Collect: The First Sunday of Advent

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;  that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Isaiah 2: 1-5 . . . the prophet sets forth a majestic vision of a time when people throughout the world will worship the Lord and live in peace with one another

Psalm 122

Roman 13: 11-14 . . . Paul urges a way of life in full awareness of the nearness of salvation.

Matthew 24: 36-44 . . . Jesus tells his disciples of the need for readiness because the Son of Man will come at a day and hour which no one knows.

Sermon By Jim Somerville

“Imagine a world where Christmas doesn’t come on December 25, but with the first snowfall of the year,” begins Jim Somerville, Pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church and co-founder of A Sermon for Every Sunday. In this sermon from Matthew 24:36-44 he says: “It would be strange, wouldn’t it, living in a world like that? It would be so different from the scheduled way we celebrate Christmas now. But it would be much more like that unscheduled first Christmas, and almost exactly like the unscheduled second coming of Christ. ‘But about that day and hour no one knows,’ Jesus says, ‘neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’”