Happy New Year and Advent comes again!

One Sunday a few years ago on the first Sunday of Advent I baptised three young people and I wondered what to say to them about what they were doing. About the history, the story, the community they were becoming part of, as well as the gifts and promises it offers. I wanted to offer some thing they might understand and remember, as well as speak to the people  who gathered to celebrate the gift this family wishes to share, people who might not know the ways of the church, who might see this as a colourful and archaic ritual. That’s not easy, like the psalmist  says, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Here’s what I said then:

What we’re doing today is telling a story, about one person, about every person, and about the whole universe. The one person was a man named Jesus: he lived a long way from here about two thousand years ago, and when he grew up he told some stories and taught some lessons and healed some people and shared food and hope and love in a world where there wasn’t much of that around. He seemed to live like there was more than enough, and that the liveliest thing that he, or anybody, could do was to keep sharing food and hope and love, and not worry about it too much. He lived like that was the easiest, truest, most joyful way to live and to love life for each person, for every person, for the whole universe.

And he kept doing it. Even when the people who were worried about many things told him he better be careful, he went on sharing food, hope, love like it couldn’t end. So some other people decided to kill him, partly because when people start giving like that, the world gets bigger, and gifts like food and hope and love can start people  doing new things, going in different ways, and that can be dangerous for people who want the world to be safe and predictable and profitable for them and the same as it ever was.

So they killed him. They tried to wipe him away from life, from everyone’s memory, so that nothing would remain, and it didn’t work. Because of the simple truth, the deepest fact (and this is the centre of what I’m saying), is that we believe that this kind of love lasts. So it wasn’t long before a few people said they had seen him alive, others said that he had somehow gotten past death. some said he was still sharing like before, now even more. And it was as if his very breath was breathing everywhere, was willing to show up, sharing, in everyone, first a few people, then more, then millions, took up the promise to breathe life the way he did in sharing life and food and hope and love.

It’s changed the world for the last few thousand years, not always for the best. Sometimes it’s been like a great big party, sometimes like a really bad committee meeting, but there is still this company of people who are trying, as best they can, to share food, hope and love.  And even though Jesus is not around like he was two thousand years ago, he’s still here, in stories told, gatherings held, food, hope and loved shared — really in every moment and every breath he still shares this love of live, this life of love.

Because he was, he is, a gift to remind us of what we deep down are: born of love, born to hope, born to share food; food for thought, for nourishment, for inspiration, to be part of a body bringing healing and hope to the whole creation.  That’s what we were created to be; and we forget that, get lost in other stories, worry about many things, forget who we are, where we come from, what we’re to do: which is mystery and meaning and justice and joy and shared food and wine and life that is so much bigger than all our understanding and any kind of death that it is almost beyond belief.

But we’re here to get reminded, renewed, in telling the stories, sharing the journey, the hope and healing, the bread and wine, the new and renewing loving life that Jesus said is in the heart of everything, that we experience what life is, what God calls us to love, even now.

So that’s what I told them. It’s true, though not the whole truth, but i hope it’s true enough to welcome them to the party and give them a taste for travelling together on this journey, but, if you've been around the church for awhile, for some days, when God’s Advent comes, it’s often not easy. But it’s good, and in the end, by God’s grace, it’s worth it. 

May your Advent be blessed.