Sermon by Fr James Heard, United Benefice of Holland Park, Advent Sunday 27 November 2016
Sermon by Fr James Heard, United Benefice of Holland Park, Advent Sunday 27 November 2016
A very happy new year… it being Advent Sunday we are, of
course, entering the church’s new year today. It's a wonderful season with the
creative interplay between darkness and light. The deep darkness and barrenness
of the winter season is placed, theologically, alongside the light of Christ,
who we patiently wait and prepare ourselves for at Christmas. As St Paul puts
it in our epistle reading, we are told to ‘…lay aside the works of darkness and
put on the armour of light’.
Another remarkable feature of this season of Advent is
the way in which conspicuous consumption and the plight of those living in
poverty are closely juxtaposed. For the next four weeks, it's Gucci perfume and
the need to support homeless charities. It’s beach holidays in the Maldives and
the responding to the humanitarian crises unfolding in the devastated ancient
cities of Aleppo and Mosel. Stark choices in our times.
Amidst the consumption of this season, we are encouraged
to make space for God. This doesn’t mean that our enjoyment of material things
is wrong in itself. However, it’s to take place within certain limits. This
really is a challenge to our culture of consumerism which knows no limit. We
have no more Sabbaths, nor any ‘holy days’, anymore. Its Black Friday instead.
It seems we have exchanged the God of rest, celebration, and singing for the
dull relentless thud of a 24-7-365 society. And we call this freedom.
Our Christian faith tells us that true freedom
appreciates the value of limits. Which is why we are encouraged to make time
this Advent to prepare our hearts and minds, to perhaps read an Advent book, or
to simply stop and be still and quiet for a few minutes each day. Monday evening’s
meditation group meet every week at 6pm for 40 minutes of silent meditation.
You are all welcome!
Then there is the call for justice and responding to need
with compassion. How do we respond to the plight of the poor? Again, our
consumer mentality blinds us both to the true needs of the poor and to our own
ability to meet them. Theresa May said soon after she was appointed Prime
Minister that she would heal the nation’s divisions and build bridges to help
the least privileged. She promised that her government would deliver Brexit and
refocus its priorities on people whose needs were greatest. Fine words which
resonate with centuries of Christian teaching that emphasises our
responsibility to uplift the poor. And this is principally a matter of justice
rather than of charity. We can make a start this Advent, even while we enjoy to
the full a limited consumption of good things. Our Christmas collection will be
going to the homeless charity Upper Room.
So, the light shining in the darkness, consumption within
limits, a commitment to justice and caring for the vulnerable, and making space
in our lives to pause and get ready for Christmas.
The other, traditional, themes of Advent are rather
shocking – the four last things – death, judgement, heaven and hell. These
things aren’t the stuff of many sermons anymore (and it’s understandable why).
It’s all rather different from thinking about cards, turkeys, puddings,
shopping and whatever else. And the trouble with the four last things is
that they don’t seem to be about now. They're about tomorrow. They’re about
what’s going to happen in the future. Yet at the same time it seems that
in Advent we’re always being told, ‘Now is the time’. Now is the moment
where we have to live. Now is where our concentration and attention
belongs - not death, judgement, heaven and hell – which we might think of as
something we won’t have to worry about for a while.
What might it means to have our eyes opened to the
present moment in Advent. How might we move towards Christmas so that we’re not
worrying about the future but living in this moment and finding the last
things here; to find death, judgement, heaven and hell here in our hearts
today. Rowan Williams suggests we look at these four elements with a different
perspective.
First of all is death, something that many of us
are afraid of. I love that quote by Woody Allen: I’m not afraid of dying;
I just don’t want to be there when it happens. (He has such a brilliant way of
putting things.) In Advent we learn that death is what you have to go through
in order for truth to live in you, the death of all those things that we use to
keep ourselves safe. And the way we react to that not terribly good news, the
way we react to that with patience, with protest, with joy, with terror, that’s
judgement. That’s what decides the kind of person we’re going to be.
And if by some miracle of love, trust, and grace you're
able to face death and step into it and beyond it for the sake of the truth,
that’s heaven. And if you’re stuck in a constant unwillingness to
face your death and the truth that lies beyond it, that’s hell.
The four last things? Well yes, but four last things that are happening right
now, right here, in you and in me, pretty much every moment.
Advent tells us, here’s the worst possible news: In order
to be truthful and alive you’re going to have to die. It involves the
process of dying to our false selves, dying to that which alienates us from
God, each other and our deepest self.
This can be rather scary. When I was young, I had loads
of American comic-strip stories about the Bible – most of them had the most
dreadful exclusivist theology. One of the stories was about Adam and Eve, and
they were depicted with a speech bubble coming from above their heads: Eve
saying to Adam, ‘It’s God, Adam. Let’s hide!’
It's a simple enough sentiment and it probably
corresponds how we feel — ‘It’s God. Let's hide’. Because in Advent we are
faced with the sobering language of God’s light exposing who we really
are. And if we're not at least a little bit alarmed by that then we're kidding
ourselves.
What do we want to hide from God? Well, like Adam and Eve
we want to hide our failure; we want to hide the fact that we're not capable of
responding to God as God wants us to, and as God has made us capable
of responding. We want to hide our sin. Perhaps we want to hide because we're
not faithful; we're often compromised. We want to hide our weakness and our
need - despite deluding ourselves that we’re self-sufficient and that we're
strong.
The point of letting go of all our longings to control
and contain the world, of saying ‘yes’ to the death of all our fantasies, is so
that something new and healing will be uncovered. Something in our lives will
flower that we can never have imagined.
The counter-intuitive message of Advent is that when
you're afraid, walk towards what you're afraid of, not away from it.
Open up. Face your fear. Let God see you're afraid. Bring your weakness, your
disappointment, your grief, your brokenness, into his light. I’m convinced that
it is by creating a space for silence and stillness, of turning to God, that
enables us to be set us free and allows us to walk out into our world with the
expectation of meeting love in each moment. That’s the message of today and of
the weeks ahead as we prepare for Christmas.
Reference:
Rowan Williams, sermon at St Martin in the Fields, 27 November 2011