Waking up to the One who comes: An Advent Sunday sermon

 

‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’

 

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What a desperate plea we hear in the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’.

 

It echoes our desperate plea now, that God would come and make things right: make things right on the international stage; make things right with the pandemic; make things right in human society; make things right in healing the creation.

 

That is an Advent plea!

 

Isaiah’s plea is followed by his reflection on the earth-shaking impact of the word and works of God. For God comes to his creation, shaping and moulding his people to his ways as a potter handles and works the clay, turning them not on a capricious wheel of fortune, but turning them back to him.

 

That is a Advent response!

 

The season of Advent echoes the desire that the Lord will come - the ancient Aramaic cry of the Church is, ‘Maranatha’ meaning, ‘Amen. Come Lord Jesus’ – and a commitment on our part to turn our hearts to the Lord again.

 

In Advent we call to the Lord to come again, as surely as he came in the flesh in his first coming: ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’.

 

This year we cannot come together on Advent Sunday to sing that and other great Advent hymns. And what will our celebration of Christmas be like?

 

It is a dark time of the year and we seek the light; it is a dark time for many people – losing jobs, dropping incomes, being ill, feeling lonely, separated from family - and they seek the light.

 

What does our faith tell us about these times? The words given to us by Isaiah speak powerfully, ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’.

 

Has God abandoned us to Covid, to Brexit, to populism, to authoritarianism, to anxiety and loneliness?

 

The story of scripture tells us we are not abandoned, not abandoned to any of these things.

 

As the psalm says, ‘The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge’

 

The One Who Comes is with us and as that psalm begins, ‘God is our refuge and our strength; a very present help in times of trouble’ (Psalm 46.7)

 

The gospel tells us that in days of confusion, doubt, fear and darkness we are to stay awake and alert to the ways of the Most High, for it is in those times that we will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’.

 

Now is the season – Advent – the season to wake up to see the one who comes, to see the heavens torn open, so ‘let every heart prepare a throne and every voice a song’.

 

'Where is the love?' A sermon for the feast of Christ the King

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Here’s a big question: where does power and authority lie?

 

When you look at the world, our country, our local community, our families, the Church: where does power and authority lie?

 

The question is a really ‘live’ one when we see the struggle for presidential power and authority over the White House and, recently, in No.10 Downing Street. It plays out at Croydon Council or in the tensions of life with others in families and churches.

 

The theologian Walter Wink speaks of ‘unmasking the powers’. In other words, in situations where things just don’t feel right, where is power, where is authority? If we can identify that then we can begin to understand a situation better.

 

That’s where the scriptures come in to help us identify where the power and authority lies.

 

Over the last few days the pattern of readings at Morning Prayer has taken us through the book of Daniel and the Revelation to John. In dramatic, sometimes outrageous, incomprehensible and alien imagery the question of where power and authority lies is tackled.

 

These strange and fantastical books are known as ‘apocalyptic’. That’s not to be confused with Hollywood action films or doom and disaster, but ‘apocalyptic’ means ‘unveiling’ or ‘unmasking’.

 

What they seek to reveal is that earthly powers and authorities are not where sovereignty, ultimate power, ultimate authority lies. Power and authority, they declare, begin and end with God.

 

Today we celebrate the Kingship of Christ; to celebrate that is to declare that the sovereignty of God is made visible in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

Yet his ‘kingship is not of this world’. His crown is one of thorns, his throne is a manger and a cross. His kingdom is revealed in service of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoner.

 

In Revelation the power and authority is revealed to be in the Lamb on the throne. The lamb is weak, frail and vulnerable in the eyes of the world, and this is a sacrificial lamb, one whose life will only make sense in death.

 

John the Baptist said of Christ, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God’. Here is enduring power, ultimate authority, revealed in love.

 

Love, the King, does not manipulate, oppress, distort, jostle, but feeds the hungry, gives water to the thirsty, clothes the naked, comforts the sick, visits the prisoner: this is the love of the Lamb of God who gives away all earthly power and authority so that he can assume heavenly, cosmic power and authority.

 

In Christ the world is not interpreted through earthly powers and authority – that belongs to him – rather it is measured by the power and authority of love.

 

Love reframes the question: in how we relate globally, nationally, locally, in families and in church. Life in Christ is shaped by love, not vying power and authority.

 

So with Christ as Sovereign King we look at the world through a different lens: the question now is not ‘where does power and authority lie in the world, the nation, the home, the church’, but in all those places where we find ourselves we ask ‘where do find and unveil the love’?