Advent and the Kingdom of God.

I'm assigned to preach a sermon today from a passage in the Hebrew Bible and orient the text to the Advent season. I chose Isaiah 65:17-25 where the Lord promises new heavens and a new earth in which "the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind." Given the apocalyptic aspects of this specific text, I turned to one of my favorite theologians, Ernst Käsemann, to see if he ever preached a sermon for Advent. I was in luck.

"At issue from now on till the end of days is that the kingdom of God is revealed on earth always and wherever the world has to do with this Jesus, and only where the gospel about him is preached and believed. This would not be possible if Jesus acquired no disciples whom he could send out as messengers and witnesses of his rule. To the messianic Advent of the kingdom of God essentially belongs that great mission in which people are called into service for this kingdom. The Lord is not without his community. The kingdom would be a utopia if it could not be visibly enfleshed on earth in members and instruments of his rule. Advent ties heaven and earth, ties the eternal God to his creatures, who continually seek to avoid him but whom he never leaves to themselves. When at Advent God's kingdom breaks into our world, it does so that, just as Israel at Sinai, we hear the first commandment with its promise and claim: 'I am the Lord your God ... you shall have no other gods before me!' The gospel is told so that it occurs where the poor, the sick, the despairing, and the possessed cry for help, where demons and tyrants play their evil game and afflict humankind, where in the midst of blindness, hate, scorn, blasphemy, and cowardice the cross of Golgotha makes visible God's rule as the self-humiliation of our Creator, that is, as love that seeks us out even in earth's inferno, sets itself alongside us, takes us in its supporting, comforting arms. As Israel once sensed the breeze or gale of freedom while in bondage to Egypt, so those who 'all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death' will sense it, and the redeemed will see the heavens above and the world around them opened to messengers of the gospel. This is what is taking place now if Advent is actually occurring among and for us."

- Ernst Käsemann, "Mark 1:16-20: On Discipleship of the Coming One" in On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene, 321.