Is This The Beginning Of The End?

This sermon was delivered to Holy Trinity Church in Ayr,

Ayrshire, Scotland on the 1st December 2024

(a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).

“Please join me in my prayer.” Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen. (Ps. 19:14).

Introduction.

This morning as we all know, is the first Sunday in advent … and for me … I love Christmas, and I mean Christmas with the name Christ at the front, and none of your Chrimbo’s or your happy holidays stuff, because Christmas starts and ends with our Lord Jesus Christ, as I sure you will all agree.

Now I am aware … that not everyone looks forward to the Christmas season for a variety of reasons … and I do sympathise with them … having experienced some bad Christmases myself in the past … but regardless … today is the first official day of the Christmas season, and we call it Advent.

Now, advent simply means “the arrival of a notable person, (or thing)” and for us, it is the period of waiting symbolically … for the birth of our saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ … and interestingly, the Greek word from which Advent is derived is called Parousia, which extends the meaning to include, the second coming of Christ, meaning that we should be should not only be celebrating the birth of Jesus, but also in anticipation, we should be celebrating the second coming of Christ as well.

With the birth of Jesus, we celebrate our atonement, (that our sins are all forgiven by his death and resurrection … and that our lives are entwined with his, as we travel through this earth) … and also with the expectancy of his second coming … where we celebrate our eternal life … with him … in heaven.

look at Luke 21:25-36, horrible reading.

Now with the thought of the Christmas season looming, I was happy to deliver todays sermon, thinking it might be about the nativity or something nice and Christmassy, then I took a look at today’s readings, and oh dear … I mean … Jesus said, "… and on the earth distress among nations … people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world … and to be on guard so that our hearts are not weighed down with debauchery and drunkenness … and the worries of this life …”. Does that not just cheer you up no end? … Especially with the world in the state that it’s in … but please don’t be dis-hearted, because there are many positives to be taken from these verses as I will now explain.

Where are we today.

Our gospel reading this morning

Our gospel reading this morning in Luke 21, refers to a sermon that Jesus preached about the second coming, making it clear that God has, and always will have his hands on human history … reminding us that history is moving in a specific direction … his direction … remembering too that Jesus was also a prophet, (and the greatest prophet who ever lived) … and who is teaching us that even in our worst circumstances … that God has not … or never will, abandoned us … rather that he has a plan and a purpose for us all, but that he is waiting on us … catching up with him … to meet us in his plan … remembering that it is his plans for us … which are not normally the same plans as we have for ourselves.

The world is out of control,

Now, with that in mind, you may look around you, look at the state of this world today … and we can be forgiven for thinking everything is out of control. … Horrible things are happening in the Ukraine and the Middle East, and other areas of the world too. … And … if we look closer to home, we see other problems: like our economy … and the general state of our country, which certainly does not seem to inspire any kind of hope. … And within us as well, personally … we all have our own set of problems such as our health, or our financial problems, or family problems or whatever, that is life … but we are all suffering from what our uncertain future holds. … And do you know, the most asked questions our teenagers are asking in schools today, is … “is World War three about to take place”. … Or even within the last month or so, how many times have you heard someone saying … with an air of despondency … I think we have reached the “end times”?