Getting Into Advent

Advent 2: 2010

Annie bared her soul last Sunday morning as Lent as Advent began. She told us how much she (or shall we call it old Annie) used to dislike Christmas with all of its fuss and the pressure to have a picture-perfect Christmas, the best presents, the best fancy turkey recipe, the best-looking and most nuclear family wearing the best machine-knitted Christmas jumpers and wearing cracker hats at just the right jaunty angle, neither too solemn nor too silly.

I’ve never felt quite as grumpy about Christmas as Annie, but I do have a friend, one of Naomi’s Godparents who sat in the front row at their baptism and looked like the X-Factor panel in black clerical shirts, who always gets to the stage (about a week before Christmas, when he can’t take singing Away in a Manger one more time) of saying: “The sooner that blooming baby gets in the manger the better.”

Advent for old Annie ends with a sense of failure at Christmas- Advent for my clerical friend ends with collapsing in a heap, exhausted, drained, with nothing left to give.

Today, as we move deeper into Advent, I’m left with a very simple message to myself and to Annie and to Naomi’s Godfather, and to everyone: Don’t mess it up. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let your head be turned or your heart be crushed. Don’t waste it. Advent is all about getting ready for the birth of the Son of God at Bethlehem in the cold night. And whatever happens, you need to be ready to worship when the Mother’s birthpangs stop and the anticipatory silence, as the world holds its breath, is broken by the cries of a newborn baby.

It’s your job to get it right. It’s your job to be ready. It’s your job to push away whatever it is which is going to make you lose sight of Jesus and it’s your job to focus in like Santa’s satnav on what matters. You won’t remember by the middle of January what Aunty Nora or Uncle Jehosophat bought you- but you will never forget, never regret, worshipping the newborn King well. Because he is coming. And we need to be ready. Which is where Advent comes in. The King is coming. And we need to wake up from sleep and to be waiting, and ready, and watching, and here.

And it is not just we who need to get this right. The world needs us to get it right as well, needs us to keep Christmas well, needs us to stand firm against everything which threatens to drown out the angel chorus and the shepherd’s excitement. I did an assembly this week on Advent and what it is to wait for something to happen. And at the end a member of staff came up to me and said how important she thought it was that we talked about waiting because a lot of children don’t know what it is to wait but want and get everything immediately, and some children know only waiting and never experience arrival, delivery, the fulfilment of waiting.

I think that she’s right, not only for the children in her class but for the whole of society, for the whole of humanity. Too many people never wait for anything. As a nation, we are consumers who get whatever we want as soon as we want it. There are real advantages to that but, even in the midst of a recession, we get what we fancy and not what we need for life. And our inability to wait changes who we are, makes us demanding and not grateful, makes us impatient and rarely thankful. Our brains and hearts change- and we resent Advent and want to fast forward to Christmas, just as we’d love to skip over Holy Week to get from Palm Sunday to Easter Day. And it’s not just us we are affected because our inability to wait affects others because the extra we want now denies the basics of life to someone else. Our ‘too much’ means ‘too little’ for someone in another land, or even in another street.

On the other hand, there are children in this lady’s class who know only waiting and longing. And there are people all across the globe who know only waiting. And there are seasons in our lives when we know only waiting- and if we don’t wait a little bit in the rest of our lives when we have a choice then we won’t have the foggiest idea what to do when waiting is forced upon us by unemployment or illness or the end of a relationship. Waiting to be presented with the choice of treatment. Waiting for someone to come home. Waiting for someone to say sorry. Waiting for the fuss of Christmas to be done. Waiting for a hug and “I love you”. Waiting for the shouting to stop. Waiting because we have no choice. Some people have no choice about waiting- and if everyone else around you is getting everything they want now it makes the waiting even harder.

So, what then shall we say about these things? Two things, I think. One is to suggest that once and for all we kill off the myth of the perfect Christmas. If we all stopped striving to get everything just so then the pressure would be off all of us and there would be no need to keep up with the Woodcocks. Christmas is not ever going to be made perfect by our planning and hardwork alone. Some people have died. Some people are elsewhere. Some presents won’t get wrapped. Turkey always tastes dull. The dishes need to be done.

Let’s stop chasing the impossible dream. Let’s use Advent as a season of realism and reality. Christmas will never look quite like the M and S adverts: so let’s move targets.

Because the King is Coming. He has come once, to raise us from death to life, and he will come again at the end of the world to bring all of creation to completion. The Child we are waiting for at Christmas will fulfil the prophecies of Isaiah and the waiting of John the Baptist. He is the one who will build a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, where those who are empty will be filled and all will have enough. In him, the child and the snake will play together, the ox will rest its head on the side of the lion and the lamb shall lie down with the wolf. “They will not hurt or destroy on all of my holy mountain… and his dwelling shall be glorious.” The King is coming- we need to be ready.

We are waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus, to celebrate this amazing gift of God. And the world outside is waiting to hear this Good News, not preached from a pulpit but lived out every day in our lives, where it makes a difference, where it matters, to wait with those who wait without hope and to challenge those who wait and want for nothing to live selflessly, to build this Kingdom which takes as its model a newborn baby.

All of this because a child is born in Bethlehem. It’s worth getting it right. It’s worth being ready. Because the end of our waiting will be more wonderful and more transformative than we could possibly dream.

The King is coming. Let’s be ready.       Amen.