Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the First Sunday of Advent 2024

Advent begins. This is how Cardinal Newman explains it

Year passes year, silently; Christ’s coming is ever nearer than it was. O that as he comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer heaven.

Christ nearer earth, you and me nearer heaven. So, what a time this is. A time of hope, a season for watching. The texts are full of energy: ‘I look from afar and lo, I see the power of God coming’. A time to wake up, ‘Wachet auf’—sleepers, awake. Advent strains at the leash; it is eager for God’s future. 

Advent is a time to be fully alive.

‘Of course’ it is’ I say, but then I add a thoroughly Anglican ‘perhaps’ and indeed a cautious ‘probably’. Because there is a challenge in Advent. There was a hint of difficulty in the first lesson:

In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David… Jeremiah 33: 15

What precisely is a ‘righteous branch’ and where, you might wonder do we find one? 

There was a bit more of a challenge in the second reading from I Thessalonians:

that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus… 1 Thessalonians 3: 13

‘Blameless before our God’, that is quite an ask. It is significantly more than needing to be a little bit kinder. I fully intend to be less grumpy first thing in the morning, but blameless is a bit much.

It was though, our last reading that took us right up through the gears,

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… distress among nations… People will faint from fear and foreboding…  Luke 21: 25–26

Fainting, fear and foreboding? That is downright alarming. Which is why we need to talk about Advent.

Advent is absolutely the moment to be watchful and waking. It really is the time to be fully alive. This is the best of seasons, but it is not an easy season to describe or talk about. We have a difficulty with language now. This is the season when the language gets rich, serious and startling. The bible has a voice all its own. It says remarkable things. Margaret Drabble describes an encounter with the bible like this:

It was grand, extreme and horrid. It spoke damnation and darkness, it sounded cymbals and trumpets, it flared its nostrils and it sniffed another air.

That is the language we heard this morning. Rich, serious and startling.

Let’s look at some of the words. Jeremiah’s Righteous Branch is a prophecy. Jeremiah is writing in the midst of war and he longing for a better future. He sees the coming Kingdom of God.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made... Jeremiah 33: 14

He sees joy, praise and glory where there was ruin and devastation. He sees the Temple restored and he sees a true King ruling in justice. And that is the ‘Righteous branch’—the branch of David’s family tree. The real King. A nation restored. 

In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians something rather different is going on. Like Jeremiah, Paul is watching for the coming Kingdom. Paul though, knows that if we are going to stand before Christ, step into that light, then we will know ourselves as we really are and we will not be proud of what we have said and done. Paul is thinking about judgement, not just about a better future, but about the whole business of putting things right. Judgement names what is wrong and redresses the balance. If we are going to face judgement, we need to make some preparation puts things in order. We need, in fact, to be blameless to withstand that day.

A Righteous Branch and blameless. And then the gospel reading; the signs in the sun, the moon, and stars… the fainting, fear and foreboding. We have had the language of prophecy and we have had the language of moral judgement. Now we are somewhere else altogether. This really is the biblical writing that flares its nostrils and breathes a different air. This is a glimpse of things we can only imagine not see, it is drama, poetry, myth, and vision all at once. All these writers are describing a future they believe in. Jeremiah thinks about restoration and promise. Paul thinks about the judgement that puts things right and Luke here takes a deep breath and wonders just how on earth and how in heaven you get from here to there. Surely everything will be shaken to the foundations? Surely the lights have to go out before they can go on again? Luke stretches his eyes wide and takes words where they do not normally go. It is a particular kind of biblical writing. It is a style of its own—it called ‘eschatology’ if you ever find yourself taking tea with the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. Eschatology opens a window into heaven and then reels back at the view.

It is tough stuff I am talking about. There are big books, there are conferences. Right at the heart of this though there are though two quite simple ideas to get hold of. When you talk about God’s future, do you really know what you expect? That is the first idea—‘What do you expect?’ And the second idea is simply what words will you use to describe it?

If you go the Tate you can see three pictures of the coming of the Kingdom painted by John Martin. They were painted in the 1840s and 1850s. Martin painted big pictures, they use to go on tour, they were blockbuster exhibitions and block buster paintings—high drama Joshua Commanding the Sun to stands Still on Gibeon, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Fall of Babylon. Martin’s language was technicolor, tragic, terrifying. The paintings of the are full of contrast—on the one hand, fire and fury and on the other hand the gentle fields of paradise. There is a really alarming avenging angel riding on a storm. There is a glimpse of heaven and it seems Martin thought that, when he got there, he would find a lot of painters waiting for him. There is light and dark, there is chaos and calm. Both / and. Martin thought that when you look ahead there has to be a calamity before the good can begin. He was interested in the crisis. 

You can go down that road, people do. There are many, many descriptions of the shaking of the nations. That is language that is in the bible. Crisis and calamity are there, but so is judgement, so is restoration, so is joy, mirth and peace. Biblical writers think about what God might do, about how we prepare, about a new heaven and new earth, but also about this world made perfect, and indeed about ‘a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning’ (Isaiah 61: 3). The expectation is vivid and the language does not stay still.

In the days ahead we are going to be bombarded with images of the future. We are going to see glimpses of Christmas again and again. The startling thing is that they are so similar. Tables laden impossibly with food, presents, families, friends, snow, robins, reindeer. Over and over again one presiding image. Is that wrong. No. Is it the full story? Certainly not. Our hopes are being boxed in. Our hopes are tamed and domesticated. Our language is impoverished. Advent is not supposed to draw the curtains and turn its back on the world.

The Advent hope is abundant and tumultuous; it is wild, never tame; it is extravagant, not confined; and it does not stay still. The worst and most godless thing we can do in Advent is to act and speak as if we think somehow, ‘we have got this’, we comprehend, we can manage it. Christian faith summons us to feel the wind blow and see the stars. 

Pick up Mark’s gospel and notice how it begins—with a voice, with words in the wilderness,

the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, Mark 1: 3

That’s the Advent hope the glorious and incredible prospect of a great smooth highway through the gorges and summits of the Judean hills, the way to God’s future that no words will ever pin down.

Advent is not the season to be specific about God’s Kingdom, not the moment to settle into an armchair. This is the time to realise that we are summoned into a glory we cannot describe and a future that is not ours to define. We do not arrive prepared, like the boy scout I once was. This is actually the moment to know that we can never be ready for the coming Christ—unless he makes us so. Bonhoeffer once suggested,

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes—and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent

This is the season that beggars belief and brings us to our knees. This is the season when we look for redemption, rescue, release. This season is not ours but God’s. When the child was born the angels sang, but even the Wise Men had nothing to say.