“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world …” (Advent One Luke 21:25-38) An apt description of outer events and inner states of mind for many of us at this time. Disturbance and despair, weariness and wariness, numbness and confusion are how many are feeling at the moment as wars around the world cruelly grind on and even peaceful societies chose division and bunkering down, and creation alternatively boils and freezes. But Advent reminds us this is the disturbance of new beginnings not the end!
You may wish to read what I wrote on these texts in my Advent Course. Go to day five, Week One.
This week is the beginning of the church year. And we begin the year by thinking about the end of time as we know it; we begin to prepare for new beginnings by acknowledging that the old must give way; and that we must make ourselves ready by being awake and yet not alarmed! It is a strange spiritual truth that we prepare for beginnings by considering endings. So do not be feint hearted as we are called to new hope.
Advent, we have been told is about waiting. But it is not a gentle passive waiting that we are called to. It is longing, a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, an openness to a new order – a restlessness for the ways of God. The invitation, the commandment is to be alert or the image of being awake which has the potential to alarm. But paradoxically we are told to be alert but also to be on guard so that our hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and the worries of this world. In many ways Advent is an exploration of how to be alert but not alarmed, to live in a state of in-betweeness: in between the birth of baby Jesus and the coming of the cosmic Christ; in between the world that is and the world that could be; in between our sleepy desire for a comfortable life and our deep desire for the in breaking of the reign of God.
I live in a little coastal town where it seems possible, even if always just out of reach, to live the good life: to live in a green place, a place of plenty, a friendly place, a slower paced place. What not to like? Why in this place would we desire real change – maybe just a little fine adjustment here and there but surely not anything too radically different! But one only has to be here a short time before realizing that despite green trees and pastures there are hearts and minds that live under very grey and low skies and struggle to hang onto life itself. That despite living in what sometimes looks like the garden of Eden families are as fractured here as anywhere else. That despite a wonderful community for those who happily join in and are successful members there are many who cannot participate because of physical and mental health problems etc.
And in the disturbance there is a sort of gift for we tend not to truly long for the kingdom until we acknowledge the darkness, pain and violence and failure of life as it is. Our world needs more than just a bit of tinkering on the edges. Jesus did not come among us so business as usual could go on - although to a large extent that is what we in the church have worked hard to achieve! Jesus came to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom – a community in which the light, loving kindness and thriving of God reigns in all life.
Let me suggest three reasons why we need to wake up and be alert to another way of living, three reasons why we might allow desire for change and the reign of God to enter in, three reasons why business as usual does not serve us or anyone!
Firstly the environment that we love cannot cope with business as usual for much longer, in fact is not coping already. We must change our priorities, the amount of material wealth we require for a good life, our share arrangements if the world we rely on is to survive, heal and be restored to the fullness that the Creator intended and intends. Clearly our political and industry leaders do not intend to lead the way. We each must individually and collectively step up and care for creation.
Secondly people, including some that we love, are left out of the current society. Some of us belong to families where it is easy to see the face of some who are left behind by competitive society. Some of us will need to sit still a little longer to see faces and names of those who are left out. And this is just in our small and privileged lives. How much more so in the wider world. How many millions of God’s most precious souls are left out of the joy and wealth of the creation? So many that we cannot simply give more donations, important and kind though that is, real change is needed. Can we for at least a moment actually desire a different world in which the good things that make for life were more evenly distributed – and we wouldn’t necessarily be in charge of that redistribution?!
And thirdly we are stressed out of our rightful minds and hearts. A new kingdom would not be all about our giving up what we have so that others can have more. Or at least some of what we would be giving up is the stress of forever trying to manage things. In a world in which we lived more gently on creation, in which others had more of the resources, you and I might have less of the stress and work! You and I might have more time to walk and sing and watch the dawn and the sunset. Maybe here at least we can have an inkling of the desire for the kingdom of God, the reign of someone other than us, to come.
The truth is it is hard to desire real change, even good change. And to those of us who are a bit feint hearted let me share some words from Maria Boulding: “If you want God, and long for union with God, yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes. If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that you have no strength even to want God, yet are still dissatisfied that you don’t, you are already keeping Advent in your life. If you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire, that the touch of God in your life stills you by its gentleness, that there is a mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation.
Your hope is not a mocking dream; God creates in human hearts a huge desire and a sense of need, because God wants to fill them with the gift of God’s own self. It is because God’s self-sharing love is there first, forestalling any response or prayer from our side, that such hope can be in us. We cannot hope until we know, however obscurely, that there is something to hope for; if we have had no glimpse of a vision, we cannot conduct our lives with vision. And yet we do: there is hope in us, and longing, because grace was there first. God’s longing for us is the spring of our longing for God.”
Even so, come Lord Jesus Christ, come into our broken world with your healing wholeness and awaken us to life.
This is my work informed by all I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others. This week I am especially grateful to the late Maria Boulding: holy hermit, nun, theologian and writer.
Maria Boulding, "The Coming of God", SPCK, London, 1994
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