GUILSBOROUGH EVENSONG  7 December 2008
“ I will give thanks unto to thee O Lord with my whole heart: I will speak of all thy marvellous works.  So may the words of my mouth and the thoughts in all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer. “ 
Last week at Spratton Michael greeted Advent and us at Spratton.  But it bears repeating. Happy New Church Year everyone!  The long march through the twenty odd Sundays after Trinity ( I’m never quite sure of the precise number) has ended 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 of will : inertia |I find is a rather 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 once put it   
Renewal?  I don’t know about that.  Enthusiasm is not a widespread virtue in this country  A born again Christian ( unlike America) is almost a pejorative term. As Cardinal Cormac Murphy’O’Connor  says in to-days paper, religious belief has almost come to be regarded as a “private eccentricity” 
Rather I have detected increasing signs of one - foot – in - the - grave  Meldrewism in too many people’s approach to life  And I include myself among them.  I seem to find myself more and more out of touch with the spirit of the age  in which I am living.  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 or DVD :  Strictly Come Dancing, Sex and the City, East Enders are more or less mysteries. I confess didn’t know who Russell Brand was. But I concede I ought to have known. 
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. As is political correctness, asylum seekers who sue because they see their benefits as inadequate, politicians who waffle about climate change, schools and hospitals, 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 with every passing year. 
My latest irritation is Advent.  Not you may think a very tactful comment when I am supposed to be saying something about it on the 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; the fight for parking spaces and most of us under a ever larger mountain of debt with Christmas shopping. Spend, spend spend.  Prudence good : profligacy better, as someone unkindly said of the Prime Minister’s approach to the economy.  
Even Santa is now being supervised, I read, by  a couple of lady elves for child protection reasons.  And the Red Cross apparently gave up selling cards with Christian themes for the ludicrously misguided reason that they might upset people of other faiths.  
Bah, humbug.  The materialistic claptrap of the Christmas season and its false bonhomie  is altogether too much. High mindedly,  I assert that even if I could buy it  I wouldn’t want  ( on sale in Los Angeles) a silver dustbin studded with precious stones - for the man who has everything and wants to throw some of it away.  Stop the world I want to get off:I’m a pensioner
Well, as George Bush once put it, I seem to have developed plenty of opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them. I need to stop moaning and get inspired. 
And the means to inspiration is the gospel story. The best antidote to Christmas Meldrewism  is getting back to the basics of Advent and thinking of about the story, the events that gave rise to the season.  As our collect in the book of Common Prayer puts it to-day: to “ read, mark learn and inwardly digest them.”  
The fundamentals are simple: that the Messiah is on the way with his message of joy redemption  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.  That was why they asked Jesus about him.  He was, literally, crying in the wilderness and only later did he get the recognition he deserved.  But that’s what happens with prophets. One thinks of Cassandra, Jeremiah, Jonah, John the Baptist, Al Gore.  They end up annoying the Establishment and the Meldrews. 
Word, words words.  But they do make things happen.  Stop, Go, Shoot, Charge!,  Hide Help. Think of the changes in world history brought about by words like these. “Yes, we can” has propelled Barrack Obama to the forefront of the world stage. 
So its not surprising that probably the most inspiring of all the gospel texts read at Christmas starts “In the beginning was the word…”   It was the word that made it all happen.  The Psalmist knew it long before the birth of Christ: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.”  
“And God said let there be light and there was light”. 
So the Jews already knew and could agree that  “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and was God.” 
As we go through this Advent season,  approaching the familiar events in Bethlehem with the benefit of hindsight,  we know that the Word  would become flesh in the stable and dwell among us for some 32 years.   We know that God aeons ago – through a Big Bang or whatever means – created the universe, and that he came back to earth 2000 odd years ago as a baby.  “Lo within a manger lies, he who built the starry skies”.  
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 and in the words of that carol we know:  “ Mild he lays his glory by/ Born that Man no more may die/ Born to raise the sons of earth/ Born to give them second birth.”  For our redemption. 
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 if you haven’t done that already, why not get an Advent calendar  - without the chocolate - and after you open the window each day, spend a few moments of that day trying to put into practice a different feature of our Christian faith, whether it be a donation to charity, a gesture to someone in trouble; read a psalm aloud every day. By this time next year you will have read them all twice over; or if you prefer something quieter  just say a prayer that in the coming year the light of Christianity can shine more brightly in our land.  Mary is great with child and we know what the outcome will be in three weeks, and thirty odd years later on Calvary, at the sepulchre and afterwards through the centuries. 
 
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.  
And we can carry that message.  We don’t have to write “Jesus is mine” on the side of our vehicles, like a Ghanaian bus driver did to inspire his passengers with hopes for a safe journey.   But let’s stick our heads over the parapet, show others what we stand for and stand up for Jesus.   
So let be renewed Christians, fired up by this Advent season.. If we’re worried about a bit of cynical comment, old Aristotle got it right “ Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing,  being nothing and doing nothing “ 
Teach us good lord to serve thee as thou deservest, to give and not to count the cost to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and to ask for no reward save that of knowing that we do thy will. 
Amen
