SERMON 28 November 2004 (Advent 1)

 Readings:   Isaiah 2: 1-5        Psalm 122        Romans 13: 9-14        Matthew 24: 36-44

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God. Amen. 

Wake up! God is coming!  The time is almost here! Advent is here, bringing with it a sense of urgency. We really don’t have much time left in which to get our act together. God is just around the corner. As the magnet on our fridge says, ‘Look busy, Jesus is coming’. 

This is the message that comes loudly and clearly from today’s readings. ‘Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming!’ says Matthew (Mt 24:42). ‘It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep’, says Paul in the Letter to the Romans. (Romans 13:11) 

All this urgency sits a little oddly 2000 years down the track. In one sense, God is already here and has been for quite some time now. In another, it’s hard to maintain a sense of imminent arrival for 2,000 years. Overall, therefore, I find myself unable to get too involved in all this pressure. It may be middle age striking me rather than a deep spiritual insight, but it all seems a bit artificial. After all, if we haven’t worked out by now that we should always be attentive to our spiritual lives, then we haven’t been listening to the constant message of the Scriptures.  

There is also a threat implicit in the Matthew reading – an threat that is somewhat disconcerting. It almost seems to imply that we should be good because God will catch us out if we aren’t  - a school room sort of image where the students muck up until the teacher comes. “Ssh, God’s coming! You’ll get a detention if she catches you!”  

Is that really why we seek to lead godly lives – because of what will happen to us if we don’t? Is goodness an option we reluctantly take because of the consequences of behaving badly? The motive for seeking to live in harmony with God is surely more positive than that. It is to do with the intrinsic merit and joy of living in that way, even if we don’t quite manage to get it right.  

One of this week’s lovely moments for me was as I walked across the lawns between the office and the vestry door and I was suddenly struck by the humour of my continuing sinfulness. Prompted by a stray question from a friend, I had been reflecting on godliness. Suddenly I had this wonderful image of what it must be like for God watching us all trying to get it right! And, of course, failing time after time, as we sinful humans do. Like one of those cartoons where Wiley Coyote tries to catch the Roadrunner.  Time after time! So near and yet so far! 

However, despite difficulties of these texts for those of us who live two millennia away from the birth of Jesus, there is within them a wonderful sense of the surprising, utterly unexpected intrusion of God into the everyday. Whatever we do, however we construct the world, whatever our expectations might be, God is God and will shake us, confound us, and challenge us. God is so much more than we can conceive that all our attempts to systematise, to understand, to contain, crumble in front of a single flower, or the experience of love.  

God speaks and acts when God wants to speak and act. No amount of orderliness can mask the wildness and unpredictability of God’s words and actions. Nor does God necessarily choose the channels we expect. Not all divine messengers come equipped with the give-away wings, haloes and golden aura of the classic angel.   

Please don’t interpret what I am saying as a critique of  spiritual discipline. There is much to be gained from an orderly spiritual life – a regular discipline of prayer, study, worship, spiritual direction. As one of the two seasons of repentance in our church year, Advent is a good time to be intentional in our spiritual life and to seek guidance. A prayer habit set in place over the weeks of Advent can be the basis of a continuing practice throughout the year, bringing much fruit.  

But we should never expect to keep God to such order. We may set aside 6.30 to 6.45am for a prayer time, but God will almost certainly have things to say at different times and will not necessarily choose the messengers we will recognise. Indeed, the messengers themselves may not have any idea that God has used them in that way. 

I am occasionally told by someone that something I have said, perhaps years before, came at exactly the right moment and opened them up to God’s presence. More often than not I have been blissfully unaware of saying anything of any depth whatsoever and have possibly even forgotten that I said it. My guess is that many of you have had similar experiences. We have, however briefly and however unconsciously, acted as God’s messengers – as the angel that intrudes. 

Of course, God breaks into our lives in many forms, not just by means of other members of the community of faith. We can be brought up short by music, literature, art. We can be deeply challenged by poverty, drug addiction, illness. World events, family joy or tragedy can all lead us to look beyond our normal frameworks and seek a deeper understanding of ultimate truth. 

The challenge of Advent is to be open to God, wherever whenever God chooses to be present to us. We know that God will be in unexpected places, speaking disturbing, confronting words – can we hear them? Can we go there too? Can we set aside our preconceptions, our fears, our systems and listen to the wind of the Spirit? 

Perhaps God is calling us to see the humour of our failures, the guilt of our successes, the pain of our victories and the joy of our defeats.  

Sarah Macneil

November 2004