Today is the first Sunday of Advent,
and, as I am sure you know, Advent means “coming”- from the Latin ‘adventus’.
What is coming? Christmas, of course. Baby Jesus. Santa Claus. Presents.
Tinsel. Carol singing – possibly a bit too much, in my case. Turkey, if bird
flu hasn’t wiped them all out. There may also be indigestion coming, and an
extra inch or two on the waistline too. Sadly, for many the anxiety of how they
will pay for it all, is coming or the sadness of knowing that they can’t. We
may be looking forward with excitement or dread, but we know, more or less, how
it will pan out.
But our Advent hymns remind us that
there is more to this season than simply getting ready to hear the story of the
coming of a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. “Lo, he comes with clouds
descending,” we’ll sing later. This Christ is “robed in dreadful
majesty”, not wrapped in swaddling bands. In our first hymn, “Hills of
the North, rejoice” we travelled round all four points of the compass, and
heard that “The God whom you have longed to know, in Christ draws near, and
calls you now”. Advent isn’t just about the Christ who came two
thousand years ago, but also about the Christ who comes to us in the present
and the future. Are we ready for him?
We’re probably comfortable with the
Christmas story. We know how it turns out. There may be no room at the inn, but
we know the child will at least have a manger to lie in. Danger my threaten,
from kings and emperors, but we know the child will survive. Shepherds will be
suitably amazed. Magi will manage, finally, to find the child, and adore him. We
know that all will turn out ok, despite the dangers and set backs.
But what about now? Where is God now?
And where will God be in what is to come? That’s the bit we’re not so sure
about, but it’s the bit that matters most, because we can only live in the
present and the future. The past is gone – it’s good to look back at and learn
from it, but today and tomorrow are the only things we can truly engage with, the
only things we can change,
The imagery of our Advent hymns and readings
deliberately invites us to ask those more disturbing questions. They talk about
a second coming, something that may sound uncomfortable to the modern mind,
making us think about those Medieval images of the Day of Judgement, with the
saved rising up to heaven and the damned going down to hell, or of street
preachers proclaiming that the “end is nigh”. People have taken literally the
idea that “two will be in a field, one will be taken and one left behind”, and
tried to scare people into the kingdom – a tactic that rarely works – by asking
what it would be like to be the one “left behind”, but it seems to me that this
misses the point.
The Bible was largely written by and
for people who were suffering, people who were oppressed, little people in a
world where big people ruled, people on the margins whose lives were nothing to
the people at the centre. The message of the second coming of Jesus, the Day of
the Lord, the Day of Judgement, was one of hope for them, not of fear. It told
them that things wouldn’t always be as they were now. The Book of Revelation, much beloved by
conspiracy theorist, who can find almost anything in it they want, is really a
message to the persecuted Christians of its time, telling them that Rome
wouldn’t rule forever, any more than the ancient power of Babylon, which had
once oppressed the people of Israel had. To those who first heard that message,
it said that God hadn’t given up on them, and he never would. African-American
slaves loved these writings too, and they inspired many of their spirituals,
because they heard in them the message that, whatever happened – in life and in
death - God had not forgotten them. For us too, the message of Advent is that
God has a habit of turning up when we least expect him, bringing love and life
and new beginnings into situations that seem hopeless to us. “The night is
far gone; the day is near” says Paul. The message of Advent is a message of hope,
rooted in our relationship with a God who loves all that he has made.
But if we are going to find that
hope, we need first to have the courage to open our eyes, to wake up. “Now
is the moment to wake out of sleep,” said Paul. When times are tough, we
are all tempted to close our eyes, to hunker down and hope they will all go
away, to deny the problems exist.
Whether it’s climate change deniers,
Covid deniers, or the really odd idea that disasters like the Manchester Arena
bombing or the Sandy Hook shootings didn’t happen and were staged by crisis actors,
there are always people ready to believe that bad things really aren’t
happening, that troubles have just been made up for some strange reason. But
even if we don’t believe that, we can all find ourselves minimising or avoiding
situations we would rather not think about. We may not be climate change
deniers, but often we carry on regardless, not making the changes we need to,
because it all just feels too dark and scary to contemplate. Like the people Jesus talks about who were
“eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day Noah
entered the ark” we behave as if its no big deal.
Why? I think it’s usually because we
feel powerless and hopeless. It’s too big; we’re too small – so the best thing
is to ignore it. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”.
But Christian faith tells us that
while we are often powerless, we always have hope, not in ourselves, but in God
– the God who came to us in Jesus, the God who still comes to us, and will
never leave us, whether we live or die, succeed or fail. It doesn’t mean that
nothing bad will happen, but it does mean that whatever happens we will still
be eternally loved, and that can give us the strength to keep loving, to keep
living our lives “honourably, as in the day” as St Paul puts it. We may not
always see the fruit of our efforts in our own lifetimes, but love and goodness
are never wasted, never pointless.
The American poet, Emily Dickinson,
put it well in her poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, which compares hope
to a bird that sings through the night, through the storms. It sings, she says,
not because of anything we do, but simply because that is its nature, and so it
is unstoppable.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words
-
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard
-
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
In our dark and scary world, Advent,
like that bird, sings to us of the love of God, of the worth and belovedness of
all his creation, and it calls to us to look up and discover the hope that is
rooted in God, who comes to us, today and tomorrow and forever.
Amen
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