Reepham Benefice

After a rather fiery sermon one morning a passionate preacher climbed down from the pulpit and issued the following question to his flock: “Put your hands up if you want to go to heaven”. Many people in church threw their hands in the air and so the preacher told them to get up and go and stand by the door. But there were some people sitting in the pews so the preacher looked at them with fire in his eyes and asked again: “Put your hands up if you want to go to heaven”. This time everybody except one person got up and stood by the door. The preacher looked at the last man sitting in the pews: “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”, he said. The man looked at him and said: “No, I don’t”. The preacher was rather dismayed by this. “I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?”, to which the man replied: “Oh, when I die yes! I thought you were getting a group together to go there now.”

Well in case you hadn’t noticed, today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the church’s year. And the day when we reflect on everything we’ve heard throughout the last year since we last celebrated advent, a day when we can ask ourselves where have we journeyed to, both individually, and as a Christian community. And a day most importantly to ask ourselves: are we ready? I often think that Advent Sunday and the season of four weeks that follows comes at the wrong time of year. Because too often Advent gets sidelined by our readiness for Christmas. But of course that’s partly what Advent is about - building up to the season where we remember the first coming of Jesus. Advent is also about looking forward to Jesus coming again. True, the celebration of Jesus’ first coming is important and it’s good that we celebrate that. We celebrate it in Church, we celebrate it in the world with our friends and families. But it’s also very important to think about the second coming of Jesus, to think about our readiness to receive him, to think about where our relationship with him is.

Now I have a confession to make this morning, and it first in very well with what I’m about to say to you. I read the wrong gospel in preparing for my sermon. I actually read a chapter ahead of our gospel reading this morning, but nevertheless but it fits in extremely well with our theme this morning. Because a chapter ahead we find the events after the Last Supper...