HOLLOWELL: 6 December 2003
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. 
Happy New Year everyone!  I’m a bit late, but 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  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,  and in our house we havn’t got round to DVD.  Big Brother, Pop Idol, Coronation Street are more or less 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, 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 a very tactful thing to say 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 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.  I read that in Austria shop assistants are literally being driven mad by Christmas music assaulting the ears many  weeks before the Great Day.  So they have gone on strike. Even Santa is now being supervised, I read, by  a couple of lady elves for child protection reasons.  And the Red Cross has given up selling cards with Christian themes for the ludicrously misguided reason that they might upset people of other faiths. 
Bah, humbug, I sympathise with Scrooge. The  materialistic claptrap of the Christmas season and its false bonhomie  is altogether too much.  Get me out of here ,I’m a pensioner
As George Bush 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 Advent,  taking our minds off  shopping and think of about the story that gave rise to the season.  As our collect put 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 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. 
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. 
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.” 
But as we go through the 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 who millions of years ago – through a Big Bang or whatever mean – 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.” 
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 go out an find an Advent calendar and after you open the windows 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, 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.  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 after.
 
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 hears. 
Amen
