by CCW | 2 December 2012 13:41
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.
What is he saying? Simply what will be said again and again and then most profoundly in the Word made flesh, in Christ’s holy birth. The Word of God is the divine Word which contrasts so completely and utterly with our words. What makes Advent so precious is the strong objectivity of the divine Word coming to us, the Word that is eternal and everlasting. That Word stands in stark contrast to the words of deceit and betrayal, the words of self-righteousness and vanity, the fickle and changing words of our hearts and our speech. Such words are words of darkness. That is what needs to be cast away in order to embrace the freeing, enlightening and life-giving Word of God, the Word which breaks into the darkness of our world and day, into the darkness of our anxious and worried hearts and recalls us to who we are in the sight of God.
For this is the great and strange wonder of the Advent of Christ. It is altogether about revelation, about what comes to us from God. It is altogether about the communication of God’s love for us even in the darkness of our self-willed ways. We have forgotten, it seems to me, the special wonder of the Advent. We have forgotten the special wonder of the divine desire to redeem our wayward humanity.
And that is why the lessons of the Advent are such a curious mixture of the comforting and the challenging, of excitement and of judgment. The darkness has to be named. But what strikes me most about the Advent is the way the divine Word comes to us. It comes with a kind of refreshing clarity and force, at once gentle and yet strong and uncompromising in its truth and power. We are confronted not merely with the spectacle of things that are simply outside us and beyond our control; we are reminded instead of who we are in the sight of God. And we are reminded of the paths of darkness which are ours.
The idea of the far spent night has its perfect complement in the Gospel story of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. “Who is this?” the multitude cry. Cranmer in the sixteenth century kept this ancient reading from Matthew’s Gospel but had the extraordinary insight to include the passage which immediately follows, namely, “the cleansing of the Temple.” It is exactly what is needed at all times and in all places. There is the wonder of God’s coming, the coming of the Christ to Jerusalem. But, then, there is the spectacle of the darkness of our humanity, all of us all caught up in our avaricious and lustful ways, in the pursuit of our own projects without heed and without regard for anything else, without regard for God and for the purpose of the holy places dedicated to God.
And so we have the wonderful paradox of Advent; there is at once joy and judgment. Christ casts out “all them that sold and bought in the temple.” He “overthrew the tables of the money-changers.” It is a deliberately disturbing and violent scene, one of the rare scenes of the wrath of Christ. There is no buy out, only a casting out of what is radically incompatible with the will of God. And what is that? What it always is, namely, trying to take God captive to our wills and ways.
That is what his anger is really all about. We are the thieves of all of the good things God has given us and we pervert the holy places to serve our interests and plans. How to market the Church? it is asked by the market-state mandarins, the wizards of re-branding and consultancy, by bishops and priests, too, it must be said. It has led to no end of schemes and plans to rebrand and reimage the Gospel, all at the expense of the Gospel and at the expense, too, of the churches in the land. We live in the ruins of such revolutionary impulses within and without the Church.
The Advent Word speaks ever so clearly to our darkness, the darkness of our complacency and folly. It recalls us simply to the one thing necessary. And what is that? Our willingness to let God’s Word teach and enlighten us. How? Through the wonderful and profound pageant of God’s Word towards us which is simply and wonderfully, the season of Advent. It speaks to the deeper desires of our hearts and minds. It speaks to the possibilities of the redemption of desire, to the possibilities of a change of heart and outlook in each of us, the possibilities of being found in the light of God’s Word coming to us. Words of thunder and words of quiet comfort, but always God’s Word which challenges us about ourselves.
The readings for today would remind us our darkness not so as to beat up on ourselves but to recall us to the light of redeeming grace. It comes on the wings of the Word in the Advent of Christ. It challenges us to enter into what God seeks for us. Our prayer is about nothing less than our wanting what God wants for us: grace “to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now”! Now, and always. The light of grace comes on the wings of the Word.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church, Windsor
Advent 1, 2012
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2012/12/02/sermon-for-the-first-sunday-in-advent-3/
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