Sermon: The Advent Ticket

You will know about Shakespeare's 7 ages of man, the stages of life through which we pass in a single  lifetime. This week I came across "The Four Stages of Christmas". These are, first ‘You believe in Father Christmas' (remember those days?); then ‘You don't believe in Father Christmas'. Then, ‘You are Father Christmas'. Finally, ‘You look like Father Christmas'. I think I am somewhere between stages three and four. Having spent yesterday Christmas shopping on the assumption that I am Father Christmas I probably ended up much closer to stage four than when I started.

I owe this post-Shakespearean insight to Stephen Cottrell, the Bishop of Reading, in his new book for the Advent season Do Nothing Christmas is Coming. It is an Advent calendar with a difference and I won't spoil it for those of you who might want to use it during Advent, but I can illustrate its argument from another book Stephen has published recently on the same theme, Hit the ground kneeling. Think of a crowd of people all going in the same direction, perhaps a train has just arrived on the underground and people are all heading for the exit, with that intense single-mindedness that seems to grip us in the rush hour - and you are caught trying to swim against the tide. It's hard enough just to stand still, you can't fight your way through, and the easiest thing would be just to turn round and be carried along with them. That's where Stephen Cottrell wants us to be, swimming against the tide for Advent. Hit the ground kneeling.

This last week we have been involved in interviews for a senior post and one of the considerations, as always, was ‘there's so much going on will this person be able to hit the ground running?' I don't think any of the candidates dared to say ‘I'm going to hit the ground kneeling'. We asked them ‘out of the many challenges facing us what would you make a priority in your first few weeks?' Good question, but nobody said ‘nothing'. ‘My priority will be to do nothing.' One very good answer was ‘I'm going to listen'. I'm going to try to find out and understand about things and people and plans that are already happening. And the temptation for the interviewer is to rush on and say, ‘yes, yes, yes, but when you finished listening, what are going to do?' And it's a brave candidate who says, ‘I don't know - it depends what I hear!' So, in this Advent season, how prepared are we to be open, attentive, even expectant towards what we might hear, of situations, of people and above all of God?

This is the territory Stephen is exploring in both books. Hit the ground kneeling gives you the rather playful, subversive message in the chapter titles: Jump off the bandwagon, let the grass grow under your feet, count your chickens before they are hatched, reinvent the wheel! Swim against the tide, he is saying, but not just to make life difficult for yourself. Swim against the tide because you don't want to go where everyone else is going. Remember where it is you're supposed to be heading and don't get swept along to the wrong place.

So where are we going and how does the Advent ticket help us to get there? Whilst the crowds are heading off towards the Christmas sales, our train hasn't come in yet. We've got to struggle out of the crowd and find a quiet space somewhere, out of the rush if we can, and wait. So what does it say on the Advent ticket? ‘The Lord is coming soon'. That is not at all the same as saying ‘Christmas is coming'. ((Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, let's get back to shopping, now we pay less VAT.)) What does the coming of the Lord mean? To answer that we have to start with the Old Testament. The OT reading set for today from Isaiah 64 gives us a way in, sets our eyes looking in the right place, points towards the destination. "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence - to make your name known to your adversaries." You and I are followers of God, but wouldn't we love him to come and sort everything out, to put an end to everything that is wrong, unjust, hurtful, diseased, broken, wicked? As a believer in God have you not longed for him to do that? But the writer goes on, "we sinned, we transgressed, we have all become like one who is unclean, ....for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity". ‘God putting things right' includes putting us right, and so when we long for his coming we also fear his judgement, fear the refining fire, because we know ourselves to be part of the problem. Yet, the writer pleads with the potter not to destroy his own handiwork, "do not be exceeding angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are your people!" The prophet is almost wheedling, certainly pleading, persuading. And so, the Advent message teeters on the edge between judgement and mercy, fear and longing, apprehension and anticipation.

In fact, these two registers are represented in Advent by the man and the woman whose calling runs through the season, John the Baptist and Mary, the mother of Jesus. John is the herald, calling for us to prepare, to repent, to make straight the way for the King. Austerity, energy and crisis are the marks of John: he calls us to lots of self-examination and reform. Mary, surprised into holiness, is the one who nourishes within herself the gracious gift of the child who is to be the saviour of the world. There is no work to be done here except the gift of space, the gift of self, the willing, cooperative reception of the generosity and love of God, our saviour.  It is as if the Advent ticket has these two figures etched upon it. As you sit in your little corner of the station, waiting, whilst the crowds flood past you, look hard at these two figures, for they tell us what we are to expect of the coming of the Lord, and they teach us how to be prepared. We need to straighten out our lives, and John calls us into the wilderness spaces to do that. It is harder to do in the warp and weft of normality. Advent needs wilderness spaces. But, with Mary, we also need, in the ordinary domestic spaces of our lives, willingness to ponder how love grows within us, as sheer gift and not the result of our efforts, and to feed that life and set it free. Nourish the blessing and set it free in the community.

When do we need to turn aside and struggle out of the crowds flocking towards Christmas and settle down in a little space with our Advent ticket to wait for the coming of the Lord? Today! No time to waste. "Beware, keep alert!" says Jesus in today's gospel (Mark 13), "for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight, or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. What I say to you I say to all, Keep awake!" After two thousand years it is easy to lose that sense of urgency, when we look around us at the world. But, as last week's gospel of the sheep and the goats makes plain, he comes to each of us individually in the choices we make. In that perspective every day has many urgent moments when we need to be alert or we miss him or choose wrongly. If you want some unusual assistance in keeping this focus you can go (today!) to a website the Church of England has produced specially for this year. Just google ‘Why we are waiting', and you will come to a cosy fireside where the Archbishop reflects in a lucid and profound manner on Advent, and where you can click on a daily calendar, a quiz and various other helps.

Can you remember as a child, hoping to get all sorts of presents for Christmas, being told to ‘wait and see'? I well remember that tantalising phrase. It was, of course, a credit card advert that first promised to take the waiting out of wanting, and the Archbishop asks us to reflect on the merits of waiting. This year the credit crunch and subsequent recession may affect many of us as we play at being Father Christmas. It seems that spending is suddenly becoming a national, patriotic duty. Is there anything to learn about our approach to credit, about our experience of wanting and of waiting - or not being prepared to wait? Some of this seems to be played out above our heads by the principalities and powers of the financial world, but we each make our choices and in each choice we make the Lord comes close. So many of our young people have only ever known a world in which wanting is king and waiting can be minimised; and even the waiting that has to be done can be filled with distractions. And it is not only our young people who are so conditioned. If we reflect on nothing else this Advent, in the context of financial turmoil and anxiety, we could reflect on the part played in our lives by waiting and wanting.

This Advent can we hit the ground kneeling, can we get out of the crowd and sit down with our advent ticket, and practice waiting, in the company of John and Mary, alert, ready and waiting for the Lord who comes - at a time and in a manner we sometimes do not expect?