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Sunday November 27, 2005 - Advent 1, Year B

"O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel."

It's one of the most beautiful hymns in our hymnal. The medieval words, full of biblical allusions; the melody with its echoes of monastic plainsong,
welcome us to this season of Advent.

Advent is a season
of waiting, waiting and watching
for the coming of the Messiah.
We wait and watch
for the baby Jesus, following the story from the annunciation of his birth to Mary,
her visit to her cousin Elizabeth,
and finally that long journey to Bethlehem.

But in Advent
we also wait for another coming. It's the Messiah again,
but this time we expect him to come
not as a tiny baby
but with power and glory,
a second coming of judgement and justice,
to put the world to rights.

And so we're caught between two comings,
and in Advent, we wait.
We wait, and we pray to God
to put an end to our waiting,
to come — preferably sooner rather than later.

It's that waiting, that hope that God will come,
that runs through our readings today.
But what we don't expect, what makes us
a but uncomfortable
is the sort of coming
that is expected in our Old Testament and gospel readings.
Because this coming
is not a benevolent, gently coming.
This coming is violent, even frightening.

The prophet Isaiah
demands that God come
in a way that no one can mistake:
"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil."

In the gospel of Mark,
"the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken."

This coming
is not the beautiful scene we see on Christmas cards. This coming
is much more dramatic, a coming that will shake the world
to its foundations, a coming that will change the world,
transform it
re-create it.

I'm not altogether sure
I want that coming.

And yet, our Christian tradition has always believed that this coming
will be a good thing. Yes, this coming will have great power, yes this coming will be frightening. But underneath it all
we trust
that the God who created us
will not destroy us,
the God who brought us life
will not take it away.
It might be frightening,
but it will, in the end
be good.

In a couple of weeks
the movie "the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" will open in theaters.
I remember as a child
loving the book that it's based on, by the great Christian writer
C. S. Lewis.
Four children
climb through the winter coats
stored in an old closet,
and fall out the other side
into a whole new world, the world of Narnia.

At the time, I thought it was just a wonderful story.
But as I grew older, I discovered that it was in fact an allegory, a story that stood for another story. And that other story
is the Christian story.
At the center of it all
is the great lion, Aslan.

When the four children arrive in Narnia, Mr and Mrs Beaver try to explain who Aslan is to them:
"I'll tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

God is not safe. But God is good.
That's why we can pray,
Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

It reminds me of something else I heard this week.
It was a radio program, talking, I think, about the problems of trying to develop effective government in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the image used
was of riding a sleeping lion. It's easy enough to get on, but when the lion wakes up
you're in trouble.
You're stuck there, with no control. And to jump off
would be even more dangerous.

Trusting God
is like climbing on the back of a sleeping lion. It feels safe — or at least, safer than sitting in front of the lion's mouth. And on his back, we get to see the luxurious fur of his mane, the rippling muscles, the strong-beating heart.

But getting up on the back of the lion
we also risk
that he might wake up.
And if the lion wakes up,
then we are likely to be taken
somewhere we hadn't planned
on going.
Because once that lion wakes up,
if you're on its back, you're at its mercy. You can't control a lion;
and you cant get off, either,
unless you're willing to risk
being eaten.

Not that God is planning to eat us any time soon.
But following God
is a risk. Deciding to get on the back of the sleeping lion, committing ourselves to God while things are quiet
is all very easy.
But there's always a chance
the lion might wake up,
always the chance
that we might be taken
somewhere we don't quite plan to go.
Always that risk
of unpredictable power.

It's much easier
to be safe.
To keep our distance from the lion.
To keep our distance from God.

Even though I sing the words "come, o come, Emmanuel"
there is another part of me that says
"stay away, God. I'm happy as I am. Just leave me be."

You see, as Christians we're constantly caught in a tension
between the desire for God, the desire to see God face to face
and the fear that somehow doing so
will change our lives, the knowledge that God is in fact dangerous.

Recently, I've been trying to get back into the discipline of praying Morning Prayer each morning, the first thing I do when I wake up. I want
to spend time with God, I want
to make space so that maybe, just maybe, I might hear
the voice of God
speaking to me.
I want that.

But more often than not
what happens
is that I get to the end of the psalm — that means I've prayed an opening prayer, and a canticle as well as the psalm — I get to the end of that psalm
and I can't remember anything that I've prayed, nothing at all.
I'd like to say that each time that happens, I go back and start over again, trying to keep focused. But what usually happens
is that I just keep on going, galloping through the readings and the prayers,
because you know, if I took the time to stop
maybe God would speak to me.
And then what would I do?

Following God
involves risk. It involves commitment. It might even involve danger.
And that's hard for us to do. We prefer to stay in safety, even when
that feels
kind of flat.

It's as if we are caught between two worlds. One benevolent, comforting, but somehow unsatisfying, like drowning in marshmallow.
The other dangerous, risky, even frightening
but with an intensity of life
that we can't turn aside from.
It's that clarity of senses
that comes when we are most on the edge.

It's that tension, that paradox
that sometimes makes it hard to be Christians.
Because while on the one hand, we are drawn to God;
on the other hand
we want to run a million miles,
to find somewhere safe, somewhere that this wild, unpredictible God
can't take us.

"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," the words that we will sing every week for the next four weeks
are dangerous words.
Because what we are asking
is for God
to invade our world. To come
not as some woolly gentle grandfather figure
but with falling stars and a shattering earth.

I wonder if it's something
we are really ready
to risk?

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005