’s a sale. Save waiting till Boxing day and it caused near riots in Tescos and Asda – people scrapping over flat screen tv’s and toasters.

But this kind of consumerism is nothing new of course. When my sister was burgled a couple of years ago the police officer told her that burglaries always spike in advent when criminals need to raise extra money to get presents for friends and families. Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

If we can recognise the idea of a realised eschatology, and determine to embody the teachings of Jesus rather than try to absorb the sometimes contradictory doctrines about Jesus, then perhaps the passage I read as our first reading might relate rather more closely to the Tich Nat Hahn piece that was my second; the kind of watchfulness implied by Isaiah and reflected by Jesus might relate to a new kind of advent observance: we might take the opportunity, if not to fast then at least to watch – to be aware, to be mindful. Mindful of the slide towards commercialism, mindful of the temptation to indulgence, mindful of our own laziness in wishing God would relieve us of our responsibilities to each other. And instead to be present in each moment, living life deeply, living life abundantly; living life in terms of eternity.

Mindfulness could help us to see the goodness of creation in all life, for me, to be mindful is the awareness of God’s presence in all life, the recognition of the incarnation not of Jesus exclusively but of humankind universally, the awareness of God among us, reflected in each human face, Emmanuel – God with us that Isaiah prophesied, Emmanuel that we sing of in our final hymn, the beautiful and ancient hymn of the O Antiphons – O Come Emmanuel (in a beautiful version here by Sufjan Stevens)