Advent Sunday - time to refocus

Passage for reflection: 

Jeremiah 33: 14 - 16

Do you ever long to be able to start again? Are there times when it feels life has been a mess and you just wish you could turn the page and start a new story and leave all the rubbish you’ve been through behind? 

Advent is my favourite season of the church year. In Advent, God invites us to see him coming again. Advent is all about God’s coming meeting our deepest longings and reminding us that in the end all will be well. 

We’ve just spent a week on Holy Island. We haven’t been to the Island since March last year, apart from a brief lunchtime visit to meet some friends in September, a few months ago. For me, the Island, when I sit and stop and enter its beauty and its story heals my anxieties, refocuses my head on right priorities and lifts my spirit to find the love and power of God all around me again. That today is full of problems, but that God in Christ comes and will come. Remember Advent isn’t Christmas come early or even a countdown to Jesus’ birth. We remember how Jesus came long ago, but Advent actually is about expectation of a second coming and a judgment by God how ready we are to receive him in new ways. If God were to come, how would he find us? It’s rather like the manse inspection! Do we have to tidy up before it happens or could we open the door and know we would be fine? 

I don’t usually include a picture in these blogs but this week I will. Here’s St Cuthbert’s Isle. Look at the colours.

Several times this past week I’ve sat on a bench at sunset and have encountered a theophany. The heavens have declared the glory of God! I’ve like all good church people have been bogged down with how we keep the church going or the latest things we have to deal with like safeguarding or votes on whether we will permit same sex marriages on our premises or working out our plans for Christmas. Sitting and staring has opened my heart and my head again to God’s intention. He wants to come again and restore his relationship with me so I can flourish as his child. 

Advent Sunday brings an invitation to us: the invitation to trust in God who, in spite of our experience of desolation, and hey, how desolate have we felt these last two years nearly - this God will indeed bring consolation. The promise will be fulfilled. Justice and righteousness will be the blanket that wraps around us. So prepare the way, for ‘the days are surely coming' when this good, this love, this righteousness will come in the form of our saviour – the Christ who is both fully human and fully divine.

How will you use this holy season? Try not to do Christmas too early! We had a minister come to my home Circuit from the Uniting Church of Australia. He was called Brian Whitlock. A fabulous man! But Brian would not let us sing any Christmas carols until Christmas Day! I got his point. I’m having an Advent carol service on Advent Sunday evening. All the carols are about judgment and hope and a radical new manifestation of the divine breaking into our drab, worrying and unconfident world. 

I suggest we all need a Holy Island moment in these weeks. David Adam wrote this some years ago in a little pilgrim guide to the Island:

“ We all need to seek our own Holy Island, a place that is sometimes set apart and cut off. If we do not have a Holy Island we need to create one. We need to be able to carry a Holy Island in our heart. Place is important and we all need a holy place, a sacred place, a place where we meet with the Holy One.” 

I found this helpful paragraph on the Episcopal Church website in the United States:

“Waiting is a time to look around and recognize that all is not as it should be or could be. Waiting is the time to lean into these feelings of longing. It is a time to lean into those feelings that not all is right, and that there is something better to come. It is a time to dream; it is a time to imagine. When we wait, though it seems that death and suffering run rampant and unrestrained through our world, we dream of being comforted. We dream of being reunited with loved ones. We dream of a time when God is going to make everything alright. To echo the words of Jeremiah, we dream of a time when God’s promise is fulfilled, and all will live in safety and in flourishing. We dream of a day when God will execute justice and righteousness throughout the land.”

Then this prayer from the Church of Scotland:

“Loving God we are in awe and give grateful thanks for all the good things in life.

We know we don't always get things right.
When we lose focus and direction, 
set us back on the right path of love.
When we feel cross, and bitter words leave our lips,  remind us of the abundance of your love.
When we feel overwhelmed by daily tasks,
show us the power of stillness;
empower us with inner, quiet strength.
When we turn from you,
turn us gently back so that our focus is on you, on love, on light, on the
goodness at the heart of all creation.

What do we long for? What’s God waiting for us to stop and see? Do we believe he comes now and will come one day in glory? My readers, Christmas and its glitz can wait and it will come and that’s okay - but let’s have an alert, honest, and open minded Advent. He will come when we are least expecting it and you know what - if we’re frazzled he’ll find us a bench and he’ll say sit and look, I’ll make the colours sing again for you. I’m here and I’m coming again. Get ready!