I’m tired. I usually am, this time of year. All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. Myself included.
All Saints found me, yet again, with a smile of wry recognition at: We feebly struggle, they in glory shine. I think Bishop William Walsham How knew what November was like. Now here we are at Christ the King, or Stir Up Sunday if you’re going by the Book of Common Prayer, and I’m still feebly struggling.
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.
It just all feels like too much. The dark, the cold, the never-ending cycle of bad news. The fear. Make it stop, I want to say. Make it stop.
Further on in Isaiah, the prophet says something rather similar: O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
A voice says, Cry out! And I said, What shall I cry?
Secular Christmas gets earlier and earlier, and so does semi-secular Christmas. The tinsel. The Christmas fairs. The carol services. The Christmas tree festivals. The office parties. It’s dark and it’s cold. The state of the world is what it is, I find myself saying, and you want me to be cheerful, too? Merry and bright?
To all of this, Advent says, Yes, and. Yes, the world is dark and cold and frightening. It is into this dark, cold, frightening world that God comes, ready to share it with us, as us. Yes, you find it exhausting, impossible, to maintain the facade of the perfect, cheerful, employee, mum, wife, daughter, Christian. And God never wanted that imaginary creature. God wants you, as you are.
For me, Advent provides a space where I don’t have to be cheerful. It’s a season that acknowledges the exhaustion and the fear, rather than asking me to shove them down and hide them. It’s a season that shows me a way out on the other side. Day by day, I can get through it. Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord.
Different things to count. Four red candles. Or purple ones. Maybe a pink one in there too. Different things to mark on each Sunday. The Patriarchs, the Prophets, John the Baptist and Mary the Mother of God. Hope, peace, love, and joy. Or the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. Take your pick.
Devotionals: Bible readings. Poetry. Art. Just a couple of pages of study. I can manage that. One single candle, burning down a centimetre each day. A prayer, or the attempt at a prayer. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
And I haven’t even mentioned the traditional Advent calendar, whether it contains chocolate, Lego, whisky, tea, jam, make-up, or just a little picture.
This year it even starts on the right day. This year everything lines up and Advent begins on the first of December.
This year, the first of December marks sixty-nine years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. One single act that sparked a months-long boycott of the city’s racist, segregated bus service, a boycott that was ultimately successful, that became one of the great symbols of the American Civil Rights movement that’s still fighting for justice – and whose work has, once again, become so much harder.
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
We know what happened. She boarded a segregated bus, sat in the first row of the section reserved for Black passengers at the back of the bus. A few stops down the line, the front of the bus was getting crowded. The bus driver moved the Reserved sign one row back.
Rosa Parks didn’t move. And didn’t move, and didn’t move until the police took her away, and within a few hours the news had spread, and within a few days Black community organisers had got the boycott under way.
This is what she said:
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Make no mistake: her refusal to move was very much a form of action. She was a lifelong member of a Church that had its roots in protest against racial discrimination and slavery. She had been an active member of the NAACP for over a decade. She had taken part in training in social justice leadership. She knew what she was doing. Maybe she couldn’t foresee that this action was the one that would spark a city-wide boycott, but that’s not the point. This was the action that was in front of her to take. And she’d been watching. She saw it. She took it.
Being a part of Cursillo, being Christian, is a challenge, a call to action. Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may be of thee be plenteously rewarded.
Each one of us finds ourselves in different places. For some of us, the next action might be obvious. Others might need to look around. Yours might look very different from mine. It doesn’t matter. That plenteously might feel a bit ambitious. Each of our actions might look very small indeed when we contemplate everything that’s wrong with the world.
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
We need to resist the temptation to do our own action down, and to tear each other’s down. That plenteousness is collective. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God starts with something the size of a mustardseed. The earthly story finishes with something more spectacular.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Advent teaches us to be ready for that day. But it also teaches us to watch, and pray, and work for God’s kingdom ourselves, day after day, taking the action that is in front of us, trusting that it’s a tiny part of God’s great story.
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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