Today Graham Earney will be preaching for the last time in this Benefice - his permission to officiate expires at the end of this month and Graham has chosen not to renew it. We have been blessed by his ministry over many years and today’s sermon is his final blessing to us. Read it thoughtfully and carefully.
Micah 2:2-5; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55
Advent 4 Sermon
Usually my sermons are quite brief. As this is my last sermon before my Permission to Officiate runs out, I hope you will indulge me and let me speak at greater length.
In more than 56 years since my ordination many things have changed in the church, most for the good, perhaps some less so. Take Advent as an example. As I explained to the Mothers’ Union at the end of last month, the whole emphasis of the season has been altered. Then the only themes of Advent were Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. My training vicar would allow no thought of Christmas until after the end of the last service on Advent 4. One year that played havoc as Christmas day that year was on the Monday – the church flower arrangers and decorators were not happy! Now the themes of the days are: The Patriarchs; The Prophets; John the Baptist: The Virgin Mary – the latter being today, although through our Gospel reading John the Baptist gets another mention.
Through the time I have been ordained we have acquired new traditions. Advent wreaths from the churches of northern Europe and Christingles from the Moravian Church. With lighted candles on each they have brought light into the darkness of winter. They are new signs to further enable the development of our worship of God.
Their advent makes the point that faith and the practice of worship changes through the generations. This can be traced in biblical times and beyond. Micah, quoting a pre-exilic oracle, makes the point that the people still looked for a physical saviour. Someone who would make the people free from foreign invaders. The scene in the Lukan Gospel of Mary visiting her cousin, Elizabeth, is both domestic and universal. Domestic because at one level it is cousins discussing pregnancy and giving one another mutual support. Universal because Mary’s song gives worship to God and allows the evangelist to show his patron signs of what was to come. The letter to the Hebrews relates the huge effect of Mary’s child. He turned the whole religious world upside down. The people had got God’s expectation of them completely wrong. God did not require their sacrifices and burnt offerings. God required then, and requires of us now, changed hearts and minds. Minds that are fixed on God and the things of his kingdom. Hearts, which are absolved from sin by God’s love, so that they can give praise and thanksgiving for all God’s glory. Hearts that are fixed on God’s love for us, which calls on us to love others despite their lifestyle choices being different from ours.
By changing the emphasis of Advent we have lost the sense of penance and judgement implicit in the older themes of the season. Too often confession and absolution seem like a brief interlude we have to get through before we get to the main purpose of the Eucharist. The teaching that it is the culmination of a process of reflection before we come to church seems to have fallen out of favour. How many of us prepare ourselves spiritually before coming to church by recollecting on our failures to be faithful to God in the past week?
The liturgical colour of Advent is Purple. The sign of God’s majesty and our need for penance. God in judgement. Us in sorrow - for having fallen short of what God requires of us.
The colours of the liturgical year are one of the signs of faith. Some of us can survive on our spiritual journey through life by the word we hear alone. But for most of us, we need other stimuli – physical signs of inward spiritual grace. Our faith and our churches are full of them. I don’t just mean the physical furniture of font, lectern, pulpit and altar. But all the embellishments – candles to give light – crosses and crucifixes – one to show Christ with arms outstretched welcoming all people into his presence, the other empty proclaiming that the crucifixion wasn’t the end, only a gateway into the lasting presence of God. In more recent times colourful banners have graced our four churches of the benefice. First the Mothers’ Union banners now laid up in our churches. More recently the ones in Longden proclaiming; “Peace is flowing like a river”; and, “Be STILL The Holy One is here”. Here in Annscroft the banners proclaim what could be said to be twin themes of Advent. “Jesus is Lord” and “Come Holy Spirit” – our worship of God witnesses to the Trinitarian nature of our belief – three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in dynamic relationship.
Have you pondered why banners are important? They are the colours behind which an army marched so everyone could see who they were and what they stood for. They were a rallying point for armies to congregate around in defence of their colours. Any of you are devotees of the author Simon Scarrow and his series of novels set in Roman Britannia and across the empire will know of the exploits of Prefect Cato and Centurion Marco. How they cajoled weaker minded soldiers to rally to the colours of the regiment and triumph against, at times, overwhelming odds.
Baners are for marching behind, metaphorically or actually. I’m old enough to remember when churches and Christian groups rallied and marched behind their church banner. Every Good Friday all churches marched to the market square in Salisbury, joined together and marched behind our church banners to the Cathedral for an ecumenical service. When Newcastle celebrated its centenary in the 1980s each deanery marched on to Gosforth racecourse behind its banner to all the verses of “Lift high the Cross”. Sadly today all our banners are locked away in churches, hung up like the lost colours of regiments which are laid up in Cathedrals.
A message for Advent as we look to Christmas is that we need to look for hope in the present. Realistic hope is about asking, in humility, what God wants of his church today. I believe we follow a God who wishes justice for all. A God who is inclusive, who in Christ Jesus on the cross opened his arms wide to welcome all. A God who is loving to the utmost, giving his very self for his creation. A God who wishes us to do all things well. A God who wishes his church to be in the hands of prophets and pastors, rather than bishops who are administrators and bureaucrats. A God who recognises that one small act of kindness speaks more eloquently than a thousand words. A God who wishes us to care for all, not putting personal friendship above acting justly in matters of safeguarding and in caring for those who have been abused. In the year ahead God will require more from us than we have managed to give in the recent past. Let us step up to the plate and be more like what God wants us to be.
A postscript: in the late 1970s and early 1980s one of the books I read was by a German Roman Catholic theologian and pastor, Karl Rahner. The book was called “The Shape of the Church to come”. It put forward the theory of the church of the little flock. At the time I was busy building up congregations in rural Northumberland and urban Tyneside. I tended to dismiss his prophecy as being too farfetched – it was beyond my experience. Post Covid I have meditated on his words. Perhaps we do have to travel more lightly. Perhaps we are right to keep the banners in church – be less triumphalist about what we proclaim about our brand of Christian discipleship. Perhaps we need less grand buildings and more small groups of two or three gathered in prayer and contemplation.
I could go on; but for one last time it is time to stop!
The Revd Graham Earney