Advent time and time for God

Sermon for St Mary’s Sanderstead ,

Advent Sunday, 29th November 2009

Advent time and time for God

Readings:

Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thess.3:9-end Luke 21:25-36

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I have recently been racing [my son] Dominic through the Harry Potter series. He is enjoying the significant advantage of taking our current book, the fairly enormous Goblet of Fire, to school through the week! Never mind. I managed to finish the previous, third book recently, the Prisoner of Azkaban. This is the one which climaxes with Harry and Hermione using her special, too hard-working ‘Time-turner’ to save Buckbeak the hippogriff and Sirius Black. But you must not be seen, says Professor Dumbledore – that way lies madness.

I want to talk about Advent time, and time for God.

Because though it will hopefully not lead to madness, there’s some potentially confusing time-turning that happens in Advent, too. Advent is the time when we start to get ready to meet God as he comes among us in human form at Christmas. We’re preparing to meet God come among us.  But he has already come among us!  His becoming human and being born as a man has already happened.  So how can we be preparing to meet him? Read more

Advent Sunday & Christingle

The word, Advent means ‘coming’.  Advent is the season of hope and expectation.  Advent is the start of the church’s New Year and the season before Christmas.  But there is more to Advent than initially meets the eye; it’s about more than hoping for the babe of Bethlehem on December the 25th.  Advent is a season with three faces, each looking in a different direction: one to the past - another looking around at the present - and a third, into the future.  Of course, the most obvious hope in Advent is the historical one.  In Advent, we hope for the birth of Jesus, as a remembrance of a historic event.  That’s the coming of God that we see on Christmas cards and in crib scenes, the arrival that we hear about in the gospel stories.

Yet, we constantly need to remind ourselves that the church needs to pause in the season of Advent so that our Christmas celebrations will be all the more meaningful when they finally arrive.  But like the children we want to open our presents early; we don’t like to wait.  Now, I think this is partially because Jesus is already born and Christmas has become a birthday and not a due date.  I think it’s also because we forget the other two aspects of Advent, the expectation of both a present and a future coming of Jesus.

You see, Advent is also a time for us to enter into that space or time or state of mind when people yearned with all of their hearts for the promises of God to come true.  Hoped beyond hope for the righteous branch to spring up; prayed and then had even stopped praying for God to come and save his people.  This is not just a promise that was fulfilled
once and for all at Bethlehem, as a single historical event, but is a promise which is fulfilled in our own lives.  It is fulfilled over and over again, not just at Christmas, but at any time, and in any place, when we have known the in breaking or the indwelling of the Holy One.  It is a promise whose fulfilment lifts us from despair to hope and from darkness to light.  So, Advent is not just about the past, it’s about the ways in which God comes to us in the present,
and can and does come to us at any moment and at any time.  It’s at the core of the name, Immanuel meaning, God with us.

What is it that you want God to do in your spiritual life this year?  If nothing comes immediately to mind,
then why not use Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians (1Thess 3 : 9 – 11) as your prayer for the New Church Year: Lord, deepen our faith, and increase our love.  We don’t ask the Lord to deepen our faith because it will make us better at Bible quizzes; we ask him to deepen our faith because it strengthens our hold on heaven.  In fact, that was the whole point of Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians.  Paul prayed, May (the Lord) strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

The implication of Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians is that they will use their time to prepare for their final meeting with God.  In Paul’s  eyes there is no time for complacency, every minute is vital.  So, once again, during Advent you get to throw out the mistakes of your old life and resolve to begin again.  You get to hope a fresh.  You get to long for God’s reign to come about in your life.  You get to yearn for God to be at work amongst us.  Amen

Let Jesus be Lord of his Church! (Revelation 1:4b-5a)

“Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
Revelation 1:4b-5a

There is a well-know story of a man who was at a reception and recognised an old lady he thought he knew. He smiled and made his way over to her, although he was embarrassed to say he couldn’t quite place her. “Hello,” he said, “How nice to see you again.” “Likewise.” came the reply from the sprightly lady. “How are you.” “Very well thank you. And how are you?” “I’m very well too, thankyou.” Typical cocktail party small talk, so far. “How are you family?” he asked. “Quite well thank you.” “And your daughter? What’s she doing these days?” the man ventured. The smiley faced old lady looked the man straight in the eye. “Oh, she’s still Queen.”

Brothers and sisters, on this day of the Feast of Jesus Christ the King, we are invited to remember that Jesus Christ is still King, still the Lord. Read more

Safeguarding: Political Correctness Gone Mad or Christian Responsibility?

Jenny is in a bit of a state.

A couple of weeks ago she came home one day to find her husband unexpectedly home from work. He broke the news to her that he was having an affair with a colleague and that they wanted to move in together. He packed a bag and left. Jenny is, frankly all over the place. She tries to hold it together, she puts on a brave face, but at church last week it all came flooding out. People were really kind, as they usually are in these circumstances. But she’s very vulnerable and fragile and the church needs to be careful and thoughtful in how it cares for her.

Jenny has two kids: Adam and Hattie. They’re 11 and 6 and the familiarity of their lives has just come crashing down around them. They have only seen their dad once in the past fortnight and everyone was very upset. At church, in the Junior Church, Hattie has been especially withdrawn and Adam hit one of the other children last Sunday. It was all very out of character. The leaders of Junior Church have spoken to the Vicar about how to handle the situation. She took advice from the Diocesan Safeguarding Officer, not only about how to care for Hattie and Adam, but also how to handle the situation when Adam gets angry and lashes out at other kids. Read more