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!

'Prepare the Way of the Lord' A Homily for Advent

 A sermon preached at Croydon Minster at the Service of Words and Music for Advent on the Second Sunday of Advent. Gospel Luke 1.5-25

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‘Prepare the way of the Lord. ‘

 

That is the title of this service of words and music for this great season of Advent.

 

It is also the opening message of St Mark’s gospel when the evangelist has announced ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ (Mark 1.1).

 

Having made that wonderful statement, Mark goes on to quote Isaiah to say that a messenger is being sent ‘who will prepare your way’ (1.2) and that a voice will cry out in the wilderness ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ (1.3).

 

Advent is a time of preparation, of clearing out distractions, being ready, alert so that the Lord’s way may be prepared.

 

It calls for you and me to have a posture of preparation. So what’s your Advent posture of preparation?

 

Is it the preparation of the athlete: on your marks, get set…?

 

Is it the preparation of the artist: with the canvas tight, with paint on the brush ready to make the first strokes?

 

Is it the posture of the musician, the violinist with bow poised above the strings, or singer having taken a breath, ready for the conductor’s hands to summons the music from you?

 

That moment before the starting gun, before the paint is smeared on the canvas, before the conductor’s baton moves – that is Advent, a moment held over these four weeks, and it’s a moment of expectation of what is to come, or rather Who is to come.

 

We stand, as the poet Malcolm Guite reminds us, between two comings: the coming of Christ as incarnate, Word made flesh, born in Bethlehem and the coming of Christ in glory at the consummation of all things.

 

Preparation, expectation, attention, waiting, yearning is our response to God’s initiative to come amongst us.

 

This church of all churches, dedicated as we are to St John the Baptist, should be imbued with Advent character: expectant, attentive, prepared and proclaiming.

 

John is an intricate and complex character, born of the priestly line, and therefore by heredity a priest, and yet also standing clearly in the tradition of the prophets.

 

The priest offers sacrifice to God for the people; the prophet represents the voice and vision of God back to the people.

 

Priesthood and prophecy are not at odds: Isaiah’s own call came in the Temple as the presence of God, in incense, filled the house. Likewise, Jeremiah was a prophet born from a priestly line and yet called to be a prophet too.

 

‘Prepare the way of the Lord’ is a prophet’s cry; receiving and making present the Lord is the priestly task.

 

It’s in the Temple that Zechariah encounters Gabriel, the archangel, like the prophets before him, telling him of the birth of the one who will prepare the way of the Lord out in the wilderness. Zechariah, husband of Elizabeth, is John the Baptist’s father. This news struck Zechariah dumb!

 

After John’s birth Zechariah rejoiced and burst into song.

 

Usually in the evening at Evensong we hear the Song of Mary and of Simeon, the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Tonight, this service will close with a canticle usually associated with the morning, the Benedictus, the Song of Zechariah, which speaks of preparation and what is to come:

 

And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,

To give his people knowledge of salvation

by the forgiveness of all their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,

and to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 2.7-10)

 

May we be prepared to meet the one who comes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comfort, forgiveness and redemption is at hand! An evensong sermon

First preached at Evensong on the Second Sunday of Advent at Croydon Minster. Readings: Isaiah 40.1-11; Luke 1.1-25.

Like many people, I have always found the opening of the Aria ‘Comfort ye, my people’ from Messiah by Handel, sends tingles down my spine: carried on the tenor voice, Isaiah’s words float out to the Holy City, Jerusalem.

The message: comfort, forgiveness and redemption is at hand!

How our world needs to hear that message today, not least Jerusalem herself. We are living in what has been described as an ‘age of anger’, an ‘age of upheaval’ and of disruption.

How our world yearns to hear that ‘[our] warfare is accomplished, that [our]

Iniquity is pardoned’.

And indeed for those reading Isaiah’s words in the light of the revelation of Christ we are bold to claim that those words are of global, and even universal application, as well as personal.

In St Luke’s gospel Isaiah’s words are directly applied to John the Baptist, our patron saint here at this Minster Church. John’s is ‘the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’ (Luke 3.4).

But at the moment I am getting ahead of myself. For our reading from St Luke’s gospel has not yet taken us out into the wilderness, but rather it places us back in Jerusalem where, intriguingly, Luke’s gospel will end.

Isaiah’s message was, in the first place, to Jerusalem, because Jerusalem, the Holy City, is the place of encounter with God, focused in the Temple.

The Temple was both a physical and symbolic place of encounter with the very presence of God.

The Temple was a microcosm of creation and at its heart was the holy of holies, the place that only the priests would enter.

This was true in Isaiah’s day and into the time of Jesus Christ.

And so it was that Zechariah, an hereditary priest married to Elizabeth also of a priestly line, a descendent of Aaron the Priest, was on duty at the Temple.

Luke records it in a way that it reads as if this was all a bit by chance: Zechariah was at the Temple ready to serve, if need be, and was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary.

Placing on his priestly robes, Zechariah entered into the heart of the Temple, which was at the heart of Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the world. And there a transformation begins.

As Zechariah pours incense on to the coals of the brazier the angel of the Lord appears.

This is Gabriel; Gabriel, who will appear to the Blessed Virgin Mary to disclose God’s purposes for her as the Godbearer. But now Gabriel discloses to Zechariah that his son, born of Elizabeth, will be the Forerunner.

It is from the Temple in Jerusalem that the Forerunner, the one to prepare the way will come: as Gabriel declares, John will turn the hearts of people ‘to make a people prepared for the Lord’.

The centripetal pull of the Temple, drawing all into the focal point of Israel’s encounter with God is now being propelled outwards in a centrifugal action that embraces the whole world.

John is to prepare the people for the coming of God’s Messiah.

John is like the farmer who tills the soil to make it receptive and ready so that the seeds can grow: John prepares us so that the seed of God’s word will grow within us.

After John’s birth Zechariah’s tongue is unloosed and he speaks the words of the Benedictus, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has come to his people and set them free’.

This is the new message of comfort to all God’s creatures, that now we may all be adopted by grace as God’s children.

After preparing us John then declares of Christ, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’

And this takes us back to the imagery of the Temple. The sacrificial Lamb is Christ the Lord.

John is the fulfilment of the prophets and of a priestly line because Jesus Christ becomes both temple and priest, the very presence of God in human flesh: as the hymn puts it ‘Thou on earth, both priest and victim in the Eucharistic feast’.

In the Temple the presence of God was believed to be on the Mercy Seat, flanked by the cherubim. We will come to see the presence of God laid in a manger, flanked by ox and ass.

In this child of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ, is all the fullness of God: our life, our hope, our salvation.

In Christ is a message of Good News to the ends of the earth, and lodging in our hearts.

Fear not: comfort, forgiveness and redemption is at hand!

'A posture of expectation' an Advent Sunday sermon

A sermon preached at Croydon Minster at the Eucharist on Advent Sunday, 2nd December.The readings were Jeremiah 33.14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13 and Luke 21.25-36.

‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21.28)

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Most families have their own quirky phrases. One of the phrases in my family is addressed to someone who is slumping in their chair or not standing up straight: ‘posture police’.

In other words stand up straight, get your posture right!

The season of Advent is a season of watching and expectant waiting. If you are watching and waiting expectantly, you are on the lookout, so your posture has to be alert and upright.  

Advent is a season when we are called to adopt a posture of expectation. We need this posture throughout the year, of course, so that we are alert to Christ’s presence in the world, in word and sacrament day by day: watching and expectant waiting is for life; not just for Advent!

Our patron saint, John the Baptist, didn’t use the phrase ‘posture police’, but figuratively speaking, that’s what he was saying: ‘gird up your loins’; ‘be watchful’; ‘posture police’.

John the Baptist adopted the posture of expectation because he was watching and waiting expectantly for the coming of Christ day by day. That’s why he was ready to see, recognise and point out Jesus Christ in his midst.

There was John, out in the wilderness, baptising countless people yet he sees Jesus. John the Evangelist records it in a quite prosaic way, ‘the next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Behold! Look! Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1.29)

That is the posture of expectation. A life attuned to seeing Christ in our midst and proclaiming him to all.

That is why John has such a high profile in Advent.

Another aspect of our tradition that raises its profile in Advent, and actually should throughout the year, is the reading of the Old Testament. Most obviously at this time of year we can draw on the promise given to our ancestors in faith, the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Moses and Deborah and Sarah - and the prophets – most notably Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah.

But the Old Testament is not there simply to be appropriated when it suits us. Reading the Old Testament throughout the year is to read a collection of books that witness to the posture of expectation and God’s faithfulness, because read through Easter eyes they point us to Christ: incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended: Adam’s ‘no’ to God in the garden of Eden points to Christ’s ‘yes’ to God in Gethsemane; Noah’s deliverance from the flood prefigures baptism; Abraham’s abortive sacrifice of Isaac points us to the Lamb of God, the sacrifice God provides for his people; Hannah’s yearning and rejoicing in her child inspires Mary’s Magnificat, her song of praise to God; Jacob’s twelve sons become God’s people, Israel, the forerunners of the twelve apostles and God’s people the Church: the people yearn, expectantly for the coming Messiah of God.

Expectation and yearning, ‘O Come, O come Emmanuel’: come ‘God with us’.

Posture is important. It is said that over half of human communication is non-verbal, in other words, body language. A key component of body language is posture, and you can read it all too well.

Try these. [Arms folded] this posture is defensive; [clenched fist] this one aggressive; [yawning, looking around] this one switched off, [eyes open hands outstretched] this one engaged.

Posture tells us what’s going on inside and helps us become something we are not yet.

I am not asleep! And I can’t go to sleep standing where I am. Bring me a duvet and pillows, let me lie down and I have adopted a posture for sleep, I will become a sleeper. Likewise prayer is more likely to bubble up in me if I adopt a prayerful posture, attending to my hands, considering whether I kneel or stand, breathing deeply and meditatively.

So the Advent posture is one of watching and expectant waiting: a posture of expectation.

When a church adopts a posture of expectation things happen. We don’t make them happen, God does, but our posture is ready for God to act, and, like John the Baptist, we see Christ, we proclaim Christ and others are attracted to Christ.

This Advent let’s shape our habits around expectation.

In Christian liturgy body language and posture are used and matter – over half our way of communication, remember. We stand, kneel and sit; we stretch out our hands to receive.

In many ways it is sad that the most expansive gestures and posture seen in churches are those of the priest: [open arms] ‘the Lord be with you’ [orans] ‘let us pray’[extended hands] ‘send your Holy Spirit’.

So this Advent in our worship let us be alert, upright, ready to see the Christ who comes to us as his word is opened up, as bread is broken, as he promises. In our prayer let us adopt a posture of expectation: not praying by clasping our sinuses, but by kneeling in our adoration; not by praying as if we are blinding ourselves, but joining our hands in supplication or stretching them out to receive; not by slumping into our pew but setting ourselves expectantly; not by sitting back for a performance of words and music, but expectantly engaging with the Lord who comes to us.

This is what the scriptures call us to: in Jeremiah’s words, ‘the days are surely coming says the LORD, when I fulfil the promise I made to Israel and the house of Judah’. This shapes us, as St Paul in the first letter to the Thessalonians says, that we may ‘abound more and more in love’.

The Lord is near. Now is the time to restore what is lacking in our faith. Now it is time to wake up, sit up and take notice. As Jesus says in the gospel: ‘Be alert at all times…’ (Luke 21.36)

The days are surely coming, so let us be watchful, expectantly waiting for the Lord who comes: ‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’.

© Andrew Bishop, 2018

God remembers his mercy: Mary sings about it

Preached at the Guildford Cathedral Eucharist, 
Sunday 20^th December 2015, Fourth Sunday of Advent. (Micah 5.2-5a; Luke 1.39-55)

“God’s mercy is on those who fear him through all generations”

+ In nomine Patris…

A mother, whose son is condemned to die for being a thief, kneels on the ground pleading with the Emperor, ‘Show my son mercy’. Coldly, he replies, ‘This boy is a habitual thief, and for what he has done, he deserves justice, and that justice is death’. The mother begs, ‘But I don’t ask for justice, your highness, I seek mercy’. ‘He deserves no mercy’ replies the Emperor. To which the mother says, ‘It would not be mercy if he deserved it’.

And so, the story goes, the Emperor was touched by the mother’s grief and compassion and released the boy.

This story draws on two particular themes that come from this morning’s gospel reading: that of the mother, and that of mercy.

Mary’s song, the Magnificat, touches many themes, of course. The fundamental one is her glorification of God and his works, in her life and in the world.

Mary magnifies for us the mercy of God: she says, ‘God’s mercy is on those who fear him throughout all generations”, “God, remembering his mercy, has come to the aid of his servant Israel”.

Mercy is at the heart of God’s relationship with Mary’s own people, Israel.

Narrating Israel’s history, Psalm 136 has this as a repeating refrain, ‘for his mercy endureth for ever’.

‘God, remembering his mercy, has come to the aid of his people Israel’, Mary sings.

Israel strays time and again from God. Justice would demand retribution and punishment for that: but God shows mercy and patiently calls Israel back to himself.

But how much mercy? What does mercy look like in the face of terror and violence, in bullying and ostracising? Bluntly, is there any possibility of mercy for Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Abu Bakr al-Bagdahi or Jihadi John?

Perhaps justice demands eternal death and damnation for them. Or is that just retribution?

Pope Francis, who is passionate about mercy, has said, ‘Mercy is not opposed to justice but rather expresses God’s way of reaching out to the sinner, offering him a new chance to look at himself, convert and believe.’ (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, §21).

This mercy is available to all people in our generation as well as in the past, otherwise it is not mercy.

This is what, in five nights, time we proclaim and celebrate afresh. Mary gives birth to divine mercy in human form. So now we see the divine mercy of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The ultimate act of mercy is the coming of the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness (Philippians 2.7). Christ born as one of us: that is mercy. ‘And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2.8). Christ dies for us and our salvation: that is mercy.

Jesus taught and lived mercy. ‘Go away and learn what this means’, he says, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ (Matthew 9.13). He became a sacrifice for sin to show us mercy. This is how we can sing, ‘O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us’.

Jesus illustrates mercy in the parables.

The parable of the Good Samaritan hinges on mercy. The priests who passed by were being fastidious about ritual cleanliness and bypassed the bloodied man so as not to defile themselves ready to offer the temple sacrifice; because of that they were devoid of mercy.

That’s not what is seen in the Samaritan. Jesus asks the lawyer at the end of the parable, ‘“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy”. Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10.36, 37).

Another ‘mercy parable’ is the one known as ‘The Prodigal Son’. But focus on the son detracts from the merciful character of the father, which is, without doubt, telling us of the nature of God. It is the parable of the merciful Father.

In that parable justice demanded that the father reject and punish his wayward, disrespectful and morally bankrupt son, yet mercy means that he says, ‘let us celebrate for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ (Luke 15.24).

When mercy is shown to us it is life giving and life affirming.

It is this life that Mary delights in in the Magnifcat.

She sings about God’s mercy which frees us - and his people throughout the ages - to awe, reverence, adoration, honour, worship, confidence, thankfulness and love.

Put that way, when we sing ‘Kyrie eleison’, ‘Lord, have mercy’ it is not an abject plea, but a joyful response to all that God does for us, just as Mary sings about in the Magnificat. When we pray, ‘Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer’ it’s not to persuade God to be merciful but it’s because God is merciful that we can pray it.

So mercy has two faces.

It is the gaze of God upon you and me, mediated in the face of Jesus Christ, the image of the Father. As St Benedict says in his Rule, ‘Finally, never lose hope in God’s mercy’ (RB4).

The challenge of the Magnificat for you and for me is to gaze mercifully upon other people and upon yourself; to be the face of mercy to the people with whom we share our lives, even our enemies and those we find most difficult or detest.

In response to the impending birth of her Son, the Saviour of the World, Mary sings of God’s mercy in her life and in God’s world. Inspired by her example, and the merciful face of her Son, may we hear afresh these words of his, as we prepare for Christmas and live every day of our lives:

‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you’ (Mark 5.19).