York Minster

The Message of Advent

Date: 13th December 2009
Preacher: The Very Reverend Keith Jones, Dean of York

The readings for the season of Advent are in danger of being crowded out by the tide of carols and Christmas music.  But they are all about getting ready.  We hear a good deal about John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus.  We hear about the angel coming to visit Mary and another message in a dream to Joseph.  And then there is a good deal about the second coming of Christ, with angels and the sound of the trumpet, to judge the living and the dead.  How does all this fit together?

It makes sense if we start with what is the most important thing of all: that God wants the life of mortal beings like you and me to be ready to be a part of his life.  He wants to share himself with us.  I don’t know much about heaven, but whatever it is, it would be sharing in God’s life.  And the way God is trying to help this to happen is to introduce us to Jesus.  For Jesus was, all the time he was alive, at one with God, whom he called his Father.  There was no hindrance, no barrier, no impediment between him and God.  He was, to use the language of the Old Testament, without sin.

Sin is a sort of false life.  It is marked by pretence, and falsehood.  In particular, it is when we pretend that we can do very well without God, and can be wholly in charge of our own destiny, do it our way.  Sin is encouraged by secrecy and deviousness, which are so common a feature of human life that we hardly notice them, and think they are normal.  They are what everyone does, so it must be all right.  Because of sin, we misuse our neighbour and make a mess of the gift of love, and deceive one another and end up by being cruel and heedless in dealing with each other.

On the contrary, the way of holiness, which is the alternative way, the way that Jesus lived and taught, is marked by simplicity and straightforwardness.  This is one of the many lessons the Society of Friends taught the world when they began: why should we have to rely, they asked, on swearing oaths, when if we were truthful we would be people who said yes and no and meant it?  Why should we be obsessed with formalities and fussy regulations about the way we spoke to each other, when the main thing is to be straightforward and on the level with each other.  Those were the days when banking for example was a matter of trusting people, and for some generations the Quakers were among the best business people and bankers.  So much of the complication of business life is really related to greed and deceit, carried to a high art, alas.

So when we take Jesus seriously, it is as if God is setting before us the ways of sin or of holiness and saying that we should choose.  If we decide that we shall take the duty of holiness seriously we shall, I am afraid, have a hard task.  For the world will ask us to play its games, which are infected seriously with deceit and falseness: in fact these are many of the things that count as worldly wisdom and the art of living, and they are regarded as the necessary accomplishment of growing up.  No wonder Jesus remarked that to find holiness we must become like little children again.  I am afraid your chances of becoming wealthy are rather diminished.  But then the more this ideal takes hold, the less that will worry you.

For holiness depends on something else, which I have not mentioned.  It is based on not being afraid.  It is almost impossible to want holiness if you are not prepared to trust God to be there for you.  If God is there, then you will not be afraid, because the troubles of this life may be very unpleasant but they are by no means all there is.  But faith is deciding to live as if God is there, and that life with him outweighs everything else. 

This is the message of Advent: prepare to meet God, so that when you do meet him it will be an easy, natural transition.  We too often think of dying as a fearful and unnatural thing.  But if it is an event in which God is making himself fully known to us, either immediately or after a period of oblivion (you can take your pick) then there is really nothing to be afraid of.  We see this in the lives of many holy people, who while they are alive seem already to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, already at home with the Lord God.