Spratton 2[nd] Sunday in Advent. 

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in you sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer. 


 The long march through the 24 Sundays after Trinity is over and we are to-day, on this second Advent Sunday, still right at the start of the Church Year.  The Saviour is coming: it's a time for renewal. 

Renewal requires, however, an effort : inertia is easier state of mind, . " You have a wonderful time for a time .that's the best one could say of life" , as an American actress put it   Renewal?  I don't know about that.

Rather I have detected increasing signs of one - foot  -  in - the - grave  Meldrewism in my approach to life recently.  I seem to find myself more and more out of touch with the spirit of the age.   Television?  We watch very little and find ourselves asleep in front of it more often than not.  Don't talk about  how to work the video . Fortunately it's getting out of date now.   Big Brother, Pop Idol, Twitter and Facebook are mysteries.  

All too often I find myself reading the newspaper and getting depressed and irritated, by what is happening in the world.  Cynicism is part and parcel of our lives.  Political correctness, asylum seekers who sue because they see their benefits as inadequate, politicians who waffle about schools and hospitals and " hard working families"  trade unionists who call strikes and still claim to care about the public, etc etc. the list of irritations is a long one and growing longer I fear  Now we hear from the Archbishop of Canterbury  of children going hungry in this country. 

My latest irritation is Advent.  Not a very tactful thing to say when I are supposed to be thinking  about it on this  Second Sunday of the season .  But: the days are short and dark, the weather often depressing,  the non-stop canned carols and Jingle Bells at the Grosvenor Centre of wherever grate on the ear, the crowds pushing and shoving for bargains  the fight for parking spaces and most of us  under a ever larger mountain of debt with Christmas shopping.  

Vicars preach that Santa Claus does not exist and Mums cry foul.  But don't worry about child protection  one Santa  is now being supervised, I read, by  a couple of lady elves for child protection reasons.  

Bah, humbug t that.   I confess I can sympathise with Scrooge. The  materialistic claptrap of the Christmas season,  Black Friday mayhem  and its false bonhomie  is altogether too much.  Get me out of here, I'm a pensioner

However as former  US President George Bush = the master of convoluted English . put it, I seem to have developed plenty of opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them. 

The best antidote to Christmas Meldrewism  is get back to the basics of  the joyful Advent message,  taking our minds off  shopping and think of about the overall  Gospel story that gave rise to the season.  And our reading from  St. Mark  today takes us into the Gospel of Christ, the story of Jesus on earth,  without  more ado : no Nativity, Wise Men to Angels or shepherds.  St. Mark  cuts to the chase a once  One senses a young man in a hurry.

That's not to say that the Bible narrative we know and love in other Gospels should be ignored, the texts  many of us almost know by heart.  They are, I dare say it, the comfort blanket of Christmas and for many the epitomy of the spirit of the season.   But as we go through the Advent season, we can't and should no ignore the familiar events in Bethlehem through the other three gospels.   We know that the Word  would become flesh in the stable and dwell among us for some 32 years.   

But in Mark  We meet in verse 2 The Messenger John the Baptist  a somewhat wild and eccentric figure with his camel hair clothes and his diet of locusts and wild honey.  He paved the way, Mark tells us, calling on people to repent.   And he obviously attracted a lot of attention.  But John himself then talks of another " the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose".  

Repent is a word that has been so mis-used in our time, both by believers and non-believers, that finding a definition is difficult.  The word essentially means to turn or to do a one-eighty change. Taken in context, what I hear John saying is essentially "God is coming!  Stop wasting your time.  Put away the things you do wrong in your life.  Admit your failures and your rebellion against God, and be clean on the inside just as being baptized makes you clean on the outside."

The next passage, not today's reading,  goes on to describe the baptism of Jesus by John . the overture as it were is over and we are into the  real story of Jesus and his ministry. There is an immediacy I find in Mark's Gospel.  He uses words like " straight way", and  "immediately".  People run  o they are are amazed.  

The fundamentals are simple: that the Messiah is on the way with his message of joy and hope for the world.  John the Baptist knew it, as described in our lesson to-day and based his preaching on what the  Hebrew prophets had said: " Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord..."   But there were apparently plenty of articulate preachers around in those days and I suspect that few people got the special message of John. He was, literally, crying in the wilderness and only later did he get the recognition he deserved. 


And that raises the question of why did God clothe himself in human form and come down to earth?  Through the subsequent teaching of Jesus we know  that he was  "Born that Man no more may die Born to raise the sons of earth/ Born to give them second birth." 

That is the message of God's love for the world, for each of us the promise of eternal life.  

So are we, as some say,  just a collection of atoms and water sitting on a planet at the edge of the universe with no other purpose than to exist and then die?  

Well, here's a Meldrewism that is appropriate; "I don't believe it". 

" Tell me not, in mournful numbers,"
Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real!  Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest'
Was not spoken of the soul.  "

So  here's an idea.  if you haven't done that already, why not get a proper Advent calendar and after you open the windows each day, spend a few moments  trying to put into practice a different feature of our Christian faith, whether it be a donation to charity, or a gesture to someone in trouble or just a prayer that in the coming year the light of Christianity can shine more brightly in our land.  

The world was changed for ever by the teachings of Jesus.  Let that message of hope and salvation, of love for our neighbours dispel the clouds of Meldrewism.  We don't have to write "Jesus is mine" on the side of our vehicles, like that Ghanaian lorry driver did to inspire his passenger, in a prayer I sometimes use.  But as we progress through Advent to Christmas, let's try to keep Jesus and his message more firmly in our hearts. 

Amen







