Advent Sunday is the first day of the church’s year. I arrived in 2014, so this is my fourth Advent. I’m starting my fourth year with you! I remember my first Advent Sunday, standing in the pulpit at St Matthew’s, and berating the congregation, bemoaning the fact that I found myself in a church surrounded by Christmas trees and not even a purple altar frontal to indicate that we were in the season of Advent.

You know that Narnia is a place where it is always winter and never Christmas. I’d come to a church where, as soon as December was in sight, it was already Christmas and never Advent. I’m pleased to say that the lack of an altar frontal has been addressed, thanks to a generous gift.

Last year, I shared an illustration with you: imagine that, instead of Advent and Christmas, we were talking about Lent and Easter. Just before Ash Wednesday, you ask me if I’m doing anything for Lent – giving anything up, or taking something on. I tell you that for Lent I’m going to eat a chocolate egg every day. Eat a chocolate egg every day for Lent? Aren’t you supposed to be fasting? And, when Easter comes, you’ll have eaten so many chocolate eggs, you won’t enjoy your Easter egg. And I say, why are you so miserable, you Easter-hating Scrooge, you! You keep Lent in your way – with your prayer and fasting – and I’ll keep it in my way by having chocolate for breakfast very day.

But that was last year. This year, age has mellowed me. I’m not going to rant and rave. I’m going to embrace the culture. I’ve already sung ‘Away In A Manger’ twice. Yesterday, I attended four Christmas events, one after the other.

Someone asked me recently, Why do you hate Christmas? (They may not have put it that strongly, but they were responding to something I often say, which I suspect is said in vicarages up and down the country: it will soon be Boxing Day. Best day of the year!) I said, I don’t hate Christmas. But I love Advent. I like Advent hymns better than Christmas carols…

This year, the latest Advent can start! The shortest Advent. But what are the themes of Advent? The word means coming or arrival. The Collect talks about Christ’s coming, first in humility and then again in glory. We look forward to celebrating the arrival of the child in the manger, daring to believe that when we look in, it will be to see the face of God. We look forward to coming face to face with Jesus when he comes again. How will that be for us? Will we be able to look upon his face without fear? Yes, if we know ourselves to be forgiven and accepted by God because of what Jesus accomplished, not on the basis of our own good works or religious practice.

The poet, Malcolm Guite, who is Chaplain at Girton College, Cambridge, describes Advent as “a paradoxical season”:

“a season of waiting and anticipation in which the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling; a season that looks back at the people who waited in darkness for the coming light of Christ, and yet forward to a fuller light still to come and illuminate our darkness.”

Guite asks us to consider how Christ comes to us today. Not just that he once lived among us in history nor just that he will come again in eschatology. But how does Christ come to us today?

Jesus promised,

remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus says,

where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’ (Matthew 18:20)

Jesus comes to us in the person of God’s Holy Spirit and when we take bread and wine in remembrance of him. And, as we saw last week, in the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-end), Jesus comes to us when we encounter the weak, the vulnerable, the needy. These are all advents.

In the bible readings for our main Sunday services this year, we are looking at Mark’s gospel . Someone has said that Mark’s gospel is a way of asking the question

What does it mean to live faithfully as a Christian in a dangerous world?

I can’t wait!