May it be given to me to speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please do be seated.

Although it might be hard to believe, this week we begin our preparations for the great feast of Christmas. In just four short weeks we will gather around the manger and rejoice at the birth of Jesus Christ, God become a human being. The Nativity scene is, for most of us, a familiar and comforting image.

One which conjures up ideas of a play with small children. A baby lying in straw. A shepherd wearing a tea towel.

Mary in blue, if the church has managed to find something. Joseph carrying a broom handle. It's a safe, peaceful, warming image.

And don't get me wrong, these images matter. They help us to speak to our children, to our grandchildren, about the humanity of Jesus. They settle in our bones, in our cultural memory, as reminders that the word truly became flesh.

And the story dwells among us, in our culture, as we retell the play year on year. Comfort is by no means the enemy of faith. But we should realise that familiarity can soften the edges of truth.

When history becomes cultural memory, remembrance can slip into myth, and then myth become fairytale. Then the beauty of what God did in a real place amongst real people, the fragility, the courage, the surprise of it all, can be emptied of its power to change our lives in the here and now. The danger of the comfort of a nativity play is not that it's comforting, but that we allow ourselves to polish the past so that it glows, but it doesn't confront us.

And so, Advent begins, not in the manger, but with Jesus' sayings, which refuse to be polished and refuse to be made comfortable. In that reading we've just heard from chapter 24, verses 36 to 44, we're placed not in the quiet of the nativity, but in a world on the brink. Signs in heavens, suddenness, the voice of the Son of Man warning, you must be ready.

This is a shock that's designed to wake us up, to remind us that the nativity was, in fact, anything but comfortable. Because a real child was, indeed, born thousands of years ago. Despite what the carol said, he did do a lot of crying.

He was the Son of Man, he is God incarnate. And he wasn't born into ease or privilege. He was born to a teenager, a Palestinian peasant girl and her husband, people of no status, who were barely surviving in their poverty under the weight of empire.

His earliest days were shaped by hunger, uncertainty, whispers of scandal. Before he could even hold his head up, he was forced to become a refugee in Egypt because his family were persecuted. He was carried across borders by parents who had nothing to protect him except their courage and their faith.

This was the life that God chose to enter. Fragile, marginal, vulnerable, hated. Jesus' identity as the Son of Man, which he takes on in our Gospel reading today, isn't just a poetic title.

It is, in fact, deeply rooted in Old Testament prophecy, in the prophecy of Daniel. In Daniel chapter 7, Daniel sees one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, presented before the Ancient One, receiving dominion and glory and kingship. In our Gospel reading, Jesus consciously claimed this identity, the Ancient One, one like a Son of Man, signalling that his life and his ministry were the fulfilment of a long arc of God's work through history.

The Gospel's warning of suddenness and the unknown hour at which Jesus will return ties directly into this. Jesus' message is God's plan is unfolding and it will not conform to human expectation. Isaiah's prophecy, given thousands of years beforehand, read for us today, complements this vision.

In days to come, the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of mountains. Many peoples shall come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. Jesus' birth, fragile, unexpected, was the first step in this fulfilment.

He came, not to gather a single nation, not a chosen people, but the scattered, the forgotten, into a new people, shaped by God's mercy. The very details of Jesus' birth foreshadow and foretell this. Mary, Joseph and Jesus were turned away from the place where they should have found welcome.

And God's embrace was therefore found, not amongst family, but in a stable, in the vulnerability, in the dirt, amongst animals. Our Gospel reading presses the question, were the people ready for this new and unexpected work of God? Were they ready for this new and unexpected Messiah? Or had spiritual sleep over the years dulled their sight? Were they so complacent in knowing what they thought God was doing and would do, that they forgot to look for him doing anything else? That image that Jesus shared, the one taken from the field, the one left at the millstone, they're not images of abandonment, they're images of complacency. People acting as though God's activity in the world is predictable, tidy, safe.

But Jesus came not to be safe, not to be predictable. He came to show mercy and justice in the places that we disregard. He came to the poor, the dirty, the sinful, showing that God's kingdom upends our assumptions.

Paul takes up the theme in Romans. You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.

The old age is passing, a new reality is breaking in. And Paul urges the Church, live honourably, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, make no provision for the flesh. Embody the change that God is enacting in the world.

The warning is that our readiness cannot be a form of self-reliance. We don't save ourselves by achieving moral perfection. In fact, he says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, be changed by God.

Allow his grace to transform you. Act with righteousness, not because you are righteous, but because Christ clothes you. Act in justice, not because you are just, but because you rise and fall, because Christ rises and lays you down.

Act with mercy, because even in your good works, God is active in you. It was a lesson that the Pharisees never learned. They were complacent even in their righteousness, assuming that because everyone else considered that they were good, they could consider themselves good.

They could consider that God had nothing left to say to them. And yet Jesus came and said, who is good but God alone? And so, as we read Matthew, alongside Isaiah and Romans, we see a pattern emerging. Prophecy turns to fulfilment.

Fulfilment turns to consequences. It draws an arc for God's promises. Through the birth of Jesus Christ, moving on to the life and the mission of the Church, moving on to us.

The Gospel of Matthew calls us to be alert. Not to allow the past to simply be the past, but a living reality of God at work within us now. And this leads, naturally, to a threefold readiness.

First, be ready for the new thing that God is doing. God's work in the world surprises, unsettles, arrives in unexpected forms. The refugee child, the peasant teenager, the rejected outsider, the one who everyone thinks is a sinner.

These are the places and the people where God's kingdom breaks in, not amongst the righteous. Isaiah's vision wasn't a rigid blueprint, but a declaration that God calls those who we do not expect to him. Second, live as Jesus would have us live.

Do not allow the nativity to become a historical story that we just tell to children, with no claim on your present. Let it unsettle your assumptions, reshape your desires, guide your speech and direct your choices. Let it be practical.

Be present to the lonely, give voice to the overlooked, welcome the stranger. Pay attention to those who, like Jesus, are fragile and vulnerable and cast aside those whose society actively hates. And third, rely on grace.

Remember that your readiness is not a spiritual performance, it is the daily trust in Jesus Christ who clothes you. The nativity tells us that God has broken into our reality, and grace is the bridge that enables us to live in that new reality. Look around our world.

We see the loneliness, the exhaustion, the fear, the hunger for hope in the people around us. In our own community of Barnet, there are people, so many people, struggling with their mental health. Families living in poverty, people seeking shelter and acceptance who have fled situations we can't even imagine.

Advent speaks directly to them. The nativity assures us that God will come in his glory, and he has already come in humility to dwell with such as these, the vulnerable. Our apocalyptic gospel shows us that history is moving towards redemption.

Isaiah shows us that God is calling everyone into peace. Romans calls us to embody hope for others. Be the answer to the prayers of those who are vulnerable and hurting.

That is the message of Advent. That is the message of readiness. And so, as we approach Christmas, of course we can embrace the comforting familiarity of nativity plays, of Christmas trees, of crackers, of good food, of presents, of family and friends.

But we must also embrace the awe, the urgency, the grace of the Son of Man who became flesh and dwelt among us, in order to lift up our eyes to the God who calls many peoples to the mountain of the Lord, the house of the God of Jacob, who calls us to be part of his work in the foundation of his kingdom here in Barnet, the missional work of the Holy Spirit, who is calling out not to the people who are righteous, not to the people who are worthy, not to the people who we expect, but to the hurt, the vulnerable, the people who everyone else disregards. Let the reality of the nativity awaken you. God has more for you and more for his church than you can imagine.

Go out and look in the places that no one else is looking. And there you will see the Christ child. Amen.