Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off
the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light”
There is something quite wonderful about Advent. It signals the motions of God’s Word towards us in ways that are quite stirring and comforting, and, at the same time, quite challenging and really rather frightening. The image of the far spent night stops us in our tracks and bids us reflect. In the darkness of nature’s year we are bidden to consider the darknesses that are within and not just without.
The themes of light and life all dance and swirl around the idea of the divine Word, the Word of God which convicts and convinces us, the Word which confronts and comforts in equal measure. The season and doctrine of Advent, for it is more than a season, it is equally and profoundly a teaching, are almost eclipsed in the shallow sentimentalities of all of the hub-bub about Christmas. The meaning of Advent gets lost and with it the meaning of Christmas, too. For none of the festivities of Christmas make any sense at all apart from the doctrine of Advent. And nowhere, perhaps, are the central themes of Advent more compellingly before us than on The First Sunday in Advent.
“Give us grace,” the Collect implores Almighty God, “that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life.” Christianity makes no sense and Christmas becomes a lot of nonsense without this awareness, the awareness of the darkness and of “the light which shineth in darkness and the darkness overcame it not.” What kind of darkness? The darkness of ‘the far spent night’ is the darkness of sin and folly, the darkness of sadness and despair, the darkness which is entirely and primarily within each of us, the darkness to which we so easily succumb. We forget how profound this naming of the darkness within us really is. We forget that to be able to name the darkness is because of the light of the divine Word. “Thy word is a light and a lantern,” as the psalmist says.
