This sermon was preached on Advent Sunday, 30th November 2025.

Matthew 24.26-34

Are you ready?

Today is the start of Advent, and it marks the initial countdown to Christmas, not the 1^st of November as all the shops seem to think. It begins the church’s official period of waiting for the coming of Jesus. At Advent, we await not just the coming of Jesus at Christmas, but also when Jesus comes again. There is so much mystery and uncertainty surrounding what it would be like when Jesus returns, but we do have certainty about our call to be ready and waiting.

Are we ready for Jesus? Are we prepared for him to come to us? As Christians, I think this is more than just about being ready for the second coming of Jesus; it’s about being ready for Jesus to come into our lives every day. If we are not ready, we might miss him and what he wants to do in us.

The sixth-form I went to was in Winchester, which meant that I had to catch the train from Southampton, and given that it was about a 35-40 minute walk to the station, I needed to catch the bus in the mornings to the station. Not too difficult. Except catching the bus always felt like such a challenging process. For starters, when does a bus ever arrive on time? And when it does, if you are not there, it is not hanging around. The same with the train. The train left at 8am on the dot. If you were not there and ready to board the train before 8am, you were missing that train (unless the train was delayed, of course, but that never happens in the UK with our ever-reliable railway network). You have to be ready and waiting when the bus or train comes, otherwise you are going to miss it. Or for me, I ended up running everywhere to catch buses and trains.

But take a different example, separate from transport. Imagine you were a firefighter. You don’t know when fires are going to happen, but you are ready with your protective equipment on, the fire-engine prepped and ready to fight fires, and you have done all the training to know what to do when you get the 999 call. So, when the call comes, you are out of the fire station in less than 2 minutes and on the scene in 10 minutes. This is what I call being ready and waiting. But the question for us this Advent is: are we ready and waiting for Jesus?

But what does it mean to be ready and waiting for Jesus? Does it mean we are sitting at the bus stop waiting for him to arrive any moment? If we knew when Jesus was coming, that might not be a bad idea, but the problem is that we don’t know when Jesus is coming to Earth again. Jesus says he doesn’t even know the hour when he is coming back. Only God the Father knows when Jesus will return to Earth. So, if we sit around waiting for Jesus to turn up, I can tell you that you will see a lot more buses turn up before you see Jesus. How many, I don’t know, but there will definitely be more buses than you usually see whilst waiting. 

But I don’t think Advent is about waiting in a way that puts everything on hold and life has to stop. Instead, Advent calls us to a waiting that is about building a life ready for Jesus to come to us and abide with us. The Christian life is not a bus stop where we have to stay in one place. The Christian life is a journey of faith and life with God. It’s not about life coming to a halt while we wait for Jesus. Rather, the Christian life is about shaping and preparing our hearts to be ready for when Jesus comes again.

But we are not simply looking for signs and wonders of when Jesus will return again at the end times, but I believe that Advent reminds us to be ready and waiting for Jesus coming to us every day. The joy of being a Christian and a follower of Jesus is that we have God with us at all times. God isn’t only at church, but he is in our hearts and lives all the time. So our Advent call to be ready and waiting is to be ready to see Jesus at work in our lives today.

Have you ever found, looking back at your life, ways in which God was present and at work, but because you weren’t looking for what God was doing, you missed it at the time? But when we are ready and waiting expectantly for God coming to us, we have eyes open and alert to see God when he comes. It doesn’t mean being stationary in one place such as church, but it is about being open and looking to see where God is at home, at work, with friends and family, at the shops, at the community centre, and maybe even at the bus stop.

As I said, Advent isn’t like waiting at the bus stop. It’s like the firefighter waiting for the call. Where the waiting at the bus stop is a passive kind of waiting, the firefighter is doing active waiting. They put on their uniforms and prepare the fire engine with water, hoses, ladders, and other firefighting equipment. They also train and practice every day, so that they know what to do and have a plan of how to respond when the 999 call comes. They don’t even have to be at the fire station waiting. They might be out somewhere else, maybe up a ladder saving a cat stuck in a tree, but when they get the 999 call there, they are still ready to go and fight the fire.

As Christians, we are to prepare for Jesus like a firefighter. We are to put on our uniform: the armour of God. And we are to clothe ourselves in Christlikeness, modelling and shaping our lives in line with Jesus. When we live like Jesus, we have a better understanding of what Jesus’ presence looks like, and so we can more easily spot it. It’s like how a conductor trains their ear to pick out a flat note in a whole orchestra. Because they know music so well, they can spot when something is in tune or out of tune. Likewise, the more we know of Jesus, the better we are at recognising him when he comes to us in our day-to-day. 

Like a firefighter trains and practices their firefighting skills, as Christians, we practice following Jesus. Being a Christian isn’t something that happens passively, even if we were brought up in a Christian household. Being a Christian requires taking active steps to get to know God through prayer, worship, reading the Bible, and gathering with fellow Christians (i.e., church). Being a follower requires us to take steps walking after Jesus. We can’t stay still waiting at the bus stop. We have to get up and follow him.

When we are reading and prepared for Jesus like a firefighter, it means that we are ready to see him and respond to his call wherever we are. We could be at church, but it could be at home, or at work. It could even be whilst you are asleep dreaming. But the key thing is that we are get ourselves reading and prepared so that we are waiting expectantly for God to come to our lives each day.

Are you ready this Advent for Jesus? Are you prepared for his coming to you this day? Are your hearts shaped to be like Jesus and therefore better at recognising God’s work in your life? Are you expecting the call of Jesus this day and are you ready to respond straight away? If the firefighter isn’t ready when the call comes, they will not be able to get to the fire in time to save the burning building. If we are not ready when Jesus calls us and knocks on the door of our hearts, we are going to miss him. The good news is that he doesn’t only come to us once, but again and again. But none of us want to miss out on God coming to us. It’s the greatest joy in the whole world, and the reason we celebrate Christmas.

At Christmas, we celebrate that Jesus comes to be with us and that God is with us, Emmanuel. We experience the light and love of Christ that has come to us and abides with us.

This Advent. Be ready and waiting. Not like at the bus stop, but like the firefighter, ready and prepared for the call and presence of Jesus Christ as he comes to be in your life this day and every day.

Amen.