Advent is my favourite season, in part for rather negative reasons, the relief that we have emerged from the depressing obsession with death and remembrance which characterises early November and the terrifying Gospels predicting gloom and destruction which punctuate late November. If I had more energy, or any prospect of anyone else agreeing with me, I’d found a movement to replace Remembrance Sunday with Forgiving and Forgetting Sunday; we could still have trumpets but there would be absolutely no Elgar.
There is, of course, some place for remembering; we should live as if, indeed, as in fact we are, playing a role in a long story, which will have an end. To do that we need a consciousness of the past. However, the importance of that sense of destiny, of those feelings at that time, for each individual at least, will end, as our lives end, has implications for how we behave now. There is something to be said for living every day as if our last. Something to be said, but not everything, and the season of Advent tries, I think, to get these feelings into proportion and perspective.
Mark 13.24-end
Having heard today’s Gospel, you might well think that I am speaking too soon; our reading from Mark still has those terrifying themes of the End of Time, the second Coming, Judgement and the need for vigilance and readiness. It differs, however, from other such predictions, in that it leaves us with a moral responsibility; we will be judged on how well we responded, specifically how well we have stayed awake. Other eschatological predictions like those foretelling the fall of Jerusalem (which had of course actually happened when they were written) left little room for individual responsibility, and indeed the ruthlessly brutal Roman war machine did not take a great deal of interest in the moral worth of its victims.
But the reading from Mark, also contains some of the other Advent themes, which epitomise our Christian experience and which I value for themselves (and not just as relief at change). There is the contrast of darkness and light, of night inevitably followed by dawn, of the seasons and the growth, maturity and decay; of distance and imminent coming, of vigilant permanence and cataclysmic change. All these contrasts, paradoxes and contradictions lie at the heart of Christianity. We know that we have arrived; that we are saved, but yet we are still traveling in a dark world where there is plainly much pain. We know there is much to be done to alleviate it, and that despite our feebleness and our blindness, we know that it’s our task to try to make a difference, however hopeless that may seem; in a word we feel inspired, empowered and obliged to hope, when human reason and human capability argue that all is hopeless.
Those are some of the Advent messages, which one can just about extract from Mark’s dark Gospel, but I want to look a bit more closely at the particular theme of this Sunday – Sleeping and waking. It’s a condition much on my mind having spent last night on the floor of the parish rooms doing the overnight shift for the Shelter. I had a mattress and warm duvet, and my wife nearby – so you needn’t feel too sorry for me!
The Church has to easily associated sleep with sin, as we shall hear in today’s post-communion prayer, asking that we shall not be found sleeping in sin, but active in Jesus’ service and joyful in his praise. Sleeping is seen as negative- it’s a time of idleness or blindness, inactivity and ignorance – or if activity then nefarious activity. It happens mostly at night when evil can prosper because unseen. This is perhaps why communities which wish to foster spirituality and prayer, have deliberately denied their members sleep; think of the poor monks getting up to pray in the small hours. Perhaps too this is why the heavenly city knows no night.
It is telling that traditional (and I suggest outdated) Christianity has appropriated one sleeping activity – sleeping together – as specifically sinful. “Sleeping together” is of course a euphemism, like “going out together”, for the opposite. But much more seriously that it should be treated as virtually synonymous with sin, is an Advent like paradox, which involves a disastrous misunderstanding of both sex and sin.
I am a poor sleeper- even in my own bed. Of course, I do sleep, but I feel that I’m awake much of the night or dreaming vivid dreams. Night is a time of reflection, when my worries crowd in and my anxieties begin to overwhelm me. It’s a time for regrets but seldom reminiscence or retrospection, rather it’s the time for planning projects, holidays and meals. It’s also when I have ideas for sermons which seem so good but, like dreams, have evaporated by morning.
This sometime troubled, sometime expectant, often happy and occasionally constructive wakeful sleep is, a paradigm of Advent. It is a time of preparation, when on the one hand, our anxieties can be given expression and sometimes moulded and brought into proportion, when our aspirations can be given rein, unhindered by too much reality, while on the other hand our subconscious can indulge in fantasy and dreams. It may not be restful but it’s a testing time, a trial and a preparation for the action of the coming day.
And so too is Advent; after the retrospection and alarm of November, the Kingdom Season, it’s the time of waiting and preparation; when we can acknowledge the darkness – real enough in the lengthening nights – and real enough in the wickedness and pain all around us. But equally, when we can allow ourselves to be encouraged by the knowledge that the alarm bell will ring, dawn will come, and the days will lengthen and buds and blossom appear.
So I prefer to think Mark’s Jesus is not so much telling us to stay awake, but rather to indulge in fruitful sleep; to allow our minds to wander and prepare themselves for the incarnation when the challenge of Christ’s presence will require an active and lively response.