Mass Readings for the First Sunday of Advent:
Isaiah 63.16b-17; 64.1, 3-8 Psalm 80.1-2, 14-15, 17-18 1 Corinthians 1.3-9 Mark 13.33-37
Here we are again, another Advent, another turn of that great wheel of time our ancient and medieval forebears spoke of, it turns over and over progressing toward the millenium, or rolling toward the abyss, or creeping toward the kingdom of heaven.
The beginning of our liturgical cycle, the Church year commencing, it put me in mind of T.S. Eliot’s last great poem, Little Gidding, and its famous line,
“… arriving where we started and knowing the place for the first time.”
That is, the circumstances of this Advent being different from the last, as familiar as the outline of the days of this season are, it is a new Advent in which we prepare for the coming of the King to whom we paid tribute last week. A king, who as I put it, is in exile in our day; and we the faithful, like the Dutch or the Norwegians during the Second World War, maintain our allegiance to our king because to cease to do so is to make a spiritual surrender that consigns us to death and excludes us from heaven, the communion of the saints, and the resurrection.
This spiritual moment and place is, indeed, being visited for the first time – and for a lot of people the sense of living in an occupied place is being felt more and more. And so, we’re called to consider what this Advent is, what it will be, as we renew our understanding of Christ, our faith in God’s promises, and consider how in the coming year we are to be faithful, watchful good servants of the Lord.
Among the melancholy images of Eliot’s poem that touches on the vicissitudes of spiritual life, of the hard choices we have in the midst of life’s difficulties, is famously that of the broken king coming at night to the sanctuary of the tiny church of St. John the Evangelist at Little Gidding, in England. It’s a reference to the dejected King Charles I who sought refuge there after losing the deciding battle of the English Civil War at Naseby. He had been to Little Gidding before, in happier times, it was actually a small lay Christian spiritual community. But at his last visit, he was on the run, and after some moments of solace there, left and a few days later, he surrendered himself to his enemies. As many know, he was subsequently put on trial, found guilty and executed at Whitehall, outside the magnificent banqueting hall he had built that commemorated his father, James I’s reign.
The verses are,
“If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for. It would be the same…”
That’s definitely a melancholy sentiment, and somewhat appropriate to this dark time of the year when so many of us in northern latitudes struggle with yet darker thoughts, with gloominess of mood and confusion of mind – there will be folks coming into the church throughout this season, and at Christmas, not quite sure why they’re here, but are here nonetheless.
Now that broken king is not our king, Christ; but rather, we should reflect on who Charles was in his day, and what his defeat and execution portended. It was the beginning of the end of the age of kings, and Charles would not be the first monarch vanquished by his people, not the first to lose his head.
My sense is that we are now in a time of change, when faith in the order of things is shaken, that those who have been given power over us in terms of governance, but also in the network of institutions and private corporations that are the creators and sustainers of our culture and economy, no longer enjoy the confidence of the vast majority of people.
It’s in times like these that prophets arise, and when we turn to sacred scripture, read and listen to the words of Isaiah, we hear him speaking of such a time as arose in his day. Isaiah began his prophetic career in a time of looming disaster. He’s believed to have been a member of the royal family, a cousin to the kings he criticized. So, in one sense brave for breaking ranks with the elite of his day, he also enjoyed some security by virtue of his connections. He had an insider’s knowledge of things, and was a keen observer of his society from top to bottom; and he could see how, indeed, the fish rots from the head.
And yet, he was hopeful. He was hopeful, despite seeing with awful clarity where things were headed; that while at last, one king, Hezekiah listened to him and briefly restored Jerusalem’s fortunes, their fate was sealed by a culture at the royal court that was corrupt and corrupting of the nation. And that realization gives us his recurring plea for God to intervene, as he says in today’s lesson, to “tear open the heavens and come down, so that mountains would quake at your presence.”
For the next three weeks, almost every day in the readings of the masses, we will hear from Isaiah as he shares his God-given vision of hope, of comfort, of God’s love for his faithful people whom he will deliver, that those who walk in darkness will be given a great guiding light. So too will we hear a message, a call to us to trust in God, and to put ourselves in his hands, to be as clay to the potter, and be moulded by him.
Can we trust in that light? Will we put ourselves in God’s hands? Or are we going to try to find some little comfort in the sentimentality of the season; in nostalgia for Christmases of the past, of happier days?
We need to answer these questions because we are challenged by Jesus to make a choice in this. Will we serve him, regardless of the times being favourable or not? Stay awake into the night and keep a faithful watch? And we must treat this Advent, not as yet another one, but as I said before, as a unique time of choosing.
Eliot’s Little Gidding as a location is not really significant in itself – it’s simply the end of the road; as it was for Charles and a whole way of understanding the world.
As Eliot puts it,
“There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.”
Isaiah contemplated the end of Israel, of Judah, the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the House of David; he’d come to the end of that road, and so too would the nation. How then could the people carry on? And what of God’s work of redeeming humanity? How could this be accomplished without a Son of David on his throne? And it was then, pushed beyond what he knew, that he began to look elsewhere for the answer, straining to see what was over the horizon, and in the distance perceive it coming from where he least expected it.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King, the hero elf and friend of Frodo, Legolas says, “Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.”
So, this Advent I pray will be the end of the road for many, a coming to the end of this world and so, a realization that it is not in earthly places or along the world’s highways and byways where life’s meaning is found. That meaning which points to our purpose and its fulfilment, this is our salvation. And that is found in our obedience to God, and our accepting each of us our particular task in his service; in our watchfulness through the long night knowing the darkness cannot endure, and should Our Lord not come til the dawn, that daybreak will be all the more glorious.
So, let us make of this church, both in the sense of it being a building but also a people, the nearest in time and place for the world’s end, and a new beginning, a watchful place filled with hope borne of faith in Christ.
Amen.