Start-Stop:Ugliness and Judgement

Three Coke Bottles - Andy Warhol, 1962

Good morning and welcome to Start:Stop. Our prayers and reflection will last just under ten minutes and you are welcome to stay and go as your schedule dictates. We begin with a short bible reading, which can be found on page 60 of the New Testament if you would like to follow along as I read aloud;

Bible Reading – Luke 1.26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.


Reflection

Our gospel reading foretells the birth of Jesus – the first coming of God into the world in Christ, which we will celebrate at Christmas. During the season of Advent, we await Christ’s second coming, as king and judge. We are encouraged to wait ‘actively’ – focusing our thoughts and prayers on the four great themes of Advent; death, judgement, heaven and hell; coming face to face with questions we might prefer not to ask.   

In his new book “Ugliness and Judgement”, the architectural historian Timothy Hyde devotes an entire chapter to exploring incongruity – for most of which he focusses on this - our church; specifically, the legal and theological judgements that were needed as a result of the questions raised by placing this unique altar by Henry Moore within the context of the perfect geometry of Christopher Wren’s finest parish church. According to comments in our visitors book, some today still regard this as an act of the most vandalous post-modernism.

The aesthetic judgements of the court hinged on the relationship between the classical and the modern, the beautiful and the ugly; the theological judgements on whether, in doctrinal terms, an altar table had to have legs. As we can see, the case was won by the church, on appeal, in the highest court in the land.

Timothy Hyde describes the interrelationship between Henry Moore’s altar and Christopher Wren’s church as a disruption in the “horizon of congruity” inherent to each.

Disrupting a horizon of congruity is a glorious phrase which very much appeals to my rebellious nature (perhaps that’s why I feel so at home sitting next to this altar?!) In my mind’s eye, this description makes the shape of a cross.

Perhaps that’s not so surprising, given the incongruous, counter-cultural message of the Good News, in which, as we read a few chapters later in the Gospel of Luke, the mighty are put down from their seat and the humble and meek are exalted; an incongruity which is celebrated in our nativity scene here - a messy, smelly, uncomfortable and insanitary manger set within a perfectly ordered, pure white classical façade.

Christians are called to confront this incongruity; like the title of Timothy Hyde’s book, to face up to the realities of ugliness and judgement – to face up to the reality of the cross; this means confronting the vertical as well as the horizontal in our lives and the world around us. This is our challenge as we wait ‘actively’ in Advent. Writing in 1937, the American theologian Richard Niebuhr believed the ‘Kingdom of God in America’ had become too liberal – perhaps too laid back or horizontal - suggesting it was content with the idea of : "A God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." As one commentator has paraphrased – Niebuhr believed that in such a church – one which has turned away from the Advent themes of death, judgement, heaven and hell - Christianity is a bit like flat coke; rather pointless.

It is perhaps easier to be on autopilot in Advent than at any other time. Same routine, same preparations. Same arguments. Same decorations. We can practically predict the point at which that aged relative will make an inappropriate remark before nodding off after lunch or when the children will start to create. We cruise along a horizon of flat coke. Waiting passively. We can see what’s coming.

But maybe, for more than a few of us, this season may be associated with times when we have crashed into the vertical while creeping along our comfortable and controllable horizon of congruity. I’ve certainly walked face first into more than a few glass doors at this time of year. My parents’ marriage broke up on 22nd December one year when I was very young. Amongst the darkness of that time, I remember us being collected by my aunt and spending the holiday with my cousins – their grandparents entertaining us as Father and Mrs Christmas. In later years, Christmas time became one of grief and bereavement, with the loss of close family members then a time of great family arguments and personal revelation, the shockwaves of which still seemingly ripple to this day.   

Advent is a time of prayer and reflection when we can shine a light on all those cross shaped marks on the scatter graph of our lives ask whether the trajectory of the line of best fit is following the path Jesus set before us.

No matter what our own personal experiences, nothing, of course, compares to the disruption – the incongruity - that confronted Mary as she faced the Angel Gabriel and was told that she – a virgin – was to give birth to the Son of the Most High – and that her barren relative Elizabeth had already conceived. But, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, we can learn much from her response. He explains that “Mary was saying “I don’t know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.” She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them.”

People often say “it’s the waiting that’s the worst thing”. But the waiting in Advent is not like waiting passively for the results of medical tests or the outcome of a job interview or a general election; waiting for our empty lives to be filled by something. The waiting in Advent is the best thing; our lives have already been filled by the love of God; this waiting is about being prepared for the unexpected - to “trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings” – waiting like Mary; embracing the God of surprises.

The difficult questions of Advent – of death, judgement, heaven and hell are held in the loving hands of hope and wonder. As we see in the cross and as Gabriel reminds us in our Gospel reading – nothing – no matter how incongruous it may seem, how dark the cliff edge we face when we confront the vertical in the horizon of our lives – nothing will be impossible with God.


Meditation

A few moments of silence before we pray.


Prayers

In our prayers, the response to We wait for the God of surprises is for whom nothing is impossible.

We wait for the God of surprises

for whom nothing is impossible.

Shake us up Lord, when our lives become like flat coke.
Enliven us with your spirit.
May we use this Advent season to learn to wait actively, not passively.
Help us to be open to new possibilities.
Give us the strength to ask for forgiveness for the times when we have not let you be in control – when it was my will, not thy will, that was done.

We wait for the God of surprises

for whom nothing is impossible.

Lord, help us to embrace disruption in our horizon of congruity.

To turn and face the vertical in the world around us head on.

The injustice. The poverty. The ugliness.
We ask for your wisdom to fill us all as the country goes to the polls this week;

all candidates; all those with the right to vote;
help them to exercise that right justly.

We wait for the God of surprises

for whom nothing is impossible.

Living God, we ask you to comfort those who at this time are facing the unexpected.

Those who are preparing to make big decisions and important announcements.

Those who are mourning the loss of people they love.

Give them hope.
Help them to know that their lives are not empty but filled with your love.

We wait for the God of surprises

for whom nothing is impossible.

Blessing

May the Lord, when he comes,

find us watching and waiting.

And may the blessing of Almighty God,

Father Son and Holy Spirit,

be among us and remain with us

this day and always.

Amen.

Thank you for joining us today for Start:Stop. Please do take a copy of our latest newsletter and information about our Christmas services. Reverend Stephen will be here next week, then Start Stop takes a break for two weeks and returns on 7th January 2020. If I don’t see you before then may I wish you a very Happy Christmas.