\t<\/p>\n
preached at the Eucharist on 8 December 2002 by Canon Jeremy Davies The Christmas cards have already started to arrive and, miracle of miracles, I’ve even started writing my own.\u00a0 Among those which arrived yesterday was one from a friend who is a poet.\u00a0 And unlike the cards which contain letters of family crises and achievements in the last year, which I put aside for later consumption with a stiff drink, I read Alwyn Marriage’s poem straight away \u2013 and found food for thought. I hope you have her poem in your hand: it’s called <\/span><\/span>‘Uncertain Advent’<\/i><\/span><\/span>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Can Christmas this year pierce the gathering darkness, Stars and angels tell a different story, Waiting in the dark we cannot know Through the dark hours our thoughts are turned and tossed Before the morning comes Yet even now we dare to trust our longing, Uncertain Advent<\/i><\/span><\/span> certainly catches the mood this year: catches the mood of the season which is always about waiting in the darkness, about longing and hope, about cosmic conflagration as well as our personal sense of mortality. However many Christmas cards we write bearing hope of comfort and joy and a quickly scrawled message ‘Hope to see you in 2003’, Advent has a feeling of the world in crisis. And this Advent, as the poem suggests, is more than usually fraught with danger and uncertainty<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Apocalyptic premonitions shape our Advent, I suppose we come here each week, and not just in times of national or international crisis, because we believe that God is faithful. That, despite all the signs to the contrary, there is point and meaning and purpose to existence. That despite the horrendous mess humankind manages to make of this world, there is a God who loves and forgives and who provides us with the means to unpick the mess we have made. A God who is sufficiently involved in our predicament that he is prepared to offer himself as the way out.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So while I’m reading Alwyn Marriage’s poem about uncertain Advent, and picking up the Guardian from the mat, that is already telling me (as I’m bent double) that Saddam has produced his evidence and Bush isn’t believing him.\u00a0 With the Guardian in the one hand and the poem in the other, I go to my study to find a bible to consult today’s Gospel from Mark whom we started reading last week and who will be our guiding evangelist throughout next year. And as I sit at my desk with these three aids to reflection \u2013 a poem, the Guardian, holy scripture \u2013 two other images confront me: the medieval crucifix which hangs above my desk, and a photo of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, which I cut from the newspaper last week to remind me that, though Advent is uncertain and our world in crisis, God is faithful.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Mark, by far the shortest of the gospels, is also the bleakest. Pared down to the bare essentials, it has been estimated that, apart from the Passion narrative, Mark contains only three weeks of material from the life of Jesus.\u00a0 Perhaps he was writing for a persecuted Christian community in Rome, presenting them with the name of Jesus and the spare outline of his story that alone would see them through the fiery ordeal that almost certainly awaited them.\u00a0 Mark is a good gospel to be reading in an uncertain Advent, because he doesn’t pull any punches.\u00a0 He tells it as it is.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So don’t be disappointed if, as we begin Mark’s account, we are confronted not with the baby in the manger; no angels, shepherds or wise men.\u00a0 If we want them, as we certainly shall do in a couple of weeks’ time, we shall have to turn to Matthew and Luke for help.\u00a0 Where does Mark start his narrative?\u00a0 Out in the desert, way back in the Old Testament, with a guy who has clearly stepped out of its pages.\u00a0 We call him John the Baptist.\u00a0 At a time of crisis in the Middle East, God provided someone who looked and sounded like an Old Testament prophet, wild, unkempt, living on what he could gather from the unyielding soil, beyond the power structure of ‘civilised society’, and delivering a message of such power that the people of Jerusalem and Judaea flocked to hear him and be baptised.\u00a0 His message was twofold:\u00a0 prepare the way of the Lord by preparing yourselves for his coming <\/span><\/span>and<\/i><\/span><\/span> there is one coming after me who is mightier than I.\u00a0 That is to say, John like the prophets of old challenged the men and women of his day to take responsibility for the way the world was by recovering a sense of the way the world was meant to be.\u00a0 He called them out of the city with its politics, its compromises and collusions and arrogant self-sufficiency, to the place of locusts and wild honey.\u00a0 He offered them nothing except a mirror in which to see themselves, and the natural but scarce water in which to make a clean breast of life; to start again.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n No wonder John ended up in prison and eventually executed on the whim of a lovely courtesan who represents the unredeemed and seamy side of all our lives.\u00a0 No politician or ruler could easily live with John the Baptist with his challenge and his questions.\u00a0 Prophets, as Jesus subsequently reminded us, have no honour in their own country.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But John, to recall the second part of his message, was not a political animal despite the political implications of his moral message.\u00a0 He was clothed as he was and survived as he did on God’s bounty because his finger was not wagging in condemnation but pointing beyond himself to one who would be mightier than he.\u00a0 He was pointing, like all the Old Testament prophets, to God.\u00a0 And John saw, coming over the horizon, one whom he recognised as God in human form.\u00a0 We call him Jesus.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We live in uncertain times.\u00a0 Today is the deadline for Saddam Hussein to comply with the UN resolution requiring him to declare what weapons of mass destruction he possesses.\u00a0 Eleven or twelve thousand pages of evidence have been amassed and delivered to the United Nations.\u00a0 Still the build-up of troops in the Gulf continues and the hawks in the American administration continue their belligerent rhetoric.\u00a0 Soon we may be at war and thousands of innocent people will suffer and many will die.\u00a0 It’s an uncertain world.\u00a0 Last week David Durston fixed our attention on the scourge of Aids and the reality of famine and starvation in southern Africa.\u00a0 And that’s only southern <\/i>Africa.\u00a0 Famine and Aids are already decimating the continent.\u00a0 It’s an uncertain world indeed \u2013 but for many there is an all too dreadful and certain outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n \n Before the morning comes In an uncertain world and during this uncertain Advent what is the appropriate Christian response?\u00a0\u00a0 Do we simply wring our hands in despair?\u00a0 Or ignore it all as beyond our competence and carry on with Christmas as though there’s no tomorrow?\u00a0 Or do we believe that God is faithful and that his grace is sufficient for us?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I’m glad to have a photo of the new Archbishop of Canterbury above my desk, and I’m glad that his election to his new responsibility took place in the great city on the Monday after Advent Sunday.\u00a0 I mustn’t cast him as the John the Baptist for our day \u2013 partly because I remember what happened to John the Baptist and partly because the new archbishop is likely to drown under the welter of expectation from within and beyond the Church.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Let me simply say that we shouldn’t be surprised when God does supply us with unexpected opportunities when the world looks most uncertain.\u00a0 And if Rowan Williams is, as I believe him to be, one of those opportunities, then we should be grateful.\u00a0 Last week in our Advent Processions we rehearsed the great Advent antiphons, the Great O’s.\u00a0 In the course of them we pleaded for Sapientia \u2013 for wisdom.\u00a0 In the new Archbishop we have a man of huge intellect \u2013 that no one disputes \u2013 but much more than that we have a man of wisdom, of depth, of holiness, courage and humour.\u00a0 A man who has looked deeply inside himself and wisely and compassionately at our world, and who knows his need and our need of God.\u00a0 If he makes challenging remarks that the media and the politicians don’t like, we will find him not pointing at himself or wagging a finger at us, but raising our sights to a wider horizon and a deeper encounter.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n God who has given us a saviour may yet again have given us a prophet.\u00a0 Our response, if we are to prepare the way of the Lord, is not simply to overreact when the Archbishop says something\u00a0 with which we disagree.\u00a0 (Who wants an Archbishop with whom everyone can always agree?)\u00a0 Our response to Rowan Williams in this uncertain Advent should be to look for wisdom and godwardness in what he says and let ourselves be both challenged and cleansed by what we find.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Yet even now we dare to trust our longing, \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" preached at the Eucharist on 8 December 2002 by Canon Jeremy Davies The Christmas cards have already started to arrive and, miracle of miracles, I’ve even started writing my own.\u00a0 Among those which arrived yesterday was one from a friend who is a poet.\u00a0 And unlike the cards which contain…<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe daily news that plays upon our fear?Apocalyptic premonitions shape our Advent,
\nthat even in the throb of Christmas preparation
\nwar and the plots of terrorists are ever near.Christmas may warm our hearts
\nbut not till wintry chill
\nhas seeped through sinew, heart and bone
\nwith threat of horrors yet unknown.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOf unquenched light and peace and warm goodwill;
\na message scattering stardust down the ages
\nencouraging us to trust that all may yet be well.
\nThrough darkest night a glimmer leads to morning,
\nguiding our hope and trust and longing still.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nwhat lies ahead, of war or of redemption.
\nWhat images assail us in the night,
\nof rape and pillage, show
\nof rage and might; or light
\nof long lost sweet remembered love?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe snatch at tantalising dreams of reconciliation
\ngently ruffling feathers on the white breast
\nof a dove.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe wait, as night
\naches on.\u00a0 Uncertain now
\nwhat shape or form
\nour longing calls to birth;
\nknowing only that those who take up arms
\nwill never bless this earth.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nthat when the first faint glow
\nof morning washes darkness from our eyes,
\nall that our hearts were yearning for in darkness,
\nwill like a radiant, Christmas morning
\nrise<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nthat even in the throb of Christmas preparation
\nwar and the plots of terrorists are ever near. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nwe wait, as night
\naches on.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nthat when the first faint glow
\nof morning washes darkness from our eyes,
\nall that our hearts were yearning for in darkness,
\nwill like a radiant, Christmas morning
\nrise.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n