Someone wrote to me this week “what has happened to Advent?” Has Christmas started earlier than ever this year? The trouble with starting Christmas on 1 December or earlier is that it’s bound to cause problems. A little girl was in Sainsbury’s the other day and eyeing up the Christmas chocolate placed by the back door to get us to buy it. Her poor mother told her she want having any and she’d have to wait. She didn’t just then cry she screamed! “I WANT IT NOW!” And she was dragged screaming out of the shop.
Did Father Christmas appear in November when we were growing up? I don’t think so. Mind you I never got on with Father Christmas. The thought of going in a church cupboard on my own with him and worse him telling me to sit on his knee sent me into a tailspin!
I was on retreat yesterday on Holy Island which was glorious in the blue sky with snow and frost on the ground as long as you wrapped up warm. I sat writing this in a pub on the sea front in Tynemouth on my way back as the A1 was clogged up and the sat nav suggested the quickest way home was via the Tyne Tunnel and the A19. I had my late lunch to my left and my I pad to my right. I put my fork down for a moment. A girl started to whisk my food away thinking I’d finished having left most of it. I guess the place wanted to get as many covers as possible through on a Saturday night.
As my correspondent wrote “what has happened to Advent?” Today is Advent Sunday. This is my favourite Sunday to write about and preach on, for it is all about expectation and optimism and also yes, judgment and challenge that we may have got our priorities wrong. And let me suggest something to you. Advent isn’t about waiting for the baby Jesus. He’s already come. He hasn’t gone away. He doesn’t pack his bags in the middle of November and disappear returning 33 years younger on the 25 December. Advent is about REMEMBERING his coming among us in Bethlehem long ago as one of us, in vulnerability and in chaos, but Advent is more about being prepared and excited for his coming again in glory to judge the quick and the dead and that his Kingdom will have no end. Advent is a time to preach eschatology.
Jesus has died. Jesus has risen. Jesus will return again. When’s the last time you heard a sermon on the second coming?
When I was minister in Rye in East Sussex I led an ecumenical spirituality group which met on a Tuesday afternoon to discuss big theological questions.
There were some lovely devoted and faithful Anglican ladies amongst its membership. I did a session on the return of Jesus with them. I reminded them that in the creed which Anglican folk tend to say in every act of worship they say Christ will come again. They told me they might say it but they had never really thought about it. It is our belief that one day soon we will see Jesus and his reign will be here in all its fullness. Advent is both remembering a baby and anticipating a Saviour.
So I’m glad Sawley folk had to move their Carol Service two weeks earlier from where we usually have it as we are sharing a service with the Anglicans in the village that Sunday and so our carol service this Sunday has turned into a celebration of both aspects of Advent hope – Hark the herald angels sing glory to the new born king but also lo he comes with clouds descending – alleluia, Christ appears on earth to reign.
That little girl in Sainsbury’s was yearning about chocolate. Advent at its heart is about yearning and maybe shouting at God to do something. Isaiah 64 is the Old Testament passage for Advent Sunday. “O that you would tear the heavens apart and come down!”
In the coming weeks, the Advent readings will walk us through the story of John the Baptizer and continue on to the angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary. But before the heavenly hosts show up, before the shepherds find the baby in the manger, the lectionary points us to the apocalyptic. Traditionally, Advent is a period when the church dons bi-focal lenses: reenacting the great yearning and expectation for the Messiah articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures while simultaneously looking to the second coming of Jesus.
That sense of longing is felt in the lyrics of Psalm 80, where three times the refrain is voiced, “Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.”
The weight of anticipation for divine deliverance is perhaps even more keenly pronounced in the passage from Isaiah 64: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” The desperation of the prophet is almost palpable. It is a cry that can only emerge from a place of anguish and desolation.
And it is a cry that reverberates today in the hearts of all those suffering oppression, war, or injustice: God, when will you return? When will the second coming of Jesus take place? When will you rend the heavens and come to liberate us all?
Do something God! Make it better.
The message of Advent and Christmas whether you use these weeks to remember incarnation or wait in hope for a divine ending is that God does indeed do something. He intervenes. He opens heaven and comes to earth. He gives us part of himself. That God enters our world. He doesn’t wait for it to be ready or right. He comes when we least expect him.
And we need that intervention more than ever. On my way up to Holy Island I went to a lecture on the future of democracy in Durham Cathedral, given by Nick Robinson, one of the presenters of the Today programme on Radio 4. He told us the story of his parents who fled the emerging Nazi regime in Germany in 1933. His parents were Jews. People told his father who was a popular doctor, they valued him and still wanted him to sort them out, but they couldn’t stand up for him now. We are similar. We pass the problems by. We cross over the road. We pretend the needy aren’t there. We would rather get on our own life. God intervenes. God comes. God hears. God surrounds. The grace of God dawns upon the world with healing for all humankind. Then and now and in the future. That’s the Advent hope.
This week has seen the passing of Shane McGowan, of the group The Pogues. His Christmas song was Fairytale of New York which he sang with the late Kirsty McColl.
When Kirsty McColl tells Shane McGowan he’s taken her dreams from her, he says,” I kept them with my own. Can’t make it all alone. I built my dreams around you.” In the drunk tank as two lovers scream abuse at each other here is the point —- there’s still a bit of hope about – as the boys of the NYPD city choir sing and the bells ring out Christmas Day. There’s a different narrative in the midst of absolute mayhem.
“What has happened to Advent?” Well maybe we need a time of honest yearning and a rediscovery God comes into our dirt and mess as he did in a Bethlehem cow shed and will come into what we face to save us from ourselves.
Last week Christine Arthur put a prayer in Harrogate Road notices I used in my sermon. She was thrilled I mentioned it. It went like this: As we begin to prepare to look towards your coming, Lord, help us to use our time wisely, reject all that displeases you, and love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Strengthen our discipleship so that when Jesus comes we may rejoice to be with him forever. This week Lynda Blackburn has put this prayer in the Allhallowgate notices which maybe sums up Advent hope and Christmas Day… Life can only be understood by looking backward, but it must be lived looking forward.
May we remember Christmas. May we anticipate Advent. God has things planned for us. Let’s be expectant: he will come and give us not everything we want but everything we need.
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