It's the same year after year. On this most somnolent of American weekends when it takes three days to recover from one day of gluttony, this lazy weekend when some people sleep in for four days in a row - it is this Sunday that the church decides to defy the culture and catapult us into a new year - smacking us first with judgment and then with demand. It is this weekend that the liturgical calendar tells us to "Wake Up!" Life as we know it will eventually end. Get up! The world as we experience it will surely change. Watch! The God we think we know is about to become for us a God we have never met. Yes, my friends, today is the first Sunday of Advent - the season of moving toward a God who will invade our predictable world and shake us up.

Strangely enough, this year I am ready for Adve…