Abstract
Advent opens under threat rather than with promise. Today’s gospel speaks of ‘distress among nations’, of havoc caused by natural phenomena, of lives eroded by fear. It is an all too recognisable scenario for us today, and for many it is the story of their lives. Severe weather systems, the pillaging of natural resources, economic breakdown, violent political and racial struggle, all bring the nations’ leaders round the table with greater frequency and ever-increasing urgency. In the mid-1970s it was calculated that there were 3 million refugees in the world; reliable statistics claim the figure now to be 15.2 million who have fled their countries plus the 26.4 million displaced within their own lands.
Far from serving to foster a joyous anticipation of the Christmas festival, a time when by mutual agreement families set aside their differences and when in time of war hostilities have been temporarily suspended, Advent seems to call us to face the worst, forbidding us to gloss over the misery that knowingly and unknowingly people perpetrate upon each other. To acknowledge the problem, perhaps, is to reach with greater urgency for the promise.
Yet Advent offers far more than a dose of realism; it is part also of the solution. Advent does not end with the Incarnation and the coming of Christ when in a ‘wonderful exchange’ God lodged in the material world to make it ready for redemption; nor does it end with the returning Christ at Easter to rescue and transform wounded humanity; nor with his coming as Spirit at Pentecost to accompany and renew us in our earthly pilgrimage. It is only with the coming of Christ at the end of time that Advent is complete, as all creation is reconciled with its Creator. When within itself the season of Advent carries such a sweep of Comings, it is no surprise to learn it was once observed at the end and not at the beginning of the Christian Year.
Part of the solution – since what Advent and the Christian Year offer is no less than a new map and a new compass. In and through the tired and jaded story of recurring human advance and retreat, of breakthrough and setback, of love lavished and withdrawn, it offers to interweave a ‘new narrative’, an alternative time line, characterised not by historical events but by seismic shifts, through divine prompting, in the human spirit. As the Year unfolds, the seasons and the truths they enshrine make their inroads into human life, as the story of salvation is unfolded. Within this, our worshipping, our liturgical, lives take up the tale and leave their traces on church and society. The traditional daily office makes all time holy. In weekly sacrament, matter is made vivid with God’s presence and a pattern of bodily sharing challenges our broken human community. In baptism persons are consecrated and called on a journey measured not in miles or years but in a deepening ability to love God and neighbour.
In praise and hearing the Word read and preached, the habit is developed of listening for God in daily life. A new map and compass. As Rowan Williams put it, Christianity is life before it is system or creed; it is about taking the plunge, but we have to have ‘rhythms to keep us moving through the water’.
Today’s readings remind us of this whole sweep of the Advent season. As Judah faces the inevitable and approaching destruction of Jerusalem and the certainty of exile in Babylon, Jeremiah combats the stubborn belief of his people that they can find security in political deals and clever alliances. Looking beyond the coming disaster, he urges the people to understand that the recovery of their lands, their city and temple is God’s alone to give, as God assuredly will in the shape of a successor to their most trusted and loved king David, who will inaugurate a time when people will live with others justly and uprightly. The epistle also takes the long view, towards the final coming of Christ, and Paul prays that the time in between will be one of growth in holiness and good conduct. The gospel strikes a warning note, that as the kingdom of God approaches we should make ourselves ready and able to stand before God, no longer slave to our appetites or to our inner anxieties. In each of these readings there is the strong suggestion that God’s future sets standards for the present.
Before, the sign of this new future about to dawn was uncovered by the prophets in the history of the people, writ larger in political disaster and moral breakdown. In the gospels it was reaffirmed in natural phenomena and ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. Now, we may say, the sign is the new people of God to whom Paul writes. The gospel is not about the salvation of some but the reconciliation of the whole creation with its Creator. The conduct of those who heed God’s call will not only be part of the dynamic of the coming of Christ but will be exemplary in readying the hearts of all for that which is promised, the sign of what is just round the corner. The conductor Antal Dorati, reflecting on his 80th birthday, saw conducting as a giving of signs: ‘There are too many conductors who mime what is being heard, whereas the conductor conducts what is not being heard, but will be in the flash of a second.’
This illustration highlights the first of two dimensions within the conduct expected of Christ’s disciples as suggested by today’s readings. Luke says we are to live as people ‘alert at all times’, not knowing when ‘that day’ will arrive. It is one thing to accept the desirability of loving one’s neighbour but quite another to do this consistently, and indeed to recognise the many small and large opportunities to do so. Such an alertness implies a readiness, openness and sensitivity to those amongst whom we live. This is not a call to rigorous discipline at all times so much as seeking to ‘live with expectation’. It is as if into the ordinariness of the everyday we were to ‘fold’, like a good cook adding ingredients that make all the difference, this feeling of Advent anticipation. We look towards the final Coming, but the light is not in the distance but seen reflected in our own faces.
The second characteristic of the Advent ethic is that our conduct springs from a well of thankfulness. Thanking people is usually no more than a polite convention, often delivered in an off hand way. There is nothing perfunctory about Paul’s gratitude here and in other letters. There is an illustration here of what it means genuinely to offer thanks. You want more for that person or group for which you feel gratitude, and here Paul wishes for them the best thing he can think of, abundance of love and deepening holiness. Living thankful, ‘eucharistic’, lives opens many doors, for ourselves and others. An overwhelming sense of gratitude, for the gifts of God in past and present and for the promise of God for the future, is to colour our every action, gracing our relationships with each other. It is above all infectious.
For us Advent is map and compass, and we are the new geographers who draw it upon the face of the world. Bruce Chatwyn writes of the Aboriginal Australian belief that in the Dreamtime the ancestors wandered the continent singing out the name of everything that crossed their path. These invisible pathways or ‘songlines’ constitute an alternative map of the terrain. If you know the song, you can find the way.