Advent Sunday - Year C

O Come, O come, thou living word, and pierce our hearts with healing sword, from God’s own mouth proceeding far to lance the fest’ring wounds of war. Rejoice! Rejoice! To mend our strife shall come in flesh the God of life.

That is one of Jim Cotter’s re-imaginings of the Advent antiphons, the exclamations of our hope for the coming Christ. I offer it to you today because it echoes the readings for the start of Advent, which always arrive with something of a rude awakening. Advent, we like to think, is the time of preparation for Christmas. Perhaps a time to find space and time in the busy-ness and stress of preparation. A time, fundamentally, to get us in the mood, the warm, festive mood, of Christmas. And then the readings come along, and we hear of people fainting from fear and foreboding; and of wars and distress among the nations. And of ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud.’ And we wonder what we are to make of all that.

For some Christians, passages such as this are texts to get us speculating about when God’s kingdom is arriving. The hope of God’s coming and reign articulated in Advent are matters, in this way of thinking, of speculation about when this is to be. Are we now in the end-times? Are the events talked of in the Gospels and in the New Testament more widely, a prediction of events happening now – for the world is certainly full of fear and foreboding? The Advent question, in this way of understanding the texts, is about when these things might come to pass.

But I think that is fundamentally to misunderstand God and scripture. Jesus and the New Testament writers lived in a turbulent world, marked by huge injustice and suffering. And they proclaimed a kingdom that made the world right. But their concern was not with the when of that kingdom, but the what – what characterised that kingdom; what enabled them to stand up and raise their heads, because their redemption is drawing near. The when was, is, always now; the what is the call to us now.

Advent comes as a rude awakening to remind us that the Kingdom of God is not something to speculate about; nor is it a matter of progress, something that we will slowly build; that we are responsible for. To know, to be open to, the fear and foreboding, the suffering and turbulence of the world, and the fragility of so-called civilization, is to know that such human pretension has been thoroughly unmasked. The kingdom is not about the slow progress of human beings towards some future state. Rather the Kingdom is that eternal possibility and presence of the fullness of God which interrupts; interrupts both our cosy-ness – asking awkward questions; and interrupts too our crying out at injustice – to ask, so what are we doing to reveal the presence of that kingdom. The kingdom that Jesus proclaimed and lived is the possibility and presence of God here and now. Our Advent readings are not about when these things are to be, but what these things are, and what we might be doing to prepare for the fullness of God’s coming.

And so our Advent hope doesn’t just interrupt us; it judges us. It asks those awkward questions that we would rather avoid. Advent is, traditionally, a time to talk about, think about, judgement. It’s often said, particularly by those outside the church, that the modern church doesn’t do judgement. That observation is often offered wistfully, as if the church should be in the business of condemnation – judgement understood as telling people that they have done wrong, in particular ways. And that the church has gone a bit wishy-washy.

But again that is to miss the point. Just as it’s not about the when of the kingdom, but the what; so judgement is not about pointing the finger at others, but about having the strength to know it is about us; about me, you, all of us together. Advent proclaims God’s kingdom that interrupts our cosy-ness; the Advent time of preparation allows the eternal presence of God to shape us, to be open to God’s judgement. But that is not about condemnation. In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus invites his followers to greet the coming of God’s kingdom, of their redemption, with heads raised high. Rather than judgement being that which condemns us, or others, judgement is that which redeems us, that saves us, that enables us into that fullness of God, which is God’s presence and kingdom now.

Advent is a time of preparation in as much as we give ourselves the space and time to be judged, in love and by love, and for love. In that judgement is not our condemnation, but our healing.

Julian of Norwich, writing in the 14th century, in the midst of the Black Death and the wars of medieval England, reflecting on her visions, wrote this:
‘What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end.’

Advent is a time to dwell, to remain in that reality that is the constant invitation of God – the reality of love. To understand that, is to understand that judgement is then not a matter of condemnation, but of growing in the practice and knowledge of love – loving God, loving neighbour, loving ourselves. If our Advent preparation is to allow ourselves to be rooted and grounded in love, then we allow ourselves, in the presence of God’s love, to be vulnerable; to know ourselves as loved enough to hear words of criticism and deeper knowledge, and so to grow in that love. Judgement, if it is about condemnation simply makes us defensive, eager to turn the pointing finger on others. But Advent is judgement encountered in love.

Let me finish with a prayer from the great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner:
Behold, you come. And Your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfilment. Now it is still the one single hour of Your Advent, at the end of which we too shall have found out that You have really come. O God who is to come, grant me the grace to live now, in the hour of Your Advent, in such a way that I may merit to live in you forever, in the blissful hour of Your Eternity. Amen.