Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent
Link to the audio file for the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for the First Sunday in Advent
“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light”
“The real desire of our soul is for what is greater than herself,” the pagan philosopher, Plotinus tells us. Augustine, in a similar vein, begins his Confessions with the observation that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee”. Confession is really about conversion, our turning to God, our turning back to the one from whom we have turned away.
Advent is our awakening to the Word and truth of God at once ever present and yet always coming to us. It is the awakening to what is always prior and always greater than us. Such an awakening is the movement of God coming to us and our coming to God. This twofold movement is really one. We can only turn to God because of God’s turning to us. Such is the awakening to what is greater than ourselves.
Advent awakens us to hope even in the face of darkness and despair, of hope against hope, we might say. “Because I do not hope to turn again,” begins T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday, the day which marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. It explores from the side of the negative the necessity of our being turned illustrated from the side of the positive in the gradual psalm for today. “Turn us, O God our Saviour,/ and let thine anger cease from us” and with greater intensity, “wilt thou not turn again and quicken us,/ that thy people may rejoice?” The psalm complements both the Epistle and the Gospel. God’s turning to us means both a casting off and a casting out, casting off “the works of darkness” and casting out of “all them that sold and bought in the temple,” a misuse of the things of God. The casting off and casting out reveal what is prior and positive, the nature of the Good that is God which ignorance and sin deny.
God’s Word is light and freedom. This is shown in the Epistle and the Gospel. The Epistle recalls us to the pageant of God’s Word as Law which enlightens and frees just as Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem marks the beginning of the pageant of human redemption in his Passion. There is an awakening to the desire of our souls in the question “Who is this?” at the same time as there is the awakening to the awareness of our misuse of the things of God. We are being called to account but this is our freedom and real dignity.
