 |
| Graveyard under Snow, Caspar David Friedrich, 1826 |
A sermon for Advent Sunday (Year A) given at the Sung Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook on Thursday 1st December 2022 based on the text of Romans 13.11-end and Matthew 24.36-44. This sermon was also given at St George’s Bloomsbury.
The first gospel reading of the new liturgical year is a rude awakening:
“One will be taken and one
will be left.”
It makes for uncomfortable
listening - perhaps because we don’t really deal with the idea of loss very
well - let alone the reality of it. We fear it.
Despite being an
increasingly frequent appearance in my life, I continue to feel thoroughly
unprepared to handle grief - both personally and in terms of my ability to
support friends and family who are mourning the loss of loved ones.
And in this, I’m afraid,
I’m not alone.
According to the shocking
results of a recent survey by the UK Commission on Bereavement, over a quarter
of adult respondents (28%) received no support from family and (46%) - almost
half - received no support from friends following bereavement.
It seems that a
significant proportion of us don’t want to confront the idea of loss, even when
it affects those we love the most.
The Commission is chaired
by The Bishop of London, who had a long career in nursing prior to ordination.
Its recommendations are designed to help enlighten us all with skills and
practical knowledge to engage more readily with others at times of bereavement.
The “light” we can help to bring, the Bishop explains, “won’t deny the
darkness” - but will help to reveal a path through the valley of the shadow of
death.
‘A Grief Observed’ is the
account of one man’s journey through that darkness, following the death of his
wife, Joy Davidman. Originally published under a pseudonym, this raw and
emotional text was written by the novelist and broadcaster C.S.Lewis - the
anniversary of whose own death fell last week.
Early in the book, Lewis
describes grief as being like an invisible blanket enveloping his life; a
barrier to the rest of the world - detaching him from friends, family and work
colleagues; a hinderance to communication - in both directions. A blanket,
Lewis found, that can grow to become ‘too’ comforting; offering false security.
In the weeks immediately
following the death of his wife, Lewis notices that he is preoccupied by the
fear of losing his memory of her. He becomes fixated on his ability to conjure
up not only a mental image of Joy but also of objects and events associated
with their life together.
Left unchecked, this
process - which he likens to like a gentle snowstorm falling continuously on a
garden - can soon obscure the reality of what’s underneath - who our loved ones
truly are. Our desire to control the end of their story - to wrap it up, to
envelop it with our memories - is to deny that reality.
He acknowledged that there
are times when we all need a security blanket - but recognised that it can all
too easily become a straight-jacket.
As the statistics
revealed, it is counter-cultural to speak about death at all these days - and
it might seem particularly strange to do so in Advent - a time when we prepare
to celebrate the joy that is the birth of Christ.
But, along with judgement,
heaven and hell, death has been one of the four great “themes” of this season
for centuries; and, however uncomfortable it might be, our readings from
scripture won’t let us forget it.
Writing recently following
the death of his partner, the broadcaster Reverend Richard Coles said
“rejoicing and lamentation often come together - and Christianity gets this.”
We know that the journey
to the crib will become a journey to the cross. We want to ‘own’ the next stage
of the journey too.
But our gospel reading
today is a rude awakening - not only confronting us with the loss of those closest to us - but our loss of control. The death of our ability to conclude the
story.
“But about that day
and hour no one knows”….“the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected” time.
Through his grief,
C.S.Lewis begins to realise that embracing the next stage of the story means
accepting this loss control; gaining the confidence to cast off the security
blanket he had begun to wrap himself in. A cloak of self-selected memories
which distorted the true story about his wife, his love for her and her love
for him.
Lewis came to see
bereavement as the next stage of marriage, to be lived just as faithfully,
embracing true love for the other. A reality beyond mental images.
The relationship between
Christ and his faithful people, the church, is often likened to a marriage.
Living after the death and resurrection of Christ, in many ways we find
ourselves in a similar position to C.S.Lewis. The season of Advent calls us to
reflect on this stage of our relationship with God. Today’s Epistle assures us
that we know that now is the time to fully embrace the unimaginable reality
that is His true love. St Paul’s advice on how to do this bears a striking
resemblance to Lewis.
“You know what time it is,
how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.”
Now is the moment to cast
off the security blanket that locks us into destructive patterns of behaviour;
to untie the straight-jacket of fear that prevents us from communicating
honestly with God and with those whom we love about what’s really important -
at times of greatest need.
Now is the moment to allow
the daylight in to our lives - to melt the snow-drift of fantasy that conceals
the messy truth of our past; to allow our winter wonderland become the manure-strewn stable that it really is.
Now is the moment to put
on an armour of light, to shine brightly as we step out into the darkness of
the ambiguity and mystery that is the unfolding story of a life in love; to
embrace the reality that we are, in the words of a famous prayer, “prophets of
a future that is not our own.”
Now is the moment we can
discover the joy that beneath the strata of familiar routines and recurring
memories, this Advent is not the same as every other - because salvation is
nearer to us now than when we became believers.
Advent offers the opportunity to become better prepared to accept loss. To wake up to the reality that through death there is new life. Perhaps that’s why it is one of the great themes of this season. We do that by "casting away the works of darkness, and putting upon us the armour of light."
Because when we cast off all that
separates us from the love of God, we ‘put on’ Christ.
Then we really have
nothing to fear when we hear that “One will be taken and one will be left”
-
because we will be at one with Him.
Amen.
Image : Graveyard under Snow, Caspar David Friedrich, 1826
Links
UK Commission on Bereavement - Summary Report
C.S.Lewis ‘A GriefObserved’ - A Review
We are prophets of a future that is not our own is a line from what is known as the Romero Prayer
No comments:
Post a Comment