Sermon preached at Evensong on the Second Sunday of Advent 2024

What is the spirit of this Advent season? Where should our focus be? What can distract us from the melee of pre-Christmas merriment, or help us to get beneath the marketing, the mulling, the muzak, and discover the joy that might survive beyond the Gavin and Stacey special on Christmas Day?

Here in the Abbey, we are asking (prompted by the twenty-fourth psalm), ‘who is this King of Glory?’ I refer you to our website, and encourage you to sign-up for our email faith newsletter; ‘Who is this King of Glory’—what can we know of this one born in a cattle-shed and coming with the clouds?

In Advent we prepare to look back to Bethlehem by fixing our attention firmly on the now; on all that is coming towards us; all the confusing signals of a fractious, anxious world; all the anxious chatter of our own thoughts, and in all the bewildering challenges our bodies, or those of loved ones may be throwing at us—through it all we strain to perceive the signals of hope—we are being trained in longing, in expectancy, and in patience.

But, we are promised, this is not a demand for some heroic, spiritual quest; like Bear Grylls facing down the blizzard, bracing ourselves against the blasts of history. We strain to hear the one who is, indeed, calling us. We reach out towards the one who is pulling us, drawing us, gathering us into his future, his fulfilment. The initiative, the energy, is all his. So, we implore him to come, veni, maranatha, even as this King of Glory is calling us, and bringing us to himself.

And this need not be a lonely quest because we do it in company with one another, and in the company of the ages—with the prophets who saw God’s hand in the unlikely arena of national and international politics, even in defeat and exile. Isaiah, in our first reading, heard a call to comfort; comfort my people, even in the direst of circumstances. Isaiah makes for very good company, in the Advent season, along with the great company of those who saw Christ and followed him, even into the perplexity of his trial and death, and the bewildering joy of his resurrection. And we are in the company of the saints ever since who have longed and waited and patiently served in each generation.

We listen into the storm, we reach into an obscure and frightening future as a people across time, one body in Christ, urged and stirred by the same Holy Spirit.

This great company has bequeathed to us countless gifts, traditions, to encourage us and help us to discern who this King of Glory was, and is, and will be. In the final few days of Advent, leading up to Christmas Eve, we will be given again the great O Antiphons—short texts, drawn from the Old Testament, often sung to glorious plainchant (recordings will be released each day on our website—I encourage you to make them part of your devotion as Christmas approaches).

The Antiphons each give us a different name or title for Christ, each of which can enrich and deepen our knowledge of the one on whom we call; the child in the manger, the Lord of the Church, in word and sacrament, and the King who is coming at the end of the ages to judge the earth.

The first three antiphons call on Christ as Wisdom/Sapientia, as Mighty Lord/Adonai, and as the Root of Jesse/Radix Jesse.

To take them in turn…

Calling on Christ as ‘Wisdom, proceeding from the mouth of the Most High, reaching out mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and sweetly arranging all things,’ this echoes the beginning of John’s gospel, in which he is spoken of as the Word of God, through whom all things were made. This sounds like a big claim, but it is not some kind of neo-Platonic corruption; a philosophical complication of a simple Jesus movement by an institutional Church with grand pretensions. Christ as Word, as Wisdom, reflects the developing, dawning understanding of a community, created and invigorated by the risen and ascended Christ, drawing on the Holy Spirit and the traditions they have received, trying to give adequate witness to what they have seen and heard and live by. 

To say that Christ is the Wisdom we perceive in an ordered universe, sweetly arranged, this, surely is the ground of all science; all knowledge. Christ is the guarantee that what we perceive of ourselves and of the universe is reliable, true. He is the guarantee that our human reason is indeed reasonable—because in him the eternal wisdom of God was made known in human terms—blessing and validating our human ways of knowing. Take that, Richard Dawkins!

So, we call on him in the antiphon to lead us into the viam prudentiae—transliterated as ‘way of prudence’, but with a meaning somewhere between ‘proper carefulness’ or ‘determined reasonableness.’ As the wisdom of God is revealed in Christ, so we are to be guided by the same wisdom reflected in us, echoing in us.

The second title that we are given to contemplate is Adonai—Mighty Lord. ‘Ruler of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the Law on Mount Sinai.’ So Christ, as Adonai, is the law-giver, the one by whom, with whom, and in whom society may be sweetly ordered. He fulfils what was revealed to Moses on Sinai with his own double love commandment: Love God, love your neighbour, the only decent ground for any society.

The birth of John the Baptist, our second reading today, heralds that new and decisive revelation of God’s law. But Moses is not cast aside—John the Baptist (Luke is at pains to tell us) emerges from the long priestly tradition of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Tent of Meeting before it—John’s mother Elizabeth is a descendent of Aaron, Moses’s priestly assistant. The line, the promise, is fulfilled, renewed, not abandoned. And we are alerted to this, that this can only be of God, because a child is born to parents beyond child-bearing age; like Abraham and Sarah, centuries earlier. This is the signal that the same Lord, Adonai, is at work in Christ.

Beyond the reading we heard this evening from Luke is the familiar reading of the Annunciation: the angel Gabriel greeting Mary, and her ‘yes; let it be’ to his message. Just as Luke is at pains to tell us that John is descended from Aaron, we are told that Joseph, Mary’s betrothed, is of the House of David. We are to understand that just as John’s birth fulfils the promises through Moses and the Law, so the child born of Mary fulfils the promise to David, that there will never fail to be a king to sit upon his throne—a kingdom that will have no end. Again, this is sealed by an unlikely birth—this time from a virgin—the work of God and Mary alone, with no need for male interference.

So, to the third title, the third antiphon to consider this evening—O root of Jesse—Jesse being the father of King David. To say this of Christ is to reflect on that promise of a King of kings and an everlasting kingdom; in whose presence the kings of the earth will stand silent, and whom all nations will worship.

We are constantly aware of rulers, not necessarily kings, whose rule is far from benign, whether towards certain sections of their own people, or neighbouring lands, or towards the fragile integrity of creation. Calling on Christ as Root of Jesse, sharpens our desire for that righteous rule, reminds us of the promise that he will come, and that the rulers of the earth will have to give account; indeed, that accounting begins now.

Come to set us free and do not delay, ends the antiphon. The scandal of mis-rule is urgent; for those whose rights are disregarded, for those who suffer unjust aggression, for the planet and the climate. Advent is a time to renew that expectancy and longing that might galvanise us into action, yet with an equal call to attentiveness and patience, watching and waiting for what God is doing; where we might see the signs of Christ’s coming within the blizzard of history.

These titles for Christ, in these great antiphons, come to us from the prophets of old; from those who lived before his first coming, that first Christmas. They are offered to us, who await his second coming, to focus our longing, our expectancy, and our patient watchfulness; to help us answer the psalmist’s question; who is it who came, and who is it who calls us know, drawing us into his future: ‘Who is this king of glory?’.

Even so; Amen, come Lord Jesus.