As I become increasingly fussy, crusty you may think, one of my irritations is the use of “anticipate” to mean “expect”. To anticipate is not to expect; it means to do or say something in the knowledge or expectation of a future event; prevention, forestalling and jumping the gun are all example of anticipation. This rather useful meaning is in danger of being lost if it is used simply a synonym for expect.
Expect itself has interesting overtones; it can be used neutrally, but tends too to have an emotional charge; we use it of future events which we fear or to which we look forward; it combines hope and anxiety.
I hope you are beginning to see the drift of these remarks and their relevance to Advent, both as traditionally defined in Church practice and in the practice of our commercial age. Secular Advent is a model for anticipation. Gone is any sense of a fast before the feast of Christmas; Advent, or at least December, is the feast, when Christmas Parties and Christmas lunches, and even Christmas Carol Services happen. The twelve days of Christmas are when we recover from this festivity, and the tired denuded Christmas trees start littering the pavements (they have lasted well considering they were rolled out as the last Hallowe’en pumpkins were knocked down to 50p)
This secular and commercial anticipation of Christmas shouldn’t surprise us and in a way it’s inevitable, given the ambiguities at the heart of Advent, because Advent means both arrival and coming; Christmas, like salvation, and the kingdom of Heaven is something we both expect and experience.
As Diana pointed out in sermon last Sunday Advent is also a time when hope and fear are mixed. There is joy in the Angels’ message, but threat as well. It was delivered by a heavenly host- a word with more military overtones than the sentimental view of Christmas would suggest. The peace which the angels announce is not the peace of inactivity, relaxation or withdrawal; was that likely to be the outcome of God visiting his world, even if he arrives (angelic host apart) almost incognito? Rather I think the peace that arrival brings is the peace of reconciliation, the equilibrium emerging from opposing forces. It is a balance of reason in human activity and surrender to the irrational power and love of God; it is both justice and mercy. These are Advent’s themes as we look towards the second coming as well as the incarnation in the stable in Bethlehem.
Advent also reminds us of the confusion in time as visions of the future and an imagined past collide with the starker reality of the present. Cribs remind us that Jesus came and still comes into the real world that we inhabit. We rather forget in our post-industrial and urban existence, that a stable or cattle shed is opposite of exotic and far from sentimental; it’s intended to emphasise the mundane actuality of Christ’s arrival.
We can see some of these ideas in both Isaiah’s great prophecy about the coming Messiah and the Holy Mountain and in Matthew’s sterner account of what the Messiah will bring.
The lovely picture of life on the Holy Mountain reminds me of those charming Flemish paintings of Eden before the Fall, with all the animals paired up and in happy harmony. Isaiah is I think looking back to a golden and inaccessible age for his vision of the future. The lovely but impossible vision follows an equally irrational description of mercy- justice based not on human evidence and perception-not on “what the eye sees”– but ethereal principles of righteousness and faithfulness. Both visions are aspirational, unreal yet touching us, urging and inspiring us to try to anticipate them in however small and feint ways in our all too real existence.
That urgency is much stronger in Matthew’s depiction of John the Baptist. Here too we look forward and back, but the promise of the coming Messiah is not a bit peaceful. It is threatening and fearful, yet many were baptised despite the apparently impossible condition; every tree that does not bear good fruit is to be chopped down. Which of us can say we have no rotten apples in our larder of life? This is the imminent and threatening future; but in the reported dialogue with the Pharisees and Sadducees we look back to the past, and to adherence to the law and tradition for justification, this is the religious leaders’ excuse for not needing John’s drastic and histrionic remedy. I can’t help sympathising, but John is right; they may be comforting, but it’s never enough to rely on tradition, and myth and fossilized law; we all need to turn, to repent and aspire to rely on the righteousness and faithfulness of Jesse’s stock.
As for Margaret Hebblethwaite’s friend (quoted in our Advent Daily Thought) Advent is my favourite season, to the extent that I sometimes think it’s a pity it has to end with Christmas. It is not just that the music is so much better; Advent encapsulates our religion, indeed our human existence, being hopeful, fearful, forward and backward looking, but also recognising the sometimes shocking present, with a pressing urgency. As Margraret Hebblthwaite puts it Advent is a time of exquisite balance between the sadness of the mess we live in, and the bliss of the world we would like to live in.
This is the human condition; waiting, hoping and remembering, expecting and anticipating, inspired by the holy mountain and threatened by the axe. Advent is life as it is, without a clear trajectory, or simple answers to the problems and pain of the world; supplying a vision, but no simple hope, of return to an incorrupt world, but not a hopeless fear of vengeful judgement either.
Advent can, however, bring us the confidence that repentance, justice and righteousness may guide us as we try to reconcile these conflicting forces. The experience of the waiting gives us the hope that when we do recognise our salvation it will be the resolution of opposing emotion, the harmony that emerges from discord and the release that comes from understanding and acceptance of differences rather the escapist avoidance of difficulty. And that does, prepare us well for the message that the Christ child will bring. Amen.