Romans 13: 8 – end; Matthew 21: 1 – 13
Last Sunday was ‘stir up’ Sunday, and we had the Christmas Fair to get us in the mood for preparing for Christmas. My husband Simon surprised me by suddenly making a Christmas cake. I wasn’t surprised that he made the cake, because he always does. But I was surprised that it happened almost without any notice on Saturday evening at the end of what had been a busy day and with guests in the house. Anyway, Christmas preparations have begun in the Young household!
Our collect this morning also reminded us of our need to prepare for the coming of Christ. We pray for God’s grace that we may “cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light,” in order that we might be ready to face the judgement of Christ when He returns in glory. The Gospel gives us the dramatic account of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This was memorably enacted by the Hampstead Players last week in their production of ‘The Man Born to be King’. Jesus is received as the Son of David, the Prophet of Nazareth, and immediately He casts out the money-changers in order to cleanse the Temple. Reading this account on Advent Sunday, it becomes an image for the return of Christ and his setting to rights of our disordered world. The double-edged season of Advent invites us to prepare both for the celebration of Christ’s birth and for His return as our judge. What does it then mean for us to “cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light”?
The epistle perhaps helps us to begin to address this question. We’re to keep the ten commandments, avoiding a whole host of sins including, rather memorably in the Book of Common Prayer’s translation, “chambering and wantonness”. More positively, we are, simply, to love one another, because love fulfils the law. The imagery of light and darkness is especially vivid now that the days are shorter and both evenings and the mornings are dark. Like me you may have got up in the dark to come here this morning. I’ve noticed my own tendency to behave differently if I’m about in the dark. It may only be 7:00 p.m. – or 7:00 a.m. – but the quiet streets around my home can seem threatening if it’s dark. We’re to behave as ‘daylight people’, living in openness and honesty although the times are dark. We’re to love.
So, as the shops, and perhaps also our diaries, get busier over the next few weeks, the season of Advent invites us to resist, to stand back, to reflect and to review our lives. What might it mean for us to live as ‘daylight people’ over these coming weeks? Where are the dark places in our lives? Where, or who, is God calling us to love?
“give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light,”
Amen