Advent Sunday 2019

Lectionary readings: [Isaiah 2:1-5 and] Romans 13:11-14 and Matthew 24:36-44

Christmas jumpers

I don’t know about you, but I find it harder to get up in the mornings at this time of year. It is still dark outside when my alarm goes off at 6.30 a.m. and I know that it is cosy and warm beneath the duvet and noticeably colder out of bed. But the time has come to wake from sleep. And it is more than a counting of time, my watch having counted the seconds, minutes and hours since it was last 6.30 a.m. so as to set off the alarm once more. No, this is a time of opportunity: God has seen fit to give me this new day, filled with the promise that, whatever will come my way, we will meet it together. An invitation to experience more, and to embrace change. But my bed is so warm — even if lying in it for too long gives me back ache, even if my bladder and perhaps my rumbling tummy and maybe even my sense of adventure protest.

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the house churches of Rome, he urges them to shake-off sleepwalking through life. To do so now, not put it off until later. And he speaks of putting on the armour of light, and of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. The word he uses suggests dressing someone else, or, that we do this to one another. I wonder whether anyone here has ever been given a Christmas jumper? Or Christmas socks? Or Christmas pyjamas? Or, perhaps someone gave you something tasteful to wear as a Christmas gift? That experience captures something of what Paul is wanting to convey, I think. It isn’t about doing it for ourselves, so much as clothing one another with dignity.

Paul contrasts this with feasting and drunkenness; with sexual promiscuity and deliberate indulgence in bad behaviour, to hell with the consequences; with a contentious spirit and boiling anger directed at others. In other words, he lists ‘any behaviour that a person finds temporary pleasure or relief in but suffers negative consequences as a result of’ which, if one ‘does not give up or cannot give up despite those negative consequences’ defines addiction, according to leading addiction expert Gabor Maté.

Maté’s thesis is that addiction is rife in our society and serves to numb emotional pain. The key question, he urges us, is not a judgemental ‘what is wrong with you?’ but a compassionate ‘what happened to you?’ That if we are to help people address the emotional pain that we all live with, we must begin by reverently listening to their story.

I don’t pretend to fully understand the parable Jesus tells in our Gospel reading for today, but it does seem to me to paint the picture of two people, indistinguishable in outward appearance or in a variety of common roles and work activity, where one is swept away in a moment and the other is left wondering what happened. It is a moment of crisis, where something that has been building towards this moment breaks. But the coming of the Son of Man, of the remnant community who have put on Christ, is just as unexpected.

The Old Testament reading for today, from Isaiah, looks to a day when God’s people will be ministers of reconciliation, peacemakers, enabling the nations to know true wellbeing.

And these readings come together in this season of Advent, in which our neighbours will come under great stress to spend money they can’t afford on Christmas, and drink to forget.

One of the things that delights me is that Alcoholics Anonymous have recently started meeting in our church hall, twice a week. Though not their usual nights, they’ll be meeting on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, because those are particularly dark nights, and they are a fellowship who know that they need each other to help each one to put on the armour of light.

But this is a hard time of year for many people, perhaps for you. It is also the season of longing and aching for the return of the king. As we wait, together — as we help one another to put on the Lord Jesus Christ — I’d like to play you a song, Until You Do. As we listen, and perhaps join in, may hope rise up within you, and give you strength to arise.