As we turn the corner into Advent it's inevitably hard to put on the breaks to slow and reflect, as everything around us seems to speed up to hurtle us towards Christmas at an alarming rate (just look at our own calendar below!).  Even if we do manage to acknowledge this month that it's still Advent, and not yet Christmas there remains the tempation to limit quite what means.  Advent is often reduced, with its calendars and candles, to be about looking forward to Christmas, but this is only really a a part of it.

This week's readings - 1 Corinthians 1:3–9 and Mark 13.24–37 - remind us of the bigger picture.  Advent, you see, isn't just about waiting for the Saviour to come at Christmas (he's already done that!), it's about reminding ourselves that we're waiting for him to come again.

The second coming is an interesting phenomenon in Christian thinking.  It seems to me that most people respond to it in one of two ways.  The first is to ask - almost obsessively sometimes - 'is it yet?'; to spend time poring over newspapers, headlines, and the scriptures to look for clues to exact times and dates.  The second is to spend no time thinking about it all, and letting it lie there as a discarded, dusty concept from earlier times.

Under both of these approaches perhaps lies hidden the same doubt, or at least suspicion - that it's never really going to happen at all, because it hasn't yet.  And Jesus, let's be honest, didn't help by saying things like, 'Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.' 

Is the draw of finding secret patterns and 'fulfilled' prophecies rooted in a fear that Jesus got it wrong, and trying to sure up an expectation that is looking longer in the tooth with each passing century?  And is relegating this hope to the bottom draw not the opposite (perhaps slightly more cynical) response to that same fear?

But remember that in almost the same breath, Jesus also said, 'But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.'

No one knows.  That affirmation of uncertainty has been baked in from literally day one.  I think there's very positive fruit to that: as Jesus points out, it means our walk in faith becomes something undertaken by consistent and deliberate choice about who we are, rather than fear of imminent judgement on who we were.  If we are fuelled by a desire to be ready 'whenever' and not 'next Tuesday', then it encourages us to bring our 'A' game to every moment - which as a consequence encourages the presence of the Kingdom to come to be more present in every moment between now and then as it is manifested in us.  We become in those moments of choice the presence of the Christ for whom we wait.  In that sense the expectation of his return becomes immanent, even as it remains indistinct and transcendent.

That's not to say that the hope of his return is not rooted in an historic moment to come - but rather to remind us not to miss his presence now whilst we wait.  Let's not let the 'not yet' occlude the 'now'.  

The counterintuitive thing is that as we experience that presence more, rather than fulfilling our desire for his return it fuels it - the more we know Jesus in us, the greater becomes our longing for that presence to be perfect, and full, and not only in part - for the kingdom to be fully realised in earth as it is in Heaven.   The 'now', in turn' does not occlude the 'not yet'. Advent is an invitation to recenter ourselves in this cycle of faith firing faith, with expectation fuelling incarnation, and incarnation fuelling expectation.  Therefore, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.