The sermon for the morning worship on the 27th of November 2022. A service on the first Sunday of Advent in which ordinand Rachael Brind-Surch preached a sermon encouraging us to wake up and take notice of each other as we start the new Liturgical year.

The readings she is reflecting on are:

Isaiah 2.1-5

Matthew 24. 36-44

A transcript of the Sermon:

May I speak in the name of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen

Happy New Year!
No don’t panic.
You've not slept through Advent
You've not slept through Christmas. 
It isn't January

Nevertheless, it is the start of a new year for the church.

The liturgical year is a cyclical pattern through which we tell the story of our faith and celebrate the feast days and fellowship of the church.

It is the road map through which we navigate each season.

This annual pilgrimage always begins with Advent. 
A time for reflection and preparation. 

In Advent we look back through scripture to promises made,
to prophecies proclaimed and we look forward to Christmas day, 
to God drawing near through the birth of Jesus and to what is still to be accomplished.

Many of us will have grown up with traditions and customs associated with the start of Advent and the coming of Christmas.
You just need to look around to see the variety of how people celebrate

[gestures at the Christmas trees]

They may look very different for each of us, they may even be on a different timeline for some of us, depending on our heritage. 

It may be that you have your own particular traditions, candles, lanterns or lights in your home to ward out the encroaching darkness. 

In my family, we greet Advent in a number of ways, but one of those is the anticipation of the visitation of a particular piece of liturgy in the church I grew up in.

Each year with a slightly wry smile, we wait for the prayer which was, and is still to this day, recited at the lighting of the advent ring at my parent's church in Groby.

The reason why this prayers appearance in the pew sheet has become a source of mirth within my family is that my somewhat irreverent church warden Dad has christened it: 

‘The Prayer of Despair;’

This prayer is said once we are sitting comfortably, in traditional Anglican unison. 

Typically whilst an adorable child teeters on tiptoe to light the candles and tries not to set fire to the holly wreath.

As we all smile in warmth and good humour we say:

Today we light our Advent ring, knowing that all God's people around the world are watching and waiting for the promises of God to be completed.

All fine so far, but then 

We do not yet have peace on earth, and so far the suffering of the poor has not ended.

It’s this sentence which inspired the name. 

Because to some of us, certainly to those of us sick and tired of sad stories in the news or working in stressful jobs, it can feel a bit of a downer to have all this beautiful decoration, festive cheer, carols sung and comfort, broken into, by yet more misery. 

And when that happens, that awkwardness and discomfort can prompt us to brush it off, or in my family's case to make a joke.

Not because it’s not a true statement. Not because we don’t believe it.
But because its proclamation is sad and uncomfortable and so we who have the privilege and the luxury to do so can be tempted to close our eyes. Push it away and to go back to our cosy slumber.

For some here that wake up isn’t necessary and pushing these realities away just isn’t an option. For some of us, we don’t need a prayer to remind us that poverty is pervasive, that scarcity is real or that bad things happen.

Some of us are not so much woken up to it, but anxiously surviving within it. 
Beset by insomnia and desperate for rest. 

We know that 'we do not yet have peace on earth, and that 'the suffering of the poor has not ended' and we don’t need to be told twice. 

We are struggling, we are tired and we are not laughing at this othering prayer, about some out there poor when we ourselves can’t make ends meet.

We may instead give a rueful chuckle at our first reading today, because in the wake of war in Ukraine, of on hearing last week, on trans day of remembrance of a shooting in Colorado Springs and knowing of all the other conflicts in our world which never seem to make the front page, the thought of a world where no one learns war anymore feels impossible, hopeless.

This disbelief was most likely how the original audience felt on hearing Isaiah's words. The nation of Israel was struggling too. 

Isaiah’s world was pretty chaotic. There was injustice and brokenness. Israel was a nation under threat with unstable military forces to its North East and West. And Worst still it had a succession of rulers more preoccupied with protecting themselves and their borders, than any particular morals or ethics.

It felt like events were unravelling, fear was at a fever pitch and it was at this anxious time and place a voice spoke. The voice of God prophesying through Isaiah. 

It was in this threatening confusing context, a word of divine hope was spoken and a promise made. It was in this context Isaiah spoke of a world where tools of war, pain, loss and death could be transformed into tools for planting, sowing, nurturing and life.

It is out of an understanding of this wider tension of struggle and hope, lack and promise that Christ speaks in our Gospel reading. 

This passage is not a comfortable one and calls us to consider the state of our world as it is to be found when Christ comes again.
As we can gather from everything said so far about peace and poverty - it’s not looking good.

This uncomfortable warning could lead us to either ignore this passage, to avoid it, to close our eyes and go back to sleep, or it could push us into anxious hyper-vigilance, anxiety and stress.

We know that waiting for the arrival of someone’s judgement is nerve-racking. 
Ask any teacher who has ever received the dreaded call.

The night before my mother's final OFSTED inspection before she retired. I walked in from an evening out at 10pm to find her cutting up display signs on the living room floor.
Still dressed in her coat and shoes, having not stopped to remove them after she got home from work, let alone stopping to have a bite to eat. 
And when I woke the next morning for College I was told she had woken at 4am, left for work at 5.

This is what one kind of awake looks like. It looks like anxiety - and some anxiety about a judgement is normal when the outcome is unknown when there is no promise of good.

When there is a lack of understanding or relationship between the judge and the defendant.

But I do not believe that this is the kind of awake that Jesus is speaking about when he talks about keeping watch for the day of the Lord's coming.

After all, Jesus sent his Spirit to dwell here with us. Ee believe as Christians that God is at work in the world and that we have a relationship with God. A God who loves us and moves towards us even when we are far off. 

Yes, there is a request for vigilance, and there is no assurance against discomfort or suggestion that we shouldn’t engage in preparation.

But I suggest that it is the discomfort of the impatient starving person waiting in anticipation of a freshly cooked meal. 

That it should be the vigilance of a child expectantly waiting by the window for the delivery of a gift. 

It is the work and preparation needed to make a welcome hospitable, not because we are tentatively admitting in an inspector but because we are inviting in a loved one.

It is the anticipation, the expectation, and the preparation we engage in when we feel hopeful. Hopeful for the promise of what is to come.

At the heart of Advent, like so much of our Christian faith sits the tension between, lack and promise. Struggle and hope.

My family's Advent prayer, like advent itself, is no different. Because of It doesn't end in poverty war and despair.
It ends with hope.

The beauty of us starting this year again together. Is that we can look around the globe and know that all God's people watch and wait with us too.

In whatever way we celebrate Advent. In whatever way we wait for Christmas, whether we are feasting or fasting. We are all headed towards the same manger.

The beauty of us starting this year together. Is that we can look across the aisle, and notice each other. 
We can welcome back the travellers and we can notice the new
and we can welcome back the fellow travellers we have been journeying with for years Together we wait, sharing the work as we watch. 
We can be awake to our neighbours and rest in the strength of community.
Together we bolster each other, providing solidarity and respite in the struggles. 
Together we notice and call out the lack. 

We may not be there yet and in some years we may feel closer than others.
We may not always want to face it head-on.
But as we light our first candle this Advent, as we share the peace and the body and blood of Christ.

If any of us has no faith left to speak of these unbelievable promises or strength left to hope, we can rest instead in the hope and faith of the others gathered here and the power and comfort of words spoken together in unison.

Today we light our Advent ring.

Knowing that all God's people around the world are watching and waiting for the promises of God to be completed.

We do not yet have peace on earth and so far the suffering of the poor has not ended. 

Yet we celebrate, because we, along with many others, are people of faith, who refuse to give up hope.

And that kind of hope, rooted in God, is stronger than anything else in the world.

Amen

Watch the full service:

The service begins at 13.45

The readings begins at 25:01

And the sermon begins at 32:20