Sunday 28 November 2021

People Look East: An Advent Sermon

 Preached at Croydon Minster on Advent Sunday, 28 November 2021. Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3.9-end; Luke 21.25-36


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Today, Advent Sunday, begins a new church year.

The cycle of the mystery of our redemption unfolds before us

again.

This beginning puts us in touch

with the creation of the world

and our place within it

as those

named, known and loved

by the creator and maker of all things.

 For Advent Christians,

time is not an endless loop;

what the atheist philosopher Nietzsche called the “eternal return of the same.”

 At the other extreme

the Bible does not envisage a naïve, relentless, linear progression

where everything turns out just fine

with the passing of time and ticking of the clock.

For Advent Christians time is a process of sanctification,

an upward spiral if you like.

Eternal mysteries are re-presented and we grow and flourish.

Life, like good music, takes us on such a journey, even repeating themes, the leitmotif,

are different in a new context

and our spirits are raised.

Our lives move to a definitive purpose;

that’s what we call the Christian Hope

 

Advent takes us to the very end of things –

death, judgement, heaven and hell –

and to the renewed creation

such as is described in the Revelation to John:

a new heaven and a new earth,

where all gather around in worship of the Lamb of God,

at the heart of the heavenly city.

 

This time in between, in which we find ourselves, which is but the fraction of a blink in God’s eye,

is what we are left to navigate.

It is a precious moment in which we live.

It is the only moment we have.

 

So this is where Jesus’ description of the days that will come

before the coming of the Son of Man

are pretty bewildering and disorientating.

 

Signs in the heavens.

Distress.

Confusion.

Fainting from fear and foreboding.

It could almost be a description of our own days.

 

It’s funny though, because that is what every age has concluded.

Every age has seen itself, in some way, as being in the End Times –

be it through plague,

adverse weather,

a significant date in the calendar like the Millennium,

or the apparently dissolute youth.

 

So how do we read today’s gospel?

 

We read it knowing

that Advent is the anticipation of the hope that is coming.

That is Good News;

that is Gospel, the Evangelion.

 

The dramatic description of the sun and the moon and stars,

of raging waters

and then the sprouting of the leaves of the trees,

takes us back to the description in Genesis of the Creation,

when God,

with the Word eternally present,

ordered the heavenly bodies,

stilled the waters of chaos

and caused plants and trees to sprout on the earth.

 

The birth pangs ‘in the Beginning…’ echo

the birth pangs of the New Creation.

 

This is not about time

as we know it.

It is a call to be

alert, vigilant, expectant, hopeful.

 

This is a call to centre ourselves,

orientate ourselves,

anchor ourselves

in Christ, the Word of God who endures through trial and tribulation.

Orientating ourselves in Christ happens

when we are alert at all times,

when we pray for strength not to get entangled

in all these things that are taking place,

when we set our sights beyond ourselves. 

In the Liturgy our focus is not one another, or even the ‘community’ we have together,

it is always beyond ourselves.

 The way we share the Peace emphasises that.

Positioning the Sign of Peace

at the heart of the communion

tells us that ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’

is not generated from within a community, however good spirited,

but is a gift from Christ, who is our peace

a gift from beyond ourselves which we receive and share.

 

               Likewise, Christian  since early times celebrated the liturgy facing East,

the direction of the rising sun – s-u-n –

to see beyond ourselves

to see the coming Son -s-o-n – of Man, Jesus Christ

As an ancient Advent cry goes up: ‘People Look East!’

 

At the eye of the hurricane is a peaceful, still centre.

For Advent People, the still centre is Christ;

Christ whom we receive in the Eucharist.

 

               Fix your eyes beyond yourselves,

beyond any priest

to the Body of Christ broken for you.

                              ‘People Look East.’

 

The ancient Carthusian monastic order has the Latin motto:

‘Stat crux dum volvitur orbis’,

meaning: ‘The Cross is steady while the world turns.’

 

At the East end of the church above the High Altar; there is Christ on the Cross

for us to behold.

 

This Advent,

in a spinning, disorientating world, where time both flies and drags,

let us fix our eyes afresh on Christ.

 

Let us centre ourselves on Christ to discern

the ‘still small voice’ of the tranquillity of the Divine Presence.

 

People Look East!


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