Sermon for Advent Sunday – 29th November 2020: : Isaiah 64, 1-9; Mark 13, 24-37.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

I have to begin with an apology – an apology to all those who were not brought up in the UK with the children’s TV programme called Blue Peter. Please allow for a few moments of nostalgia. Every year at this time of year the Blue Peter team would make their own version of an Advent Crown. John Nokes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton are among the names I recall from my childhood. This is the 1960s.

Two wire coat hangers, silver tinsel, four candles (no I didn’t say fork handles!) and four Christmas baubles, transformed into their Advent wreath. This activity always forewarned us that Christmas was approaching, and we should be getting ready.

Advent candles on the television, Advent candles in church. The season of Advent is now here. A new church year begins today and a new set of Sunday readings on our three year cycle of readings begins today. As we might say, our countdown to Christmas begins today. Advent appears to be a time of beginnings.

Strangely enough in the old days, for example when I was much younger, the preachers for these four Sundays of Advent used to preach not about four themes of beginnings, but four themes on endings. The themes were what we call eschatological – the Four Last Things – Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. I suppose these themes would indeed sharpen the expectations of the believers. It is a long way from the coat hangers and tinsel of the Blue Peter Advent Crown.

In more recent liturgical developments other themes have become dominant for Advent consideration – all of them equally focused in some way on expectation, that valuable Advent quality of waiting, watching, anticipating; all in relation to the birth of the Messiah, the Saviour.

Advent is deep, and rich, and profound in the way that this whole holy season holds together almost the whole content of God’s holy narrative of Creation and Salvation in Christ. How so?

We have become accustomed in these days to be familiar with ‘travel corridors’ or ‘bridges’ – safe routes for flying in our Covid-gripped world.

I would like to suggest that the holy season of Advent is like a theological travel corridor, a season of bridge building. Advent directs us to departure points and arrival points.

Advent is the corridor between the beginnings of the world, Creation, and at the end of its four weeks, the birth of the new Creation; it is the corridor between the prophetic voices of the Old Testament, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Joel, Nahum, Obadiah etc and the voice of the one crying in the wilderness ‘make straight the highway’ namely John the Baptist. All the prophets were fore-runners of the Messiah in one form or another, but John is THE Forerunner, the Prodromos, as he challenges us to get a straight corridor ready for the arrival of the Christ, the silk road to salvation

The Advent themes connect us with Holy week and with Easter. In the western church we think of the arrival of the bridegroom at the wedding, an allegory for the arrival of the ‘Word made flesh’, yet in the Eastern church that Bridegroom theme occurs when Christ enters the holy city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

One of the Sundays in Advent is set aside for us to consider the Mother of God, Blessed Mary, and the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel. Advent prepares us for the crib and redirects us almost immediately to the cross. As the Blessed Mary’s womb empties in a new childbirth, so the empty tomb pours forth a new creation, the risen Christ.

What a tapestry of themes – and these are but a few – that are woven into the rich brocade, this dazzling damask of Advent. All of God’s divine work is expressed in this season. So it is a season for us to be expectant, just as Blessed Mary was, to be full of Christian proclamation, as John the Baptist was, to be watchful as were the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem, and to be ready; to be ready for a renewal of our faith; to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, and to be born again.

Advent tells us that this is the time, and now is the moment. Advent is not a time to slow down and keep time under control but is as one author says, ‘not an appeal to waste time with meaningless inactivity, but a call to engage one’s vocation, one’s relationships, one’s hope, one’s life in God, in an active presence, a holy waiting….It is not a matter of waiting for things to happen, but a matter of what happens to us – to you and to me.’ (Waiting for the Coming – J.Neil Alexander, The Pastoral Press 1993)

Advent is about the ‘expectant now’, the ‘anticipated present’, or what theology might call a realized eschatology.

 

All words so far, yes, but learn from the fig tree; at last a picture!

The fig stands bare; suddenly without any warning the buds appear from nowhere; before you realize it those massive green leaves adorn the branches; and from its branches little bulbous growths begin to form which develop into wonderful ripe figs, full of seeds and potential new growth within each one. You can follow the annual cycle of the fig, and you can tell the season, you know the time of year. Why can we not understand God’s glorious activity among us and within us. Why are we so dull to read God’s season?

From our back balcony we look out on to the backs of rather unattractive blocks of apartments, and we look directly into a dentist’s surgery, so we see people in fear, and we sometimes hear the drill. However in the garden down below us there are two or three wonderful and massive fig trees. We watch the seasonal changes. We can tell the season. Sadly all the figs are way beyond reach even from the balcony – I don’t know what that is telling me, but maybe it is for another sermon at another time.

From the fig learn about the Advent of our Lord, know that he is near; he is at the very gates; read the signs; be awake, be ready.

Two wire coat hangers, some silver tinsel, four candles, and four Christmas baubles, and there you have your Blue Peter Advent wreath.

‘Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free,

From our fears and sins release, Let us find our rest in thee.’ (Hymnal AMR 3).