Sermon - And one will be left

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