Do you feel perhaps that Latin is an outdated language? Yet you will find it within so many words in our language. It is used by most families every Christmas, in the word `advent`. Not many people necessarily know what that word `advent` means. The word `advent` means `coming towards`. We look forward to coming towards Christmas. Today is the second Sunday in Advent, and we remember the prophets and their clear message. Here it is in our Gospel reading: `Prepare the way for the Lord.` In a short time we shall be celebrating, coming towards, the first coming of the Lord – and look forward to his coming again.

John the Baptist preached about repentance and baptism, and we shall hear about his ministry next Sunday. Baptism is a graphic picture of someone going down into the water of baptism – drowning to an old life – and coming up, rising again to a new life.

Advent: a `coming towards`. Our Gospel and Epistle readings speak of two aspects of the good news we celebrate Sunday by Sunday in our coming to God in repentance, and God`s grace working in us, enabling us to become who we already are. John the Baptist`s message is clear: that we are to turn away from sin and turn to Christ in repentance. Repentance: it`s important that we include that aspect of our Christian faith. I can remember coming to faith in Cromer in the 1970s and celebrating all that the Gospel is. But I was confused about emphasis on repentance. I didn`t feel I had done anything too terrible – why did I keep having to repent, say sorry to God? I asked him to show me what he meant by repentance. Over the next weeks I began to wish I hadn`t asked as God showed me so many ways in which I failed him. I understood some of what repentance meant. I needed to come towards God and admit my failure and ask for his forgiveness. We can use the simple Jesus Prayer: `O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.`

Have a look at our stained glass window, one you have examined many times as you have sat within the body of the church. Here is Jesus and his disciples, male and female. We look at their faces. But if you look carefully, you will see one of the disciples whose face is hidden. Is it because he is humble, embarrassed to be shown? Is he hiding, not wishing his life to be seen? Is he wanting us to concentrate on the person of Jesus and show he comes towards him alone?

We come towards . . .

Our Epistle this morning is about another kind of `coming towards`. Here in Philippians 1 are the words of St Paul. Very different ones from the strident words of John the Baptist. Paul writes to the church at Philippi about what he feels about the Philippians` faith in action: `I thank my God for you every time I think of you, and every time I pray for you all, I pray with joy. . . . And so I am sure that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it on until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus.` What lovely words of encouragement to a Christian church.

Again and again we realise that it is God who is working in us, to make us more like him. He didn`t wait for us to be perfect: he met us where we are. Romans 5:8: `while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.` God in Christ comes towards us. And as we say `yes` to his call, as Mary did, so his grace grows in us, to make us what we already are in Christ.

Such a response is pivoted on love. Love for God as we bring our lives to him in repentance. Love from God to ourselves as we receive his grace and grow further in love for him and for those around us.

John encouraged his listeners to show a sign of their repentance, to be baptised. That is a graphic picture of dying to an old life and rising again to a new as we go down into the waters of baptism. But there can be other signs of repentance and commitment which strengthen us and draw us closer to God. It matters that we meet up like this. It matters that love is so clearly shown in our church life. Love was the sign of the early church. It is the sign of the Christian church here now. We see clearly the presence of Christ in our midst, in one another, and in his church. We see the signs of our coming towards, through God in Christ coming towards us. Philippians again:

`Your lives will be filled with the truly good qualities which only Jesus Christ can produce, for the glory and praise of God.` There in Philippi. Here in Sheringham.

  The Revd Pat Hopkins