Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent

admin | 1 December 2024

Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, Meek and sitting upon an ass

This Advent Gospel challenges all our assumptions about Advent. It is the story familiar to you from Palm Sunday, the story of Christ’s ‘triumphant’ entry into Jerusalem. Yet it signals the deeper meaning of Advent, not just as the season of penitential adoration and preparation for Christmas, which it certainly is, but even more in terms of the doctrine of Advent as the Revelation that holds all things together in the mind and heart of God.

Jesus comes as King, stepping into the expectations of Zechariah’s joyous prophecy about the coming of a Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ. He comes as King but what a strange kind of kingship! He comes without any of the trappings of military and worldly power. He comes, gentle and meek, sitting upon an ass, and the colt the foal of an ass. He does not come in worldly pomp and glory, but in the gentle humility of Zechariah’s vision and hope.

And yet as Zechariah goes on to say, he comes to “command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea”, the motto of Canada, we might note. But what is this kingship and peace, what is this dominion? It completely overturns all our assumptions about power and might and authority. Yet this Gospel inaugurates Advent. It highlights the more radical meaning of Advent as the constant coming of God to us, the Word of God in Law and Prophecy, in Gospel and Service. He comes as Light and Life, and ultimately, as “the Word made flesh”. It is all about what comes to us in the darkness of our world and day. Advent quite simply is God’s Word and very Person who is always coming to us. We can only enter into the meaning of what we see and hear. Advent recalls us to the truth of our lives as found in God.

This is the great joy of this scene. The multitudes sense that something special is happening even if they are unclear about what it means. Hosannas are sung. Branches are cut down from the trees and spread in the way. A procession, to be sure, but hardly much in the way of something regal and astounding, not much in the way of all that jazz.

Yet “all the city was moved, saying, who is this?” It seems that some of the people of Israel pick up on Zechariah’s imagery but not everyone. Here is the first of the great Advent questions that belong to Advent as Revelation. “The multitude said, This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee”. Bethlehem and Nazareth are all part of the Christmas story, to be sure, which includes references to Jerusalem, but the Jesus who comes as “Thy King” is the King of all Creation. He is God of God and God with us; something which we can only come to know by attending to the pageant of the everlasting Advent of God coming towards us.

It isn’t about outward show and spectacle. His coming signals something serious and profound. The Gospel reading ends with the remarkable scene of Jesus casting out of the temple, “all them that sold and bought in the temple”, “overthrow[ing] the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves”. It is a powerful scene of violence that seems to contrast with Jesus meek and sitting upon an ass. Yet it belongs to the radical meaning of his coming for us, the awakening to the things which really matter in contrast to the ways in which we attempt to domesticate God and reduce him to our private and commercial and/or political interests. It is very much about the necessary cleansing of our hearts.

To forget or deny this betrays the deeper meaning of Advent which opens us out to the grandeur and wonder of God. What is sought for all of us is an inner transformation of heart and mind. The Advent readings provide a wonderful corrective to all of the fears and anxieties and stresses of this time of year. The simple point is that we cannot make Christmas. And, after all, what does Christmas mean in a post-Christian and anti-Christian world, we might ask? Answer: simply Advent. Advent gives us the greater vision of peace, and joy, of hope and glory both anciently in the context of a myriad of competing religions, political turmoil, and in the many different forms of pseudo-religion in our contemporary world. The doctrine of Advent speaks to our hearts and gathers us into the love of God which Paul highlights, the love which is the fulfilling of the law, and, indeed, the perfection of our heart’s desires. God comes to us without which we cannot come to him. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.”

Advent seeks the setting of our hearts aright, freeing us from the overwhelming burdens of our own preoccupations and obsessions by recalling us to who we are in Christ. The doctrine of the Advent recalls us to the whole pageant of Revelation summed up in one phrase: “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” for only so are we “made partakers of the divine nature”.

The Collect draws together images from Paul’s letter to the Romans and from Matthew’s Gospel to indicate the nature of that inner transformation. It means “casting away the works of darkness and putting upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility” and looks ahead to our final consummation that “we may rise to the life immortal.” The judgement is mercy. We are called to God and to our lives as found in him. Paul captures something of the Advent theme of God’s Word coming to us now and always and what that should mean for us inwardly in our thoughts and actions. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand”. It is always the far spent night; the day is always at hand, the day of the Lord. Nothing falls outside the embrace of God. Advent signals our end with God.

Advent teaches us about the light of Christ which overcomes all the forms of darkness, the counter to the despairing nihilisms of our age when we put our trust in the things which cannot satisfy and even destroy. The Advent Hymns and Carols are particularly profound both in word and music about the radical meaning of Advent as God’s ever present Word always coming to us. Just consider.

“Great God, what do I see and hear? The end of all things created” as hymn # 68, puts it in a 16th century tune called, Luther. It certainly takes the theme of spiritual preparation seriously; “Prepare, my soul, to meet him”. Or Milton’s 17th century paraphrase of Psalms 85 and 86 in # 64 “the Lord will come and not be slow” for “Thou in thy everlasting seat remainest God alone”, sung to a lovely 16th century tune by the French Calvinist, Louis Bourgeois. Then there is of course “Hark! A herald voice is sounding; Christ is nigh it seems to say; Cast away the dreams of darkness, O ye children of the day!” (#63), again an echo of the Epistle in words from the 6th century. Not to overlook “Creator of the starry height, thy people’s everlasting light, Jesu, Redeemer of us all, Hear thou thy servants when thy call” (#66), again words from the sixth century sung to a beautiful Sarum plainsong tune from the 7th century. And there is, of course, the great Advent Hymn, the Veni Emmanuel (#62) which encapsulates the themes of what comes from God to us in a wonderful collection of images that pertains to our life in Christ. Everything calls out to us to embrace the radical meaning of Advent, the coming of God’s Word to us in the different registers of Law, of Prophecy, of judgement and mercy, but, above all, of divine love.

The Advent hymns and carols serve as fine Advent meditations on the Advent and I commend them to you. They provide a wonderful commentary on the Words of God coming to us in Revelation, words that awaken us to hope and joy in the ever-deepening awareness of our life in Christ.