Note: The beginning of this sermon is based on the Godly Play story, The Circle of the Church Year. 

What do you know about time? What are some of the times in your life? Like bedtime, work time, play time… We know all about time because we live inside it. But what is time, really?….

Some people say time is a line. Here, this rope can help us think about time being a line. Here is the beginning. It is the newest part. It is just being born. Now, look…. Take this beginning and walk over there with it, OK?  Slowly. Look, time is passing. The beginning that was new is getting older. I wonder how long time goes on? Does it go on forever? Can there ever be an ending? … Look – it ended. There’s the end. The beginning that was so new, is old now. – and the ending is new. We have a beginning that is like an ending, and an ending that is like a beginning.

Do you know what the Church did? They took the ending that was like a beginning, and the beginning that was like an ending, and they tied them together. They made time into a circle. So that we would always remember that for every ending there is a beginning, and for every beginning there is an ending.

Let’s look at it a different way. Instead of the rope, let’s use this cloth. These colors show us the circle of the church year. This blue is the beginning. It is the color of Advent, the season that begins today. Today is the Church’s New Year’s Day! Happy New Year!

After blue Advent comes white Christmas –  then green Epiphany –  then purple Lent – then white Easter – then red Pentecost – careful, it’s hot! – then the long green season of summer and fall, the great green growing season. There is the beginning – and there is the end. But they aren’t a line. They are a circle. So let’s fasten the end to the beginning.

Now let’s think some more about endings and beginnings. Think for a moment about some of the beginnings you have experienced. Times when you have started something new. Think about the things you feel, when there’s a new beginning. Happy? Excited? Hopeful? Determined? Afraid? Eager?

Now think for a moment about endings. Times when something has come to an end. When something is over. Think about the things you feel, when there’s an ending. Sad? Quiet? Full of memories? Relieved? Peaceful? …

Today we begin the season of Advent. Advent is a season that is about beginnings, and endings.  It is the beginning of a new church year.

And it is about getting ready for a Great Beginning: the Great Beginning of Jesus being born. The beginning of a new relationship between human beings and God, through Jesus’ life and the things he showed us and taught us.

But Advent is also about endings. Even though it’s the beginning of the year in the church, we feel and see that it’s the end of the year in the world. It’s getting colder. It’s getting darker. All the living things out there are dying or going to sleep or flying away. It feels like an ending. That’s why we light one more candle every Sunday of Advent – to help us count the four Sundays, but also because at this season it gets darker and darker, week by week. The days are getting shorter and shorter.

And Advent is about another ending, a big ending. Jesus taught his friends was that he would come back someday. He’s talking about that in our Gospel lesson today – he’s telling them,  After I die, and rise from the dead, and go to be with God, I will come again – someday. And when I come again, all God’s children will be gathered together, the living and the dead, and there won’t be any suffering anymore. And the world will be changed, too – the world that groans as it waits for God’s redemption. Maybe it will be like a garden, like the garden at the very beginning, where everybody has everything they need, and the fierce animals are friends with the gentle animals, and nobody hurts or kills anybody else. Maybe it will be like a city where there is a home for everybody, where there is plenty to eat and never any war, where people sing together day and night, and where God tenderly wipes away the tears of our grief and weariness. We don’t know what it will be like, but Jesus and the church teach us that that time is coming.

And it’s a little bit scary, to think of everything changing and ending. But it’s hopeful, too. It’s another ending that’s also a beginning, isn’t it? And God’s people have yearned for it, for so long, since long before Jesus’ birth. The book of the prophet Isaiah gives us these words: Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Say that with me: Oh! That you would tear open the heavens and come down! 

Psalm 80 gives us these words: Stir up your strength, O God, and come to help us! Say that with me: Stir up your strength, O God, and come to help us! And the songs and prayers of Advent say, Come, Lord Jesus! Say that with me: Come, Lord Jesus! 

We don’t know when that time will come. People have been waiting for it and wondering about it for a long time.  That’s part of what Jesus is talking about in today’s lesson. He’s saying: You won’t know when it’s coming. It’s a mystery. So be ready, always. Live so that you’re always prepared to meet God and walk into that new beginning that is also an ending.

We don’t think about it a lot, that ending-beginning, most of the time. We try to live our lives well, and love each other, and love God, and take care of the world. Most of the time we don’t think much about it at all, because it’s such a big mystery and it’s probably still a long, long way away.

But in Advent the church thinks about it. About that ending/beginning that will come someday. We get ready for the story about Jesus coming as the baby in the stable, the story that has already happened, and we also share the story about Jesus coming again and the whole world changing, the story that hasn’t happened yet.

Those stories are all mixed together in Advent, in the Scriptures and hymns and prayers of the season. Beginnings and endings all tangled up together. And all the feelings we have about beginnings and endings might be tangled up together too: happiness and sadness, excitement and fear, hope and remembering, gratitude and urgency. That’s Advent.

You can hear that in the songs we sing today. The song we gather with is a joyful song: People, look East! And sing today: Love the Lord is on the way! And we’ll sing another familiar Advent hymn that sounds very cheerful: Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free, from all fears and sins release us, let us fund our rest in thee!

But we’ll also sing a song that feels solemn and urgent: Signs of endings all around us, darkness, death, and winter days, shroud our lives with fear and sadness, numbing mouths that long to praise… Later the song says, Give us hope and faith and gladness! Show us what there yet can be! It’s a song of yearning, a song of struggling to hold hope.

And then we have some songs that I think invite us to slow down, to pay attention to how it feels to wait and wonder: O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel… Lullaby, lullaby, wait till tomorrow… Come now, O Prince of Peace, make us one body; come now, O Lord of life, reconcile all peoples.

And there’s one more – we sang it just now, at the Gospel proclamation. It is a song that was made by people who were suffering, and that story that hasn’t happened yet, about Jesus coming back and the whole world changing, gave them hope that their suffering wouldn’t last forever. It’s partly happy and hopeful, and partly sad and serious – just like Advent. It goes like this – sing it with me: “My Lord, what a morning, My Lord, what a morning, My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.”

Welcome to Advent.