People of God, awake! A sermon for Advent Sunday
People of God, awake!
This is the call of the prayer we prayed at the lighting of the first advent candle.
It is the call of Paul to the Romans, and of Jesus to his disciples in Matthew.
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme – Wake up, the voice is calling us — runs the famous German carol.
Wake up, the saviour is coming.
There is something fundamentally strange about Advent, a tension that it brings to the fore. It lies in part in its strange doubling of time, as we wait for the coming of Christ, both the first coming and the second; as we wait for the coming of God our saviour and yet know that he has already come and that he has already saved. And it lies in part in a waiting that is alert, somehow both patient and not, uncertain and yet absolutely certain. He is coming. But when?
It is a tension that we find also in the metaphorical darkness in which we wait: a darkness that is at once unnerving and full of fears—the darkness of the world’s wars and jealousies; and yet a darkness that is soothing and nurturing—the darkness of a womb.
We are accustomed to the ‘darkness’ of the world: the wars, the suffering, the reality of death, the fear of pain. Our waiting here is distinctly impatient. The saviour is coming when? There is not a lot that is ‘good’ in this darkness.
In contrast the darkness of the womb is, at heart, good.
Even though pregnancy and parenthood can be complicated and often fraught, fractured by the darknesses of the world; it remains a place where nurture takes place, where we are formed for life in the world. It is an image and metaphor whose pains and dangers can be redeemed by the utterly faithful God who is described in the Bible as father and mother, and who is always working to nurture us towards new life in the kingdom.
Perhaps less emotionally complicated is the darkness of soil, in which seeds are buried and nurtured, preparing to sprout into life in our gardens, allotments, and fields. Or the darkness of an airing cupboard, where cress seeds are nurtured in cotton wool, ready to burst into life to show us how this works in a short experiment!
Or perhaps we might think of the darkness of space, in the depths of which the universe was born, as the Spirit hovered over the void, and in which stars and galaxies emerge and dance, in forms of life and light that are often beyond our sight and comprehension. In The Magician’s Nephew C.S. Lewis describes a beginning like this:
“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing… Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words, there was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard… Then two wonders happened. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale… The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars…If you had seen and heard it, as Diggory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves that were singing.”
In the darkness, beings are made ready for life… and for new life. And yet, in this darkness, this life is not sound asleep. It is not dormant.
Chemicals react. Gases swirl. Foetuses kick.
Growth and preparation happen
And there is an alertness of some kind to what is going on around this life.
The night is far gone, writes Paul, and we are being called to stir, to make ready—or to be made ready—for the new day when we may join in the singing of the stars.
Sleepers awake; a voice is calling…
If we draw this imagery in to the world of our lives, we find ourselves in an uneasy waking, alert to the perils of the world. In Matthew, Jesus talks of floods, of people being swept away, of thieves coming in the night. This is language that is very similar to the apocalypse language we heard in Luke only a couple of weeks ago—and it has resonances for us. Our future feels deeply uncertain, and I suspect many of us are fearful of many things.
But we are asked to hear the voice that is calling.
The voice of the Spirit who hovered over the void and the waters in the beginning and called forth life and light.
The voice of the one who was born as a baby, who cried as we cried, and offered loving guidance to his friends and disciples along their ways.
The voice of the one who is the light in the darkness, who heals the broken-hearted, who redeems and restores life to all its fullness and joy.
For it is learning to hear the voice that is calling; in letting it stir us into new life; in recognising it as the voice with which we want to sing in harmony… that we are nurtured in the darkness of the womb and that we learn to live in the unnerving ‘darkness’ of the world. It’s just that ~somehow~ this living and this nurturing happen at the same time, overlaid on each other.
Metaphors of learning to hear and recognise a voice, of learning to sing in harmony; of paying attention to light and where it falls and the paths it illuminates; are helpful here, because as Jesus tells his disciples, we do not know ‘about that day and hour’ when the Son of Man will come. We do not know what will be happening; there is no certainty; nothing is set in stone here—there is only alertness to the voice that is calling, to the light that shines, that shows us where God is moving and where we should follow and how. It is a matter of following the light as it lights our way, step by step. Of learning to fall into harmony with the voice that calls the universe into being and life.
This advent, may we find ourselves being nurtured in the darkness; learning to live in the darkness; ever-hopeful that the day is near
People of God, awake!
The day is coming soon
When you shall see God face to face.
Remember the ways and the works of God.
God calls you out of darkness
To walk in the light of his coming.