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ADVENT HOPE
Preached on 2nd December 07
Light and darkness:
If I asked
you to make a mental list of all the sources of light, my guess is
that you would soon run out of space. You would probably start with
the sun and the stars and the moon, and then discard the moon as you
remember that it reflects the light of the sun, rather than
generating its own light. Then there is the light generated by the
earth that shows its self in volcanic eruptions and flashes of
lightning. Electric lights, torches, neon lights, Christmas lights,
firelight, candlelight – the list is endless. But now make a list
of the sources of darkness. Where does darkness come from? That’s
not so easy is it? All we can say is that darkness is the absence
of light.
At this time of year, as
we move towards mid-winter’s day and daylight hours are reduced to a
minimum, I usually find my thoughts turning to our ancestors,
wondering how they coped. I try to imagine the stone age people,
the hunter-gatherers, whose nomadic lifestyle brought them to
Cradley from time to time where they made temporary encampments by
the springs at Oldnall, hunted for food in what was then a thickly
wooded area, before moving on leaving no trace of their being there
other than loads of flint arrow-heads, scrapers and other crude
tools. How would they have coped with the onset of winter? Is it
any wonder that primitive people worshipped the sun? Warmth,
daylight, new growth, renewed life were all given by the sun. They
accepted the rhythm of the seasons, knowing that the sun, upon which
their life depended, would soon begin to dispel the cold and
darkness that held them in its icy grip.
That, I think, is the
context in which we should understand the writer of John’s gospel
referring to God as the light that shines in the darkness and the
darkness can never put it out. Just as the sun is always there, as
darkness turns to daylight, as winter turns to spring, so too is God
– as constant as the sun. Always there, never failing – the source
of all goodness, all life, all hope of a better future.
Advent Sunday is the day
that Christians celebrate this hope of a better future. And that is
why decorative lights play such an important part in those
celebrations. Over 700 years before Jesus’ birth, prophets like
Isaiah instilled hope into the nations life, by looking forward to
the time when things would be different. It was as though they were
living in permanent darkness, but God would do something decisive
and rescue them from their plight. Nations would abandon their
weapons of war and learn how to live peacefully together. “Come”,
says the prophet, “let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Christians believe that
Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. So each year, as we
prepare ourselves to celebrate the coming of Christ into an
unsuspecting and unprepared world, we also take the opportunity to
reflect upon the wonders that God has in store for us. We call it
the Advent Hope.
Christ in the
unexpected:
Matthew was reflecting upon the widely held belief that Christ would
physically return to earth and that would signal the beginning of
the end-time, when God restores all creation into the way that God
intended it to be.
I have to say that for
me, and I suspect for many modern day Christians, the second coming
of Christ does not figure very highly in our expectations or our
hopes for the future. We are content to make our creedal statement
that “Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again”
and leave it at that. After all, the gospel writers constantly tell
us that no-one knows the day or the hour, neither the angels in
heaven, or the Son, but only the Father. So we leave the
speculation to others, and get on with the work that God has given
to us. After all, there is a sense in which Christ has never left
us, and we are encouraged to look for the presence of Christ in our
neighbour and to see ourselves, the church, as the Body of Christ,
the physical presence of Christ on earth.
But when Matthew talks
of Jesus coming at an unexpected hour, he is speaking to our
condition, for it reminds us that we are also likely to encounter
Christ at unexpected moments, in unexpected situations.
So here we are, in a
seemingly impossible situation. How on earth do we prepare
ourselves for the unexpected?
HIV/AIDS:
The answer, I think,
lies within the mission and ministry of Jesus himself. He was
constantly found in situations that decent people wouldn’t touch
with a barge pole. He mixed with undesirables, he feasted with
sinners, he took uneducated working men and a tax collector to form
his closest companions. He touched the lepers, the mentally ill,
and the dead and allowed himself to be touched by a woman with
menstrual problems and to have ointment lavished on him by a woman
with a bad reputation. In short, his whole life was lived out in
defiance of convention and the constraints placed upon society by
its religion. So that means that we too can expect to find Christ
in the unconventional people and situations of today.
Let me give you an
example of something that caught my attention as I was considering
the issues surrounding World Aids Day.
As most of you are
aware, this church tries to give what support we can to our mission
partner, Eileen McDonald, who is working with AIDS victims in South
Africa. In her last letter to us she made an oblique reference to
difficulties that AIDS workers are having with the South African
government. Those difficulties relate to the fact that president
Thabo Mbeki’s views on the disease are shaped by an obsession with
race, the legacy of colonialism and sexual shame. As a result of
these views, he blocked the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs in
public hospitals because he believed that the drugs companies were
overstating the link between HIV and AIDS in order to sell drugs.
Yet 2 million people in South Africa have already died of AIDS and
one in eight of the working age population is infected with HIV.
This is the background in which Eileen McDonald and thousands of
AIDS workers like her are trying to operate and often feel that they
are losing the battle.
To put it into
perspective, it is estimated that across the world there are over 33
million people infected with HIV, of which 2.5 million are
children. Surely, this must be one of the unexpected places that
Christ can be found. His spirit is moving people like Eileen to take
action to alleviate suffering, but he is also incarnate within those
who are infected. The Body of Christ has got AIDS! And therein
lies our Advent Hope, for whereas our reaction might be to run away
from the danger of infection, Christ is still there, working and
moving and trying to change the hearts and attitudes of those who
have the power to rid the earth of this killer disease.
Our situation today:
Let me give
you one final example of looking for God in unexpected situations,
this time, much closer to home. A little over 12 months ago, our
Leadership Team met up with David Alford, Diane and Elizabeth for
the first time. David had been appointed to our circuit as a
probationer minister and we were all struck by his enthusiasm to get
started here, to make a difference, and his conviction that this is
the place that God intended him to be. Well, as we know, things
didn’t quite work out as planned. His ministry among has taken on a
stop start nature owing to his illness and frequent spells in
hospital. At the end of October I had to call the Leadership Team
together to reschedule a meeting, as David was once more in
hospital. I asked the team members to reflect upon what God might
be trying to say to us through this unexpected turn of events.
Well, my own reflections have led me to an even stronger conviction
that God does not intend leadership to be vested in one person, but
that it is a shared responsibility. That the strength of the church
lies in the ability of all its members to take care of one another
and to value the contribution that each member makes. We saw it
last week in the way that the younger members took responsibility
for organising the Christmas Fair, and the way that new people came
forward and threw themselves willingly into the work. We are all
praying that David will return to us this week fit and well and able
to carry out his distinctive ministry among us without any further
interruptions. Once more, God has demonstrated that he is able to
work out his purposes through the most unpromising and unexpected
situations.
Conclusion:
I invite you to use
this period of Advent to look for the presence of Christ in the
unexpected in the world today. Although there are still “wars and
rumours of wars” we have not been abandoned. God never gives up on
us. We worship the God who comes to his people, the God who
rescues, the God who redeems. We must recognise and give thanks for
those situations where God’s will is being done; we must keep awake
and work with renewed vigour for a just and peaceful world. AMEN
by Barry Blunt
©2007
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