Sunday 8th December – Second Advent Week Service led by Mike Findley
Mike told us that his plans to prepare his Address on Saturday had been derailed by cancellation of the football matches of his three grandsons and the family’s decision to come over to see him – packed lunches with crusty bread and copious crumbs included!
But we would not have noticed. As usual his reflections brimmed with insights on the day’s readings.
It being the second Sunday of Advent, the theme this week was the prophets and how people over the ages had looked forward to change, something new happening, somebody new coming to change things. We got two reflections, the first about getting ready for Christmas, and the second about seeing the bigger picture of Christmas.
His daughter and son-in-law had done a wonderful job, sorting out the mess in the garden created by storm Darragh and decorating the house for Christmas. But was he himself ready for Christmas? The purpose of Advent was to prepare for Christmas, but to not just prepare, in terms of physical preparations of decorations and presents, but to clean up our lives, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ. And that was the question – were we preparing ourselves?
The Old Testament reading was from Malachi (Malachi it turned out was the ‘nom de plume’ for someone thought to be the scribe Ezra). Written around 420 BC, the Jewish people had returned from exile but were in a mess, with a lot of corruption, particularly amongst the priesthood. Malachi or Ezra got annoyed with it, and told people to clean themselves up, to sort themselves out. And the message was as relevant to us today as it was to a people who’d gone astray 2,400 years ago. Were we making ourselves better? Were we asking God to help us become better?
An image he’d used in the past was that of mother-in-law coming to visit – dangerous territory he noted, when many of our congregation were mothers-in-law who might visit.
But if we were expecting someone to visit our house, we’d clean the house up, tidy it, put the rubbish away, to avoid being told off or looked down upon. With Jesus coming into the world did we think about improving ourselves, tidying ourselves up, sorting ourselves out before Christmas. Or had all that disappeared in the commercial rush we now had?
The second reading from Luke’s Gospel was about John the Baptist. It was the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar and so the year that we call AD 29. John the Baptist had come from the desert and gone around saying to people, repent, change, turn around. Mike told us that in independent writings and histories John the Baptist had had far more entries than Jesus did. He had been very important, very well known, and people came from all over the Eastern Mediterranean to hear him, to be baptized by him and to be challenged to turn their lives round. When they went back home, they had met in groups of ‘followers of John the Baptist’ but had remained within the Jewish community. They didn’t get on with the Christians who were moving away from Judaism. There had been conflict and bad feeling between the followers of Jesus and the followers of John the Baptist.
Nonetheless, John the Baptist had been the forerunner of Jesus, telling people to repent, to change, to be baptized, symbolically washing away the old life and rising to new life out of the water. And that had prepared for the coming of Jesus, who baptized with the Holy Spirit.
So we had to ask ourselves, How do I prepare? How do I change in anticipation of Christmas? And the answer was, we couldn’t do it on our own. We had to put ourselves in God’s hands and allow ourselves to be changed.
Reflecting on the bigger picture, Mike told us that he found Christmas in church disappointing (he certainly enjoyed it at home!) . A lot of what we did focussed too much on story, on angels, shepherds and wise men and we remained trapped in a nativity play mindset. We didn’t concentrate enough on the meaning of Christmas – seeing Christmas in perspective.
He talked about times in his life when he’d felt lonely, isolated, under pressure and having to cope on his own as a businessman in a country thousands of miles from home, nor knowing anybody, not speaking the language, but having to deal with difficult situations negotiating contracts. Then social circumstances where he didn’t know people and didn’t find friends, companions, people to share with.
At other times there had been wonderful periods as part of a team, in sport, at work, or in a social or local enterprise – sharing with each other, strengthening each other. He’d had a warm glow about the relationships he’d had with all the people around him and with him.
If we looked through the Bible, we’d see that God didn’t ever intend that we should be alone. Living took courage. We needed courage to exist as independent beings. We needed courage to exist as part of something else. We started our lives dependent on our parents, or whoever was looking after us. As we grew up, we progressively became more and more independent. Eventually, when we got older, we realized that neither being dependent or independent was the right solution. We needed to become interdependent. Others depended on us, and we depended on them. It wasn’t always easy. Mike knew a lot of older people who still tried to be independent, resisting other people doing things for them. At 81, Mike realized there were things he couldn’t do anymore. And when people (like his family – crumbs and all) did things for him, he was very grateful.
Humans were never meant to be alone, always meant to be connected, always meant to be in a relationship with God and in a relationship with each other. But loneliness was real, and its roots went very deep, founded on the suspicion that there was no one who cared or offered love without conditions, and no place where we could be vulnerable without being used.
Loneliness was real, something which in our busy world too many people found themselves. But God, in thinking about the human race, must have realized that eventually we would understand our position in the vastness of the universe and would begin to feel lonely. We wouldn’t know whether any other intelligent beings existed or not or where they were – in any event a very, very long way away. The human race could feel lonely and unloved, and God didn’t want that to happen. God wanted us to be cared for, to be loved, to be part of something.
Some people found isolation easy, because they knew that God was with them, like in Psalm 23. We all remembered those words, and for some it was real that God was with them every day and they never felt lonely as a result.
We were never meant to be isolated. We were always meant to be connected to each other, to the power behind the cosmos. That’s why we had Christmas. God came to be with us in the form of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, to avoid isolation and loneliness, to reach out to us so that God’s power could flow through us. We could be connected to the power that’s behind the whole universe.
And that was the message of Christmas. God came to us, to touch us, to be living with us, to be in us, and to ask us to reach out, back again, to take His hand and walk through life together. Christmas says we were meant to be part of a living organism. God at the centre and around it human beings, arm-in-arm – the cure for isolation and loneliness. That was what Christmas was all about!
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 