Advent 2011

This was the original text and content of a sermon which was then delivered without notes- it gives a sense of the point and feel of the sermon as we moved into Advent together.

Advent Sunday, 2011, Year B

And what I say to you I say to all, Keep awake.

The core of our keeping of Advent this year at St Mary’s is the idea of living creatively with Advent’s tensions. In the week’s ahead we’ll look at some in detail, I want to look at three today as an introduction to Advent. Advent is a practical gift to us, because it keeps our eyes on Jesus in the midst of shopping and lists and all of the preparations we have to make for Christmas Day. And, second, it is a gift which makes us conscious of how we are called to live every day of our lives, as members of God’s Kingdom. And, third, it reminds us that we must not wait passively but use the time well to be awake, ready, waiting.

First then, on a practical level, Advent prompts us to cling tight in the midst of rush and chaos to the light burning in the stable as Mary gives birth to the Son of God. Advent reminds us that we are not getting ready for the most over-hyped and over-advertised day in the year but for the birth of Jesus. Advent reminds us that we must not allow rush and lists and Jingly Bells to overwhelm the pregnant silence of a Bethlehem night. Advent reminds us that taking time for God in these next weeks is not always easy, but it is the only way to get ready for Christmas. It keeps Mary and Joseph and Jesus centre stage. Opening Advent Calendars and welcoming the Posada figures and coming to the Advent Course (which starts tomorrow night and on Wednesday morning) and choosing to get excited more by the coming of Jesus than anything else is what will make our keeping of Christmas.

Advent is also a time to remember that we live in the world but do not just live in the world. We hold dual-nationality. We have two passports. One says that we belong to this United Kingdom. The other would say that we belong to the Kingdom of Heaven, to the Kingdom Jesus comes to proclaim and embody and deliver. In Advent we wait for Jesus to come at Christmas, and that reminds us that we are called to live for God here and now and to make his Kingdom real by our lives and actions, and it reminds us that we are all waiting for God to act and for Jesus to come to bring the brokenness of our world to an end and to bring God’s creation to completion.

So Advent is all about focusing religiously on what Christmas is all about and not being distracted by the baubles and the tinsel, about properly seeing God’s unimaginable daring and courage and gift in being born as one of us. And Advent is all about using this time of waiting and preparation to explore the fact that we don’t belong uncritically in this life and in this world but are made for more, called to live in God’s Kingdom now, called to live by the rules and values of Heaven.

This reading from Mark is often seen as some kind of secret communication, where if you tilt your head to the side and squint a little bit and turn round three times to the left and chant the right words then, like in the Da Vinci Code, you’ll suddenly know when the end of the world will happen. It’s not. This reading is a reminder that the people who seem to rule the world do not, that God alone is God and that, at some time in the future, God will act to bring history to fruition. And it is a reminder to those who benefit from oppression and injustice need that they need to be wary because there will be a judgement and we will all be held to account.

And it’s a reminder to us too that we need to make sure we’re on the right side of the debate, that given a choice between the best thing for us and the right thing we choose the right and generous thing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. In the reading sleeping is selfishness and greed, and being awake is loving and kind. And since noone knows the day or the hour when God is coming we need to be sure that we are living in the light for God all of the time. Such is the challenge of Advent.    

Belonging to God, doing the right thing, living in the light, is also what our powerful reading from Isaiah is all about. The writer of these verses starts by calling on God to act again, to come with power and urgency to shock his enemies and vindicate his people. He longs for God to “tear open the heavens and come down”, an image of unexpected violence. God has acted before, and made the mountains quake, and the writer longs for God to act again. Despite everything, despite human rebellion, God is still the potter and still we are the clay. The writer prays for God to come and to make the nations tremble because of their sin.

The reading ends with “We are all your people”- which poses a big Advent question for us. At the Passover, when God led his people through the Red Sea out of slavery in Egypt, God’s chosen people marked their door lintels with blood so that his anger would pass by and not fall on them. This time, when God comes and acts, how will he know that we are his? What can we write on our doors? What faithfulness and commitment can we bring out as evidence? What can we show as proof of our faith? What could we write on our door to prove that we are part of God’s Kingdom? Or, to use a more positive image, what gift of generosity and love can we carry with us to the stable to lay at the side of the crib as proof of our devotion and commitment? How do we make sure that we are ready, awake?

Let me draw these themes and ideas together by talking about how we wait, how we put on, in the wonderful words of the Collect, the armour of light now in the time of this mortal life.

Too often waiting is seen as something passive, still, boring. Waiting for Christmas is about counting down the days and doing nothing else. But that it not what it’s for, and it’s not really how we wait for things. How we really wait for things is by practicing in our heads what it will feel like when waiting ends.

If we are looking forward to a big occasion, like a wedding, then we dream about it and think about- doing the dishes we’ll find ourselves practicing it, imaging conversations and what people will wear and who we’ll talk to. If we’re waiting for someone to pick us up, and they’re late, we might walk to the end of the road and back again, and start to think what our other options are. If we’re waiting to run at the Olympics then we spend years beforehand planning and preparing, doing thousands of starts, running thousands of miles, everything turned to that one day, that one moment. And if we’re waiting for the results of a hospital test then we’ll have spent days beforehand planning for every eventuality, doing our homework, imagining how we’ll react and what we’ll do if the news is unexpectedly good, or unexpectedly bad, walking through every scenario. When we wait we don’t just sit there- our bodies and our minds are active as we get ready. Advent waiting needs to be the same. 

We’ve talked about the tension of getting ready for Jesus in a world of intimidating TV adverts with beautiful people and guaranteed snow. We’ve talked about the tension of living in this world as citizens of the Kingdom of Heave. And we’ve talked now about the tension in our waiting, about the fact that waiting is not something still but something determined, focused, active.

Make sure that our preparations for Christmas centre on Christ. Think about the fact that we are part of the Kingdom Christ is bringing in and not defined by the way our world does business. And wait actively, generously, thoughtfully, by getting ready for God to come, and making sure that, when he does, we have something selfless and kind to lay at the side of the crib, something of Heaven to write on our doors.

God is coming, in the stillness of the night. God is coming, through a tear in time and heaven. And we need to keep awake and be ready. We need to wait well.