Sermon at the Sung Eucharist on the First Sunday of Advent 2016

“Driving last year in the red wilderness of Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, again and again I was surprised by the sudden arrival of a flock of budgerigars, flying in perfect formation.  Startled at the sight of the truck, they would turn, the sun would flash on their emerald wings, and then the vision would be gone.”  This beautiful image is described by the writer, Monica Furlong, in the Introduction to her book Bird of Paradise.  It’s a deeply evocative image – birds’ wings flashing green and gold in the bright sunshine, a flurry of wingbeats, and the vision is gone in a moment: a glimpse of rare beauty, a glimpse of promise beyond our ordinary experience.

The psychiatrist Carl Jung said that the moments the eternal erupted into the transitory had been the best moments of his life.  As the poet George Herbert puts it when he writes on prayer – Prayer is:

The Milkie Way, the Bird of Paradise,
Church bels beyond the Starres heard, the Soul’s Blood,
The Land of Spices, something understood.

Today we celebrate Advent Sunday, the beginning of a new Church year; and it’s a day on which our bible readings pull us up short.  “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming… you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour”.  Today we’re reminded of the truth and the promise that God has come and does come and will come into our midst – as suddenly as that flock of birds, giving glimpses of beauty beyond our dreams, summoning us to live beyond ourselves.

Time and again the authors of the biblical texts speak of this coming of God into our midst:  of how it will happen.  How unexpected will be that coming.  How challenging God’s coming will be to us.  God’s coming will be as silent as the tip-toe of a thief in the night.  Or it will be with the roar of thunder and lightning, like a king at the head of his army, arriving triumphant on his chariot.  God’s coming will be with swift suddenness, as of a huge flood.  Or it will come like the first glimmer of dawn on the horizon at the end of a long, cold night.  The images tumble along, conflicting with one another, as the writers struggle to express the inexpressible. 

Today, these ways of talking about God’s coming among us are often regarded as the territory of the mentally ill, or of the fundamentalists.  But yet they stand as reminders to us to be on the alert, to learn to expect the unexpected, to be on the lookout for God’s coming.  Clocks may tick tock on their way; we may keep calendars on our walls to mark the passing of time.  But God’s coming cannot be timed and booked into the diary.  For whatever else may be the case, God’s coming will come upon us unawares, and we may easily miss it.  We stand in danger of failing to recognize God in our own midst. 

How then are we to learn to recognize God’s coming among us, even here in Westminster?  What are the signs to be, that God is here?  How are we to glimpse God in our midst?

There’s a story told of one of the first monks who lived in the Egyptian desert 400 years or so after the birth of Christ.  This monk very much wanted to find the God whom he worshipped day and night.  He prayed and prayed, but felt nothing, saw nothing.  He recited the psalms faithfully, but still nothing.  So eventually he decided to go on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem.  He trudged hundreds of miles across the desert, and came to the city.  He made his way to the sites of Jesus’ death and burial and resurrection, but still nothing.  Eventually, the monk realized that he was getting nowhere, so he set off back to his hut in the Egyptian desert.  But as he neared his hut, he decided to consult his abbot.  “I wish to find God, but I have searched and searched and cannot find him.  What am I to do?”  Go back to your hut, my son, and you will find that God comes to you when you least expect him.”  And there, as he arrived at his hut, the monk found a beggar, covered with sores and very hungry, seeking food and shelter.  It was only then that the monk knew that God had truly come to him, knocking at the very door of his home.

Where does God promise to come to meet with us?  When we least expect it, in the poor, the needy, the vulnerable: among those whom we ignore and despise; when we help the helpless, care for the weak.  It’s in the boring often mundane things of our lives that we may catch those glimpses of God among us: sitting with someone who is very ill, watching out for an elderly neighbour, offering childcare to a hard-pressed mum; spending time with a tired and fearful child who cannot sleep.  The needy, the weak and the vulnerable, we are told in the gospel, are to be Christ to us.  We are to treat them with all the care and love and attention that we would lavish on Christ himself – for in them we may find a glimpse of the beauty and grace of Christ present among us. 

This is no mere romantic dream.  Caring for the sick, vulnerable and needy is hard work – and can be very unpleasant and very demanding.  We may go for years and years without any sense of the presence of God among those who ask for our care.  But still we are promised, still we are asked to live in the faith that in responding with love to the needy and poor Christ is to be found in our midst.

Or you could take a wider view.  When you hear words of truth being spoken with courage by those who oppose injustice in our society, you may find echoes of the voice of Christ among us today.  Those who speak up bravely on behalf of the Palestinians of Gaza, penned within what amounts to a virtual concentration camp, are speaking for oppressed peoples who otherwise have little voice in the wider world.  Those Syrians who seek with huge courage to build peace between warring communities trapped by their fearful history or ideology are acting in the spirit of the prophet Isaiah whose words helped to define Jesus’ own sense of purpose and mission.  All these people speak with the dis-comforting prophetic voice which echoes the voice of Christ in the gospels.  Peacemakers, justice seekers – among them today we may catch glimpses of Christ in our midst.

Or you could turn to our own Christian communities today to find the answer to that question:  where does God come among us now?  ‘Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’ we are told in the gospel.  Christ still comes to us, still dwells among us, still reveals himself to us, even here in St Margaret’s.  Remember the story of the disciples walking with the stranger from Jerusalem to the little village of Emmaus, a couple of days after the crucifixion?  They glimpsed the truth of that stranger in the breaking of the bread, and knew him to be the risen Christ come among them.  And the promise still holds true today.  We receive the bread and wine with thanksgiving, asking for the eyes of faith to glimpse the joy and beauty of risen Christ among us now.

I began with a picture of the brilliant emerald of budgerigar wings flashing in the hot Australian sun – a glimpse and promise of extraordinary beauty.  I end with some rather more local birds, nonetheless beautiful, and nonetheless ordinary reminders to us of the extraordinary humility of the God who comes to dwell among us, even now.

This is Bird Psalm by the poet U A Fanthorpe:

The Swallow said,
He comes like me,
Longed for; unexpectedly.

The superficial eye
Will pass him by,
Said the Wren.

The best singer ever heard,
No one will take much notice,
Said the Blackbird.

The Owl said,
He is who, who is he
Who enters the heart as soft
As my soundless wings, as me.