Sermon: Compline in Advent

Isaiah 63:1517, 64:1-4

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal through him who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Isaiah 63:1517, 64:1-4

The ground is white and crisp and even as I tramp around the College in cassock and wellington boots, grey and slushy and uneven as I walk along the Bailey. The dazzle of low wintry sun stretches the shadows and winter’s snowy beauty is overlaid on left-over autumn. Advent Sunday is colder than in recent memory. Eleven people are in the Quire at 8.00 but by the time we distribute Communion we have a veritable crowd of 16, including two visitors from Africa having their first sight of real snow. To say nothing of the angels with whom we have joined in worship.

The tranquillity of our devotion is shattered by the boldness and action of Collect, “Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light”. At Matins we sing, “We pray thee Lord arise, and come in thy great might; revive our longing eyes, which languish for thy sight.” But even that’s a tame prayer compared with last year when we heard Isaiah on a rampage with God, “O that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence, as when fire kindles brushwood.”  And Jesus is hardly comforting when we hear him speak of the cosmic chaos that precedes the coming of the Son of Man, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

Creation is in turmoil. God is rending. We cast away. It’s action stations. Nothing is delicate, but decisive and determined, even violent. Is this really what we want in the first week of Advent? Instead of the exquisite snow scene outside we find ourselves saying we want the devastation of a wildfire and anticipate the destruction of a tsunami. Is this a wise prayer? Do we honestly mean it? What a way to begin a new church year! I’m distracted momentarily as images from the television of the heaps of rubble still littering Haiti flash into my mind, along with photographs I saw in Warsaw of that city flattened after the 1943 uprising. Those images from this past year merge with memories of the night skies early in the Gulf War, lit up and shuddering.

At the Advent Processions the Advent Prose piles on the discomfort: “Thy holy cities are a wilderness; Jerusalem a desolation: our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised thee.” Maybe earthquakes, human malice and dynamite have already done their worst? How would we feel if Durham Cathedral is a pile of rubble? Would we continue to pray to God?

But then there’s another perspective from Isaiah about the heavens which he wants God to rend in power, “Drop down, ye heavens, from above and let the skies pour down righteousness.” Quaking and fire and righteousness all rolled together because God is coming to us. “Thy kingdom come!” we sing as we join, standing rather than on bended knee, the prayer of passing ages, the past generations whose legacy is this cathedral which is now keeping its nine hundred and something-th Advent. We sign up to our part in the faithful waiting and action of our forebears who, like us, have yearned in this place of worship, “O come! O come! Emmanuel!” at the same time as getting on with life through good times and bad, celebration and civic grandeur, war and famine, not losing hope but singing with unquenchable hope, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

We sing, “O come, Desire of nations, show / Thy kingly reign on earth below; / Thou Corner-stone uniting all, / restore the ruin of our fall”.  I think of the student production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” that I saw a couple of years ago the day before Advent Sunday, and then singing in church next day about the Desire of Nations coming, and being struck by the juxtaposition. Advent as a streetcar named desire is an intriguing thought, heading as it does to a very different destination than that which entangled Blanche, Stanley and Stella. What do we desire, this Advent Sunday? this first week of Advent? Are we ready for God’s answer to our prayers? Are we serious about wanting the heavens to be torn open and for God to come down?

A baby cries somewhere in the nave during the Advent Procession. Suddenly I am jolted back to being in the south transept of Salisbury Cathedral a few years ago as a full church waits in the silent dark for the pure voice of a chorister to begin the Advent Processions. Instead, the silence is pierced by the wail of a baby and behind me a woman mutters huffily to her neighbour, “They shouldn’t bring babies to a service like this.” But what could be more appropriate? What is the incarnation about, what are we waiting for, if not God coming to us a baby crying in the night? I remember how as teenagers we sang, round about the time that the homelessness charity Shelter was founded, the new folk carol, “A cry in the night and a child is born, a child in the manger, there isn’t any room, a cry in the night and God has brought our homelessness to an end.”

A cry in the night: the cry of birth, the weeping that surrounds death. Life begun and ended interweave. The Dean of Southwark has died after a short illness; he was due to retire soon, death has come too early in our eyes. On Advent Sunday after Matins I sit in the Nave with a couple whose elderly father died on Friday; he had dementia and they have cared for him for years. He will be carried into the Cathedral, through the cloisters, for the last time next week. I walk through those cloisters, meeting baby William for the first time. He is going to church tucked up in his pram so all I can see is his white hat and a little bit of face. At home the answering machine is bleeping bringing news of another death. I phone back and her daughter tells me that she laid her mother out yesterday, something she wanted to do.

All these people, newly born, newly died, have been cared for lovingly. So many are not, but are born unwanted or die alone. As we wait in Advent hope and care for others, in the mystery of God we discover we are caring for Jesus because Jesus said that what we do for others we do for him. Our liturgical time, Advent, overlaps with chronological time, 2^nd December 2010, when there is unimaginable suffering in God’s world. Have we missed the signs of his coming among us? Was that Jesus’ cry in the night that we didn’t hear? Advent is a time when we are asked to be quiet enough to hear the babies who still cry in the night of this mortal life in which God’s Son, Jesus Christ, came to us in great humility.

But the Collect is not finished with us because there are two moves in it: Christ came in great humility, Christ will come in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead. And there are two moves for us: if we cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light now we will rise to the life immortal. So, as we hear Jesus speak about the unexpectedness of the hour of his coming and hear his command to keep awake, be alert, be on our guard because it is time for faithful action, we do so in the crazily-secure Advent hope that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead, that our messed-up world is in the hands of a merciful redeemer and judge.

Why else does the church prepare for Christmas in such an austere way? Outside the streets are already full of Christmas while we remove the flowers from church, pare down the liturgy, listen as a solo voice leads us in blessing the Lord, the God of Israel, who has visited and redeemed his people, and focus on the second coming of our Lord. Perverse? No. Advent is when we are invited to yearn for God to come among us, to board the streetcar named desire, like watchmen to let our gaze rest on the horizon and to be attentive to the signs of God’s movement there, to clear the air to help us see further. We can see much further than the world around us: in faith we can see our Lord coming to us in great humility and in glorious majesty as judge.

So we pray,

Disturbing God, your advent shakes

the old foundations of the earth;

O holy One whose hour has come,

the world is waiting for your birth. Amen.