Advent I
Nov 30, 2014
People look East! The time is near…
So begins one of my favourite Advent hymns; favourite because it catches so well the sense of expectation that is at the heart of this season. Already the wreaths are on the doors and houses glow with Christmas lights; the city has the scent of Christmas. Trim the hearth and set the table. It used to bother me, this early leaning into Christmas, but increasingly I am grateful for the light. For it is a pointer, this light in the winter night, this excitement. It is not Christmas yet—but Christmas is coming. HE is coming, and it is necessary to get ready.
For as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:37).
The problem in Noah’s day was that no one got ready. There they were, eating and drinking and getting married, carrying on with daily life, laying up treasure for their own futures, as if everything was all right. As if the violence that plagued the earth in the wake of Cain’s murderous rage was perfectly normal; as if the earth was not bleeding from war and crying out to the gates of heaven from the blood that had been shed upon it. There they were, eating and drinking and marrying, as if all flesh had not corrupted its way upon the earth; as if they had not by the insouciance of their eating and drinking and killing and marrying grieved God to the heart.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth (Genesis 6:11-12).
Hamas, in the Hebrew: violence. In the days of Noah, the earth grew bleared and smeared and the inclinations of the human heart were no longer true. They ate and drank and married and killed, and did not know that they grieved God to his heart.
As it was in the days of Noah…
Genesis 6 hits close to home. For in our day too the earth is bleared and smeared and the voices of the people who have been killed in the wars of this very year cry out from the earth to high heaven. And we eat and drink and marry…and divorce…and turn a blind eye to the suffering of the children…and turn marriage inside out, into an image of ourselves, the place for the satisfaction of the devices and desires of our own hearts, instead of the place of the image of God. And we meet violence with violence, the cruel brutality of ISIS with the sleek cruelty of air strikes.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight.
We prepare in Advent for the coming of the Lord. It is good to be clear about what this means.
Our God is a God not of darkness but of light. That is why we string our porches with light and make the Christmas tree shine: because we look to the light.
We look East, to the coming of the day.
And it is the property of the day to reveal: to reveal what is wrong, to reveal it as wrong, to establish what is true. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord: that is the Advent prayer.
We pray it as we hang the Advent lights, light the candles on the wreath, one more each week, light growing toward the light of Christ. We wait for the time of truth.
And where we are in darkness, we grieve, and we pray.
Grieve for the blindness that covers the human heart, for the desires that distort it. Grieve for the blood that is poured out upon the earth, and for our part in it.
There is a time for weeping, and that time is now. There is a time to hear the cry of the earth and its poor people, the cry of the wandering heart. There is a time to hear the answering grief of God.
Advent is a time to listen, and to grieve.
And it is a time to hope.
Because already we get out the candles; already we circle the door with green. Already the night grows light with the coming dawn.
We prepare in Advent for the coming of the Lord.
And that advent has been accomplished among us, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. Into a suffering world the Lord has come, in suffering and in grace. In and for the world, our Lord has come, to draw us to himself. Light in the darkness, to draw us out of darkness into light. Advent is a journey away from the devices and desires of our own hearts, toward the heart of God. Advent leads us to a child, and in the distance three trees upon a hill.
We await a mystery: judgement that is grace. It is judgement—for the heart of God is grieved by the harm that we do—and it is grace, the world’s darkness taken up into the grieving heart of God and there suffered for the world’s sake. Lighten our darkness.
So get out the candles, this Advent, and pray. Weep for the darkness, sing for the light.
People look East: the time is near.
Feasts & Fasts 