Advent is probably the hardest season of the year for the church to observe, not because of the kind of disciplines we might try to keep, as in Lent, but because in the culture around us, it is already Christmas. We might, I suppose, try to observe Advent by giving up the anticipation of Christmas, but that would be far from easy. We are surrounded by Christmas decorations, the television has been showing sentimental Christmas films since the beginning of November, as well as adverts for Christmas food from a wide range of stores. People express surprise that the church is not yet decorated for Christmas, or for all the school carol services. It used to be the case that vicars insisted on having carol services after Christmas and not in Advent but that battle was lost long ago. In some ways our culture is designed to crank up our anticipation of Christmas to such an exalted degree that the event itself may be experienced as something of a disappointment. Gone are the days when a child’s first sight of the Christmas tree was on Christmas morning, her parents having decorated it the night before, after she had gone to bed.
So what is Advent for? It is certainly a time for singing Advent hymns and not Christmas carols. And Advent hymns, while looking forward to the birth of Jesus, also look forward to the end of the world as we know it and to the second coming of Christ, and God’s wrapping up of the world project in an act of final judgement. These three themes are perhaps so difficult that we prefer to look forward to Christmas instead. Reflection on the end of the world is left to mad men with banners and loud halers in Oxford Street.
The real Advent themes are so far ahead (we hope) that thinking about them seems a waste of time. We prefer instead to think about progress, about the eradication of poverty, and the establishing of world peace. We prefer politicians who give us a bright view of the future, however temporarily bad the present may be. But that is not quite the vision of the future we find in the gospels. One essential teaching of the gospels is that we cannot bring about the end of poverty and the dawn of universal peace for ourselves. Of course we should seek to help the poor in every way we can, where we can; we should seek practical if painful, slow and difficult ways of bringing about the end of conflict where we can. But neither effort will ever bring about Utopia – human failings, weakness, and sin are too strong for that. And the gospels seem to say that in spite of all our efforts things are likely to get worse rather than better. Only God can achieve through us what we hope for in ways that we can hardly comprehend. Salvation comes not through progress but dramatic and divine intervention.
Advent therefore may be a time for reflecting on that puzzling verse in the Lord’s Prayer; ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ That verse is puzzling insofar as we wonder what kind of God would lead people to be tempted. An alternative translation might be the request that we are not brought to the time of trial. In other words, this prayer is a recognition of our own weakness and a plea that God will not allow our faith to be tested beyond our strength. And in praying such a prayer we might remember Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering which he was about to face should be taken from him.
This clause of the Lord’s prayer, therefore, recognises that history is not a story of progress but a sequence of tests, trials, and successes followed by yet more failure. And that means that Advent is a time for hoping against hope, for the unmasking of facile optimism, and the recognition that we can only chip away calmly, persistently and honestly at the problems which face us most seriously as individuals and as a society. God more mercifully judges our little achievements than our failed solutions.
And finally how are we to think about the second coming? Stories have been written about Jesus coming back to earth and not being recognised. The New Testament, however, seems to tell us that we shall all recognise him all too easily because he will come with clouds of glory. Even if we think of such language as symbolic we are still left with the problem of recognising the reality which it might symbolise. Any answer is perhaps too big for us. It will sound like human hubris.
In the Book of Revelation Jesus is said to be the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus, it claims, is there in creation and he is there at the end of the life of that creation. Jesus, the epitome, the summing up, the essence and fulfilment of what we mean by humanity, is at the centre of God’s thought in creation and he is there at the fulfilment of God’s intention for our world’s part of his creation. And so while looking steadily and truthfully at the failures of our humanity we can have hope that God will not let us go. We are, as it were, a project God does not give up on. And that thought should sustain us even in the recognition that Syria, and climate change, and the huge gap between rich and poor, and all such intractable problems, need not defeat us, even though we can only chip away at them by doing small exercises in generosity, economy and prayer. We must not allow the anticipation of Christmas to take our minds off these fundamentally important themes of Advent.
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker