Wachet Auf - awake!

 Advent Sunday 2022: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 3:11-end and Matthew 24:36-44

In a poem which we will hear in full this evening, entitled ‘Advent Calendar’, Rowan Williams explores this holy season of expectation, in earthy terms.

He will come like last leaf’s fall - with flayed trees and shrouds of leaves; like frost tracing its icy beauty; like dark - with the bursting red December sun before the night sky envelops us. 

Today marks the beginning of  a holy season: one which is startling, not sentimental.  He will come, will come, / will come like crying in the night writes Rowan in the final stanza.

He will come like child yes; he comes like blood, like breaking as Mary labours to give birth. 

Image my own

This child comes, like every new born, disrupting rhythms and routines; this child breaks us open too, bringing the promise of new life to this death-bound world, marked with winds and mist and the star-snowed fields of sky.

In the cantata we’ll hear tonight, Bach draws us into a midnight hour: where maidens wait with lamps lit; where voices from watchtowers call us to awake from sleep and arise to meet the one who will come, will come, will come. 

He will come like a bridegroom; like one who has tenderly sought after his beloved. He will come like one bringing graceful strength and gentle judgement; like one inviting us to share in joy and gladness at a feast. 

The music stretches our imaginations with an emotional pull and a spiritual longing: oh to open our hearts and be alert to embrace the wonder of God; a God who calls us beloved. 

May lamps burn bright to embrace the one who comes: be alert, be prepared; wake from sleep, the Lord comes and will not delay.

In Christ, there is hope for more: not a confidence in the glittering prizes and illusions of this world; the lesser hopes destined to disappoint. This is a hope in victory over death, in loving and merciful judgement, in  new and abundant life. 

It is the kind of hope which gives us courage in the face of present struggles and worries.  He will come, will come, will come; saying beloved, I am here.

Yet our Gospel reading speaks not of labour pains or the cries of childbirth; nor does it speak of lamps, bridegrooms and wedding feasts. 

Instead, we are given a disturbing image of a household being broken into; of the distribution of a stealthy intruder, damage and loss. It challenges our peace and security. 

In part this is the scandal of Christ’s coming - like leaf fall, frost or darkness. He will come in a way that is unexpected. He comes like a child - born to wake us from sleep, to bring life out of death. 

If Bach takes up the imagery of well-trimmed lamps and the foresight to provide extra oil; he also wakes us up - calling us into a season which we do not embrace lightly or selfishly; but with vigilance and faithfulness. 

We are to keep awake; to notice what is going on in our hearts, communities and world. We are to be prepared, responsive, ready. We are to be rested yet alert; trusting in God.

So perhaps the shock of today’s gospel is a challenge to us in a couple of ways.

Are we if not literally asleep, then sleepwalking through life. Are we caught up in busyness or the mundane that we miss the urgency of the moment - moments to console or rejoice, support or love. Wachet auf - sleepers awake - pay attention to what matters.

Jesus doesn’t come in the way we expect - like a child, like a bridegroom and even with stealth. Perhaps we might take that as an invitation to let go of our assumptions and embrace Jesus with joy; knowing that there is no place, no circumstance that is too insignificant, ordinary, complex for God’s love to dwell there.

As we open our hearts in that way - letting go of the pressure to have every detail worked out - we make space for a God who calls us beloved. Sometimes, we have to let go of persistent fears, even the fear of death itself; and the heavy burdens, the many distractions of life or entrenched attitudes about ourselves or others. Those things which get in the way the beauty of God’s desire for us; which stop us loving our neighbours as ourselves. 

If the imagery of being robbed is a startling and disturbing one, perhaps in this way we can set it alongside the new life promised and how we make that present in our interactions now. 

For Paul, living in God’s daylight meant laying aside - being robbed of - what he calls the works of darkness: from quarrelling to drunkenness, debauchery to jealousy. In doing so we begin to make space for God’s ways of peace. We are called to awaken from the rest and refreshment of sleep to be active in offering hospitality and consolation. 

He will come, will come, will come: like leaf’s fall, frost and darkness; he will come like a child, bridegroom and beloved. 

He comes wanting us to be prepared for - and to prepare the way for - a transformed world: today we come to God’s banquet and joyful feast where in bread and wine we are called to light and joy, consolation and love.

Here, and at every Eucharist,  we are taught God’s ways; ways that we might walk in. Ultimately God will come as arbiter and judge over human hearts and between the nations. We pray now that the Spirit, our advocate and guide, will help us begin that work of turning swords into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks. Laying aside all that does us harm.

Wachet Auf!

Awake!

Be vigilant and faithful!

Be prepared - with lamps brightly lit!

He will come - drawing us into a holy season. 

A season which is startling, not sentimental.

He will come with a birth that leads us through life and death to new life.

Live lightly and intensely, with purpose and love, before we let go of this life; trusting in a greater hope.

This child comes, like every new born, disrupting rhythms and routines; this child breaks us open too, bringing the promise of new life to this death-bound world, marked with winds and mist and the star-snowed fields of sky.

(C) Julie Gittoes 2022

Do you want to close the door or open it?’

A Sermon from Advent Sunday 2021. I found myself drawn back to Bonhoeffer on Advent - words from his prison cell. The readings were: Jeremiah 33:14-16, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-end and Luke 21:25-36

For 21 days, a man went on hunger strike for his imprisoned wife.

This week, 27 people died after their boat sank in the Channel.

In Greece, 28 Afghan female MPs fight on from a parliament in exile.

Storm Arwen has brought 100 mile an hour winds and torrential rain. 

Rising sea levels in the Gambia have left 30 hectares of land too salty to grow rice.

On the earth there is distress: confusion, fear and foreboding. 

Do event the powers of heaven shake?

The church year begins here: in the dark hours before dawn and, in the northern hemisphere at least, in the season of shorter days.

We begin here: not with fireworks and parties of a new year; nor even with the familiar image of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. 

We begin with distress, fear, confusion and foreboding: we begin with the world as it is now. We notice and name the fragility and the determination; the forces beyond our control; the fears and the hopes. 

Now, it might seem that things fall apart; and yet, there will be justice, safety, righteousness and abounding love. Hearts will be strengthened and not weighted down. 

Link to Bonhoeffer image here

The twentieth-century theologian, pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned because of his criticism of and active opposition to the Nazi regime. In 1943, he wrote to his fiancee, Maria, of the dark hours of their lives. He wrote: ‘we shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand’. 

From that place of separation and isolation, he found words of hope - reflecting on how we can and should prepare for and celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us. For there, as he says to Maria, we find that ‘God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succour in abandonment’.

It is in the season of Advent, that Bonhoeffer holds on to love - to goodness and light - even in the midst of signs of distress. He wrote this to Eberhard, one of his closest friends:  ‘Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent. One waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other--things that are really of no consequence--the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.’

In Advent, our senses are in a way sharpened as we wait for Christ's coming in the here and now. yet, as prophet Jeremiah hints, we cannot bring about the completion of God’s promises on our own terms - as an act of willpower or in accordance with our own agenda and timing. 

Jeremiah calls us back to trust in the Lord’s promise: both in the midst of the desolation of his own age, when restoration seemed a long way off, but also in the face of the distress, fear and foreboding of our world. 

Christ has come and will come to execute justice, the righteous branch who will bring us health and salvation. As Bonhoeffer wrote: Christ ‘is coming to rescue us from the prisons of our existence, from anxiety, from guilt, and from loneliness’. 

Today’s readings sound an alarm - they call us to attention - so that we can both see the world and our lives as they are, but also knowing that Christ has set us free. It is the words of Jesus’ prophetic wake up call that our hearts are strengthened not weighed down; that our hearts are turned outwards rather than turned inwards. This freedom writes Bonhoeffer sets us free from ‘thinking only of ourselves… it means to be for the other: the person for others. Only God’s truth can enable me to see the other as they really are’. 

In the distress of the nations, the raging storms and people fainting from fear, even when the heavens are shaken, Jesus calls us to be present here and now: to embrace reality and know the nearness of God with us. It isn’t always easy.

When our hearts being weighed down with worry; when we numb our reactions with alcohol, consumption or escapist fantasies, we are sucked into a cycle of despair - the loss of hope. As human beings, we will always find something to fill the gap: to find meaning, purpose and worth outside of ourselves; to find a flicker of satisfaction or happiness.

Advent offers a different path. It is one picked up in the letter to Thessalonians. They were a Christian community aware of the distress of the earth, who were encouraged to live in hope not fear.

It’s a letter which echoes Jesus’ invitation to be alert and attentive; we are to look and see. 

We are invited to fix our eyes on the coming dawn, even when it is dark; to look out for new leaves, even in winter. Only when we are alert will we see the coming of God’s kingdom and play our part in it as we respond to the needs of others.

Then will our hearts be strengthened. The Thessalonians were learning to rise to the challenge of this way of life too. For them hope flowed from relationship with God and others. They brought joy to others; they were a source of gratitude. They were held in prayer - and Paul and others longer to be with them face to face.

Thankfulness, delight in the other and the pulse of prayer turn our hearts to hope. Prayer for protection and strength, for wisdom and imagination, for courage and guidance; and above all love. 

Love that increases and abounds: love for God, for the one standing at our door; love for ourselves, in our frailty and dignity; love for others, in their different gifts and needs.

This Advent, may we embrace that longing: a longing as we lift up our hearts in prayer and worship, that our hearts might also be strengthened and opened to others. 

In this season, we begin in darkness and strain our eyes towards the light. We long for the manger, for our arms to cradle the life and love of God in a speechless babe. For now we wait - we wait with longing and hope, with obedience and expectation. 

Bonhoeffer went on to say that not only was Advent ‘a season of waiting, but our whole life is an advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.’

Such waiting is an active way of life: not only full of longing but also a time to notice what is going on. Look says Jesus - where are there sprouting leaves, where is dawn breaking?

This blend of longing and noticing shapes our imaginations - as our hearts open towards new possibilities.  Who might need company and support because they can no longer leave their house unaided? Who might need mentoring and encouragement so that they might flourish in school?

The God we believe in comes in unexpected ways: eternity was enclosed in the life-giving darkness of a young woman’s womb so that we might know the light of  God’s very self in flesh of our flesh.

When the earth is in distress, may we be people of hope; when we are gripped by fear, may our hearts be strengthened. With gratitude and joy, may we look towards the light and life which is born amongst us to save us.

We must do all this more intensely as storms rage and heavens shake: we wait in hope because the God who was in the manger will be with us still. As Bonhoeffer gives us space to respond to God’s love with and for us, saying: 'as long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbour, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us. Do you want to close the door or open it?’

© Julie Gittoes 2021

Keep Awake, Stay Alert

 Advent Sunday: Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-end

Stay Alert: Back in May, after three months of being told to ‘stay at  home’, the government introduced a new slogan. Stay alert. Stay alert to control the virus and save lives.

Some, including Scotland’s First Minister, said that they didn’t know what ‘stay alert’ meant. It was seen as too vague, imprecise and unenforceable. Some turned created their own parodies of the campaign.

Other’s explained what alert meant: staying at home as much as possible; limiting contact with others; keeping our distance; wearing masks; washing our hands.

Perhaps we’ve swung between being hyper-vigilant and feeling complacent? What does it mean for us to stay alert in this season - as SAGE issues advice on avoiding board-games and recommends meeting households outside?

Advent takes up this theme of staying alert and redirects it.

Staying alert is combined with a longing of God’s presence; a longing for God to act to bring hope and justice; for suffering to end.

It is perhaps in a time such as this that we are more receptive to the themes of Advent, to the vivid imagery laced with judgement.  

Isaiah expresses that longing for God’s presence vividly; his words cry out for God’s decisive action:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
    so that the mountains would quake at your presence.

It’s a passage full of awareness of God’s awesome deeds and power; of fires kindled; of creation quaking and human beings trembling.

Isaiah paints a picture of a God who is powerful - and asks why don’t we turn to him? Why don’t we call upon the name of God of devotion, remembering acts of deliverance; out of obedience and gladly doing right? 

Why don’t we call upon God out of an awareness of iniquity, that is being alert to the ways in which the world is out of kilter?

The 19th century painter, John Martin produced vibrant canvases which he gave colour and drama to themes.  His work depicts the ways human desires turn away from God chasing after the fleeting and dazzling prizes of this world; he depicts the way the world is shaken up, refined and restored by the blazing and dazzling fire of God’s love. 

John Martin: works at The Tate

Yet the language of judgement - this longing for God’s coming into our midst - makes no sense without an awareness of God’s mercy. 

We are to call upon God’s name because we know it: we know it in our hearts and on our lips; we know it from the moment we were created out of dust and earth; from the moment we drew breath:

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
    we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.

God at the heart of this world holding us and shaping us: holding the suffering and pain; transforming it with the sheer energy of mercy that God’s very self brings into our midst. 

In the words of Martin Luther King, it’s a challenge that although: ‘we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.’

We face the disappointments of criticism and illness; of disappointments and loss. And yet, and yet, we are still invited to place our trust in the God who loves us.  Who considers us all a people who are precious.

The cry goes up to God: we are your people!

Image from the Hubble Telescope

Heavens: At the beginning of this new church year, we begin to focus on Mark’s Gospel; we recall that he was writing to a Christian community facing fear, uncertainty and disillusionment.

The threats facing us might be different - the social, relational, economic and cultural impact of lockdowns and tiers; the concerns triggered by a virus, but a global pandemic which has changed our life locally. 

But perhaps the impact is the same: it feels as if the world as we know it is being shaken. 

The first hearers of the passage read to us today, would have related the cosmic imagery that Jesus uses to their own political upheavals. The fall of Jerusalem, the disruption of familiar world order; dynamics of power and loss.  

It is in this context that Jesus call his followers, including us, to be alert: for although it might feel that poverty, oppression, and pandemic have the last word, he is pointing us to God’s sovereignty. 

It might seem as if the heavens are in upheaval; that the sun and moon are being cast aside; but this powerful language points to God’s reign. A reign of greater light and love and hope. 

To quote Martin Luther King again: ‘Only in the darkness can you see the stars.’

God’s presence is near to us; we must remain alert.

Fig Tree: Jesus points to the fig tree and invites us to read the world just as we read the changing of the seasons. 

The changing of the seasons are disruptive; processes are at work, seen and unseen. 

This Advent, we are to look with honesty at the world we live in; the sadness the loss, the confusion and the disruption. But we are also to look towards the hope of a world we would like to be part of, that we long for; that we want to see brought to brith in our midst. 

We are to be alert.

To look for signs of God’s reign.

To draw strength and comfort and hope from the nearness of God’s presence.

To trust in the turning of the seasons; the hope of the world to come.

The world is pregnant with the new life that God wants to bring to birth; but there are labour pains too.

Jesus: For Jesus came with a promise of regime change - for was Rowan Williams reminds us in his little book on Mark’s Gospel, that is the force of the euvangelion, or good news. 

When we are tempted to despair of our political discourse or the behaviour of the human race, we are to go back to that good news. As Michelle Obama once put it, when they go low, we go high.

We go high because the face of Jesus Christ reminds us that there is justice and mercy.

He speaks and acts for the poor; for freedom; for life. 

He is God’s presence with us; calling us to be alert.

To be courageous and to treat others with the dignity they have as children of God; he enlists our help and demands that we take a side in this world. 

His face turns us from despair, resignation, indifference or even cynicism.

That our faces might be written with love and mercy; that our lives might seek after justice and compassion. 

Light: Keep awake; be alert; God is with us. 

This Advent: let us not act as if God is hidden from us, but lift our cries to God and live as people of light. 

The person of hope is the person who waits; who sees the light shining ever more brightly in the darkness.

Waiting. Trusting. 

For God will make all things new; and that work of renewal begins in us.

Expectantly we wait for God is faithful.

In darkness we see signs of salvation.

Emmanuel, Emmanuel

Our God has sent his only son

Awake our hearts to sing your praise

Our Lord has come to change the world

To change our hearts

© Julie Gittoes