So from today, we will be hearing much more from Mark whose gospel is the shortest. He writes like an express-train. His “And, and, and” style gives us a sense of his urgency - he’s breathless - he just can’t wait to tell us what happens next!

Advent, which means “coming” or “arrival” has a two-fold character: as a time of preparation for the nativity when the first coming of God’s Son to the world is celebrated and secondly, as a period of reflection pointing us to Christ’s 2nd Coming at the end of time. This is a season for prophecy, calling us to conversion, preparation and a constant sense of watchfulness.

This 1st Sunday of Advent, invites us to recover a sense of urgency as we watch and wait for the coming of Christ.

We live with this tension between eager anticipation and waiting. Since Jesus first walked on earth, we - the universal Christian church - continue to anticipate his “coming again in glory.” [Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory, as Mark 13.26 puts it.]

How, then, as 21st century Christians, should we prepare ourselves for Jesus’ birth afresh in our hearts, in our lives and in the communities of which we are a part?

How exactly do we watch?

And where do we look?

Amid Christmas shopping, maybe? Having just returned from a few days in Cambridge, I can recommend a good Advent ‘read’: “Approaching Christmas” by Jane Williams (the wife of the Archbishop and herself a theologian and lecturer). She covers the advent theme in an exciting way but also takes away any guilt about enjoying sending Christmas cards, giving presents and preparing good food for family and friends. She says that because God shows his love for us all the time, but especially during Christmas when his greatest gift was the birth of his Son, we are showing that love to others with presents and nurturing them with food, and if we can include in our festivities anyone who would otherwise be lonely, that’s the icing on the cake.

As we gather together for worship, the scriptures invite us to live this season of Advent through a different lens: not as over-burdened slaves to a consumerist Christmas already in celebration, but as trusting pilgrims waiting in the dark. In strength or in weakness, we wait freely and hopefully for Jesus, the gift from eternity, who is to be born within us.

Prayer is another important part of our preparation. Bishop David will be praying the Jesus Prayer for an hour in Barking Abbey between 8.00 and 9.00 pm on Tuesday December 13th, on behalf of the Barking Episcopal Area. He says, “It matters little to me whether I do this on my own or in the company of thirty others or three hundred. It is primarily a personal discipline to which I invite anyone from the Barking Area who wishes to join me.” So there we are - an invitation.

There has been much speculation down the ages concerning the “2nd Coming of Christ”. You may remember how the turn of the millennium had “the end is nigh-type scaremongers” out in force, with their billboards and their false prophecies.

On November 18th, 1978 an American cult leader, Jim Jones, who called himself their prophet prepared his followers for the end of their narrow little world by making them rehearse their suicides. Tragically, he succeeded in convincing them that the end was near, and 912 people lost their lives in a remote South American jungle compound called “Jonestown” in British Guyana. Jones prepared his people for death, but God’s true prophets prepare us for life.

The words that Jesus speaks are familiar Old Testament quotes direct from several prophets including Isaiah, Daniel, Joel, Zechariah and the book of Deuteronomy. This colourful, exotic imagery was commonplace in Jewish literature and its drama was used to describe some of the torments that people must face during particular times. Today’s poetic Isaiah passage illustrates the power of God overcoming all evil in favour of his chosen people: here is God in all his majesty, who comes not with a whimper but with the full force of all that his creation has to offer, and who is on our side.

Looking to our Gospel, Mark was writing at a time of disruption and conflict. The Roman Empire was bearing down upon the people of Jerusalem and here in Mark 13, we have the same Old Testament imagery summing up the desperation of the early Church’s situation. Indeed, we could say these words describe what the world goes through in regular phases throughout its history when we think of wars, famines and other natural disasters such as those experienced this year.

Jesus seems to be saying that when he comes again there will be clear signs in the sky but then he warns us against any attempt to pin down the date. Perhaps he is saying that chaos and destruction are a part of our lives, not just within one generation, and will continue to be so right up to the beginning of the end.

There is a paradox in Jesus’ teaching, which is meant to make us think. He doesn’t legislate for every tricky situation we find ourselves in, when we’re faced with difficult moral decisions.

In every stage of our lives, the work of the kingdom of God goes on. Indeed, Jesus implies that those who rally to carry out his teaching even during the last days (as described) will be among those who are saved when the Son of Man comes. At the deepest level of our being, we know we cannot save ourselves but it is God, by His grace, who intervenes. Here, the Isaiah imagery of the potter and the clay reminds us of God’s power to transform our ugliness into works of beauty.

As disciples of Christ we are life-long learners. There are no school rules, only guidelines. In today’s gospel, Jesus calls us to be of a certain disposition, that is, watchful. Watchfulness springs from a frame of mind and heart and spirit: alert and expectant.

We watch by looking around. There is no time like the present to hone our receptors: to be open to the significance of chance encounters, to meet Christ in the most unlikely people in the most unlikely places.

“Stay awake” here (in today’s Gospel reading), doesn’t mean “do not go to sleep”. It means carry on with the good work. Continue to be the faithful followers of Christ in whom Jesus has such confidence. Don’t let surrounding problems and conflicts distract us from living and preaching the Good News, in word or deed.

Who knows if the current “signs of the times” are pointers to the beginning of the end? Only God knows.

As Archbishop Rowan writes in the Canterbury Diocesan newspaper for December, “In the middle of our bafflement over terrorism, poverty, ecological threat, religious collapse or corruption, we must simply be aware of what God has done [in history], is doing and will do. He does what none of us can plan or organise, he makes all things new by doing a new thing for us and with us. He comes into the middle of it all. He doesn’t solve our problems like a great all-powerful agony aunt or fairy godmother. He changes everything.”

Although today’s Gospel carries warnings, it also carries reassurances. Jesus reassures us that those engaged in his work in the world when he comes again will be saved. He gave us some very clear instructions, which are summed up in the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love others as ourselves, and here lies the source of our joy - and His.

God calls us to be His co-workers, not His co-worriers. Let us recover a sense of urgency to go about God’s business: don’t let’s wait for tomorrow, let’s do whatever it is God’s prompting us to do today! Whatever that is will be different for each of us: it may simply be to watch and to wait.

During this season of Advent, as together we watch and wait, let us prepare our own hearts as a manger for the Christ-child to be born into, afresh. However we choose to prepare, let us remember that Jesus is the greatest gift of all.

Let me close with an African schoolgirl’s prayer, which reminds us of the need for self-examination and preparation:

“O Christ, You are our great Chief:
light a candle in my heart
that I may see all that is within,
and sweep the rubbish from your dwelling place.”
Amen.