HOPING FOR ADVENT

Are you a member (whether closet or open) of CAMRAD? Don't panic. It is alright for Methodists to belong. It has got a 'D' at the end of its name. It is the Campaign for Real Advents, a movement I proposed forming many years ago now. Not that it has made any apparent difference. In 'normal' years, Advent has been taken over by Christmas.

I know that Advent can properly be called a time of preparation for Christmas. But preparing for something is not the same as having it or experiencing it. Are we in danger of living in a world where "I want, I get; and I get it now" is the norm to which we all now conform? Is that affecting us in our churches? Are we just looking forward to letting things rip?

It is sometimes said that Advent is a time of hope. But in what do we place our hope? Jesus suggested that where your heart is and where your energy goes tells you what it is that you treasure the most. It will be those things that will be the most important for you over the weeks of Advent. It is easy for them to take over, partly because it is easier for us to identify them and get our minds round them.

It is harder to remember the Christian story (which all those things are meant to celebrate), and to let what the story represents become real for us. In the northern hemisphere Advent comes when the days are physically darkening, and it feels as if the world is too. We get a few weeks in November of remembering the saints and all the dead. Traditionally that remembering has led people in Advent to reflect on what are sometimes called the "four last things" - death, judgement, hell and heaven and to prepare themselves for them. It is not surprising therefore that we react to it all by rushing to turn away from all those dark thoughts and by repacking Advent as a busy but indulgent festive preparation for Christmas!

A 'proper' Advent calendar would begin with a time of getting ourselves made, our churches ready and the world ready for something else. We need to be ready to receive afresh the good news of God's love coming to us all, embracing us, filling us with light and life and joy. The Jewish people looked for God to intervene decisively in the world through a king or special agent (a "Messiah"). Looking back, we celebrate the fact that God did come, through the birth of Jesus. Looking forward, we pray that Jesus will come to us again. As we celebrate both past and future in the present, we can discover that above all he comes to us now, so that when he comes to us in the future, he will find us prepared.

So in Advent we prepare ourselves to celebrate that Jesus was born over two thousand years ago to show us in human ways that God's love which was there in the creation of the world in the beginning is here for each one of us now. We prepare to celebrate the promise that, if and when the world as we know it comes to an end, Jesus will still come to us to show us that the same love of God is there for us in and through it all. We celebrate that the same Jesus comes to us now, knocking on the door of our hearts; and we open ourselves to receive him.

We do not know when God will come to us. We have to be on the lookout and always be ready. God might even come in the form of a helpless baby, and we and the world might be judged by whether we notice and whether we are ready.

In this time before Christmas
things pass by like shooting stars,
whether leading to good things,
or heading for disaster,
is hard to tell
As we journey on, one star
catches our attention, and
stops over a baby in a manger,
the still centre of our turning world.

Revd. K G Howecroft (revised 3. 11. 2024)
Via Ken Wales