1st Sunday of Advent · Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Longing and Lament

Isaiah 64 gives voice to a people who know God's absence and their own complicity in it. The prophet does not begin with confession, but with a desperate plea for God to tear open the heavens and act. Advent can recover this raw honesty: hope begins by naming longing and sin together. The potter-and-clay image then reframes the congregation as both fragile and held, waiting not for a distant judge but for the One who shaped them. Preachers might explore how confession becomes a form of expectant waiting rather than shame.

Restored at God's Right Hand

Psalm 80 repeats the refrain, 'Turn us again, O God; let your face shine, and we shall be saved.' The psalmist addresses God as Shepherd of Israel and pleads for restoration. The final movement asks God to place a hand on the one at his right hand, connecting national deliverance to a particular human figure. For Advent, this is a lens for reading Israel's hope as taking flesh: the Shepherd who leads Joseph like a flock will act through a person at God's right hand. Preachers can trace the refrain as a prayer the church still prays, awaiting full restoration.

Awake to the Returning Lord

Mark 13 pairs cosmic upheaval with a simple command: keep awake. The sun and moon fail, the stars fall, and the Son of Man comes with great power and glory, yet the passage's center of gravity is the doorkeeper's charge to watch. Advent is not about decoding signs to fix a date but about staying alert to God's presence in ordinary time. The master may return at evening, midnight, cockcrow, or dawn—the very rhythms of a night of prayer. Preachers can ask what it means for a congregation to live now as those who expect the returning Lord.

Second coming

“It is as a man, who journeyed, and left his house, and gave his authority to his servants, and appointed every man to his work, and charged the porter to be wakeful.”

— Ante-Nicene Fathers, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9

Watchfulness

“It is not any grace received, it is not any experience obtained, it is not any resolution improved, that will preserve you from any evil, unless you stand upon your watch: "What I say unto you," says Christ, "I say unto all, Watch.”

— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin

Scripture and the Word

“Heaven, although it turn and move, doth keep yet a wonderful and most stedfast course; the earth is most stable and unmoveable.”

— Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Vol. 1 (First and Second Decades)