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The Third Sunday Of Advent (Gaudete)
Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, world without end. Amen.
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The Third Sunday Of Advent (Gaudete)
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A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
✛
A Sermon for Advent
I’ve been at Saint Thomas long enough now to have learned a few things, and one of the things I have learned is that you can’t spend much time in this church without becoming just a bit of an anglophile. And once you become an anglophile, eventually you begin wondering what it might be like to meet the Queen. What would I do if I got invited to meet the Queen of England? I’ve been thinking about this and I have made a list of things I need to prepare for.
Number One: Dress Nicely. I will probably need to get a new suit; mine are getting a bit threadbare in the seat. For what it’s worth, I will get a haircut and shine my shoes. I want to look nice for the queen.
Number Two: Be On Time. I’ve watched those PBS documentaries: I know the queen’s day runs like clockwork, so I want to make sure I’m there at the appointed hour.
Number Three: Observe Protocol. When I get to the palace, I’m going to listen carefully for instructions and follow them, using even better manners than my mother taught me. I will expect to be lead to the queen where she will be waiting to receive me. Perhaps she will extend her hand to me and I would know just to touch it and not to wring it like a wet rag.
Number Four: Don’t Get Too Personal. The Queen and I may pass a few pleasantries and I will know not to tell her my life story or mention anything I have read in the tabloids.
Number Five: Don’t Overstay My Allotted Time. I know not to expect that the Queen and I are going to spend the afternoon hanging out. Very shortly, I imagine, I would be dismissed and sent along my merry way.
Afterwards, I won’t know very much more about the queen than when I hadn’t met her and she won’t know much about me. I doubt that I would be any better off for having met her, except maybe a little bit puffed up. I would tell the story about my visit to everyone who would listen, (not because I think that they would ever be invited, but to impress and amuse them).
And in the deepest rotten parts of my soul I might hope you never get invited because that would make my visit less special. As unlikely as it may be, you can imagine how the anticipation of such an encounter could lead to a lot of preparation. After all, it’s not every day you get to meet royalty.
Ah, but here we are in the midst of Advent, the very season intended to prepare us for a meeting with a king? How much thought and preparation have we put into that meeting? Any more than the thought I’ve put into to meeting Elizabeth?
So, let’s think about this for a moment. I don’t know the odds of me ever meeting the queen, but I can assure you, apart from this sermon, I’ve never given it any thought and when I step down from this pulpit, I won’t give it any more.
I don’t know how likely it is that you will ever meet the queen, but I can assure you, those odds are long compared to the odds of you meeting Jesus Christ. That, beloved, is a meeting that neither you, nor I, nor the queen of England will avoid. And that is a meeting that requires far more self-examination and preparation than a meeting with the monarch of an earthly principality. But it does beg the question. How does one prepare to meet the King of kings?
What would I do if today I was called to meet my king and Lord Jesus Christ? For starters I wouldn’t give much thought to what clothes I am wearing or whether my hair was cut or whether my shoes are shined, because I am convinced that Christ doesn’t give a fig about any of that.
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body more than raiment?” Mt 6.25
I will not worry about being early or late to my appointment with Christ. That meeting will happen in God’s time, neither being too early nor too late, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” Mk 14.32 This is why the cry of Advent has for so long been:
Wake, Awake & Watch! Ten virgins took their lamps going forth to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were wise and five were fools. The fools took their lamps, but no oil. The wise took vessels of oil with their lamps. They all slumbered and slept, but at midnight came the watchman’s cry, Wake, awake, midnight’s solemn hour is tolling, Rise up with willing feet, Go forth, the Bridegroom meet. But the bridegroom had been so long coming that the lamps had burned out and only those who were prepared were able to meet their Lord. The foolish and unprepared were shut out. And Jesus said, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” Mt 25.1ff
The Christ styles himself as few monarchs on earth ever have. “When Jesus left his Father’s throne, he chose an humble birth; like us, unhonored and unknown, he came to dwell on earth.” This is why I might expect a different sort of reception from Jesus than from an earthly queen; led into her presence, the slight touch of a gloved hand, the remoteness, the formality. On the day any of us repentant sinners goes forth to meet Christ we will begin our approach to the palace, and while we are yet a great way off Christ may catch sight of us. He will cast off his dignity and run down to meet us. In our sorrow, we may begin to say, “lord, I am not worthy to be here. I have sinned against….” “Shhh!” Christ will say. “Put a robe on this child of mine and put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. Kill the fatted calf and rejoice, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Lk 15.20ff
When you meet Christ he is going to look right through you, past any façade you erect, any persona you affect, any defense you erect; he’ll confound the games you play; he will see through you entirely; your heart will be an open book and all your secret desires known. And if you will only say the word, he will purge you of all that artifice and idolatry and make you whole, for to know Christ intimately is to know yourself for the first time. He is as God intends you to be: the perfect man or the perfect woman, the new Adam. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Ro 5.19
When we do meet Jesus, and we have really prepared ourselves for that meeting, it will not be a momentary encounter, but eternal. “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Jn 14.2f “Safe from the world’s alluring harms, beneath his watchful eye, thus in the circle of his arms may we for ever lie.
Such is the nature of this king, so full of grace, and mercy, love, kindness, self giving, salvation that we must tell everyone we can the story of our own encounters with him, not to laud it over them that they haven’t met him as we have, but like sick men who find a physician, and beggars who find bread, or the homeless who find a place to rest, we who have been sick and have been healed, hungry and have been fed, wanderers who have found a home, exiles who have found a kingdom, must share this gospel with everyone we meet, all so that we might without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing and our inevitable appointed meeting.
