First Sunday of Advent

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. [BCP p. 211]

Advent is as good a place to start as any. Here in the northern hemisphere, our days have grown shorter and colder. The weather is shifting from the blustery chills of autumn to the stormy wetness of winter. The snows haven’t started falling yet, for the most part, but they’re coming. Growing up in Seattle, we didn’t normally worry about snow until January or February, what with the warmer waters of the Pacific keeping us moderately warm, albeit wet with constantly gray skies, fog, drizzle, and a variety of other forms of moisture that knew how to find its way through clothing, skin, muscle – to the marrow of our very bones.

Darkness always creeps in slowly – just like sin. It’s normally late in October, like around Halloween that I first notice the darkness outdoors. I like a well-lit house, and when I look outside and see the dark, I have an instinctive need to drop the shades and draw the curtains closed. I don’t want the world outside to know what I’m doing inside. To be honest, most of what I do would doubtlessly bore my neighbors to tears, but I don’t even want them to know that about me. Some people are open books and don’t worry about what others think, say, or do about them. Not me. I’m an old, retired parish priest who has happily traded in the fishbowl in which clergy often live for a castle made of big, hard, dark stones into which a few slits have been cut, but only for defensive purposes. I don’t like being that way, but, frankly, that’s how God has put me together, so I make do as best I can with the gifts and curses the good Lord has lay at my feet or in my heart.

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away darkness …” We enter the Season of Advent with a prayer that unites us in two things. One, that we are in darkness, and two, we are in need of light. Notice, however, that casting off darkness isn’t something we can do willingly or easily. In fact, the prayer implies we can only begin to cast it off with a dollop of God’s grace. We begin our journey into the new year acknowledging that we need help, and, boy, isn’t that the truth?

As I have gotten older, I have found a need for more and better lighting when I am working on projects around the house. Things I could once see clearly and easily have become dim. I often find I need to take off my glasses for working close up to something, and I need a bright flashlight to help me see what I’m looking for in drawers or cabinets. Our Collect for the First Sunday of Advent lets us know right off the bat that our eyes are not as sharp as we would like them to be, so we look to the source of all light for the light we need. That’s the first step.

The second step is acknowledging, too, that we are mortal. That may seem pretty obvious to most people, but the fact is, I don’t spend much time pondering my mortality (let alone my morality which, personally, I think is fairly decent, as long as we use a sliding scale). This prayer reminds us that, not only are we mortal, but God decided to jump in and join us in our mortality! As one wag put it, God didn’t just come to us “in great humility,” but in great humiliation – born a baby who would be completely dependent on the limited abilities of a complete novice (the Virgin Mary) to bring him into this world and raise him up to be for us what we can never be on our own – a Deliverer like Moses, a prophet like Elijah, and MORE. 

If this is true, what are we hoping for? What is our aspiration? Our desire of God?

“That in the last day … we may rise to the life immortal …” To spend eternity with God! Our prayer is to become centered on the One in whom we live and move and have our being. We addressed our prayer to “Almighty God,” which seems a bit off-putting, as we are anything but holy, anything but clean, anything but righteous or faithful, and yet we ask the One to whom we pray to pull us up and to lift us out of our darkness, and lostness, and weakness, and pull us in toward God’s very own bosom, in Christ’s “glorious majesty,” so that, in the words of St. Augustine of Hippo, we may find rest for our restless hearts in God.

That’s a nice way to start the year off, not focused on the worminess of our sordid lives (or wherever we find ourselves on Perdition’s slippery path), but on the glory and majesty of God who is not content for us to be tossed into fiery pits, but desires, instead, for us to come up higher and sit with the heavenly hosts and regale one another with tales of all that God has done.

Candle one is lit; the year begins with fire.