We have arrived at the 4th and last Sunday in Advent. When you have celebrated wildly, without inhibition? Advent is also a time of celebration. Somehow, lots of good church-attending people get the idea that moving your body in worship is sinful, or at least  a defective form of worship.

This morning we’ll think about living in “a time for renewal”. I said last Sunday that Advent is largely about ‘Waiting, Patience and Hope’ So is life. Neither is just about doing, unthinkingly. Nor are they about waiting, passively, Good waiting is a synonym for preparing. Waiting is an activity.

We’re into our 3rd week of looking at 2 Corinthians 5. In With Love to the World’s comment last Wednesday on 2 Cor 11 the author suggested that Paul may have written as many as 4 letters to the Christian community in Corinth. Back in 2 Cor. 5, over the past 2 weeks we’ve been studying what the future might hold using several images: the house in heaven compared with our tent here on earth; the shining new clothes worn over the old ones as I wear my alb; the coming judgement, which has been brought forward in time for those who have given over their lives to God in Christ.

Verses 6-10 address another aspect of life after death AND…life after life after death: the Judgement of the Messiah. To better understand what and why Paul was writing about judgement you need to understand that one of the first things you see if you go to Corinth is the judgment seat. In the middle of the Forum is the place where, in Paul’s day, the Roman governor would sit to dispense justice is the judgment seat, the bema. Paul draws a picture here of everybody appearing before the Messiah’s bema.