Well, Happy New Year everyone!
We are at the start of another Christian year which begins on this Sunday - the first Sunday of Advent.
Advent – has got to be the season of the year most neglected.
Those outside the church pay no heed, for a start. And those of us inside the church tend to get caught up in the wild consumerism of our neighbours around us.
It’s hard to get ready for Jesus when we are so busy getting ready for Christmas! Ironic, maybe, but true for most of us.
There is a guy lost somewhere in Turkey. You’ve probably heard about him in the news. His name is Donald McKenzie and he comes from Stornoway. Donald went to Turkey looking for the remains of Noah’s ark at the top of Mount Arafat and now he has disappeared.
No one knows what has happened to him – whether he has met with an accident or even been captured by bandits (which is a real possibility).
It’s a serious and sad story.
You can’t help feeling how awful that must be for his family. I hope he turns up safe and sound.
But if he had spoken to me before his trip and asked me to go with him and I was free, I wouldn’t have gone – not because I don’t want to climb a very tall mountain, and not because that area of the world is dangerous, (although that turns out to be very true).
My main reason would be that I don’t think he is going to find the ark. And the reason I don’t think he will find the ark is that I don’t believe there ever was an ark.
Why not?
Well for one reason – the story of the ark and the flood is literal nonsense.
Think about it.
Noah builds a big boat and fills it with two of every species of animal and they all live happily together.
Polar bears, duck-billed platypus, kangaroos, lions and tigers, the Kodiac Island bear (found only on that island in SW Alaska) and, of course, Thomson Gazelles (the favourite of us at Langside).
Where did Noah get them all?
Was he a zoo keeper?
And they all lived happily and no-one ate anyone else - or stood on anyone else?
Just to spend a moment’s thought on this is to reckon – this probably didn’t happen.
But there is a greater reason for thinking the ark and flood story isn’t something historical.
The story is theologically offensive.
It portrays a God who is not the God we worship as Christians.
A God who changes his (or her) mind.
A God who deliberately destroys the world - killing millions of people.
(By the way, if someone today had the power to create a great flood to be unleashed to wipe out humanity we would consider them to be both lunatic and terrorist – and I don’t think God is either!)
It portrays a God who is unreliable – certainly not constant and unchanging - yesterday today and forever.
Yesterday God destroys the world. Today God is looking after the world. Who knows what tomorrow might bring!!?
So I don’t think the story of the ark and flood is literally true.
The story of a big flood was a common story in ancient civilisations.
Many different groups had their own version.
I think it’s a story that the Bible writers use to put across some important insights – but without presuming that is a historical event.
For example,
the story teaches that God is in control of the world,
that God can bring new life out of tragedy,
that God can be depended on, and
that God has covenanted with us to always care for humanity.
And another theme (in the Noah bit) is that of being ready to do what God wants even if other people are giving you a hard time.
And Jesus reminds people of that early part of the story again to suggest that we need to be ready – we need to be prepared for him.
Noah and his family were laughed at and mocked and ignored for doing what God asked them to do. But they were willing to put God first.
If God asks us to do something would we do it if other people started slagging us off or giving us a hard time?
Would we do it if other people wouldn’t join us and we were on our own and out on a limb?
Bing ready for God is the main theme of Advent.
When other people ignore this season of Advent, are we going to follow the crowd or do what God wants from us?
Are we going to use this season to get ourselves ready?
But maybe you are asking………… How do we get ready?
WE NEED TO STRIVE TO SLOW DOWN AND MAKE SPACE FOR GOD
Advent and Christmas aren’t just different from each other.
There is a kind tension between what Advent is calling us to and what Christmas is calling us to – at least Christmas as the vast majority of us actually celebrate it.
Christmas is about more.
Advent is about less.
Christmas is about external
Advent is about internal.
Christmas is about speeding up.
Advent is about slowing down.
Christmas is about adding.
Advent is about subtracting.
Here is a thing said by many Christians.
“We all have a void in our lives. A God-shaped void which only God can fill”.
I know what they mean, but really “nothing could be further from the truth!”
(John Churcher: Setting Jesus Free p19)
The truth is that God isn’t out there. God is within us all.
Maybe you’ll have heard this story before.
Rabbi Eisik was a poor Jewish Rabbi who lived in the town of Krakow.
One night he had a dream. It was set in a place called Prague, 300 miles away. He had heard of this place but he’d never been there. In the dream there was a big castle and a great bridge in front of it and underneath the bridge was buried treasure.
It was a strange dream and he ignored it. But after the dream was repeated three nights in succession he thought it must be some kind of sign and so he dropped everything and set off on the long journey.
When he gets there he finds the bridge (presumably it’s the Charles Bridge) but there are soldiers guarding it on all sides. He can’t just march up and start digging. So he waits and waits, hoping that one-day the soldiers will go away. Eventually the Captain of the Guard approaches him and tells him that the soldiers have reported him loitering about the bridge over a couple of days.
“Why are you doing this? Are you looking for something?” he asks.
“Can I help you?”
Rabbi Eisik doesn’t know what to say so he just tells the truth about the dream.
The officer roars with laughter.
“Are you mad? You have walked 300 hundred miles for the sake of a dream. How stupid you are! What a waste of time!”
Then the Captain says, “ Everyone gets dreams but only a fool would trust them. I once had a dream that there was treasure buried under the stove of a Jewish Rabbi called Eisik who lives in a place called Krakow. But I’m not about to walk 300 miles there to find out!”
At this Eisik goes home and discovers under his stove a great treasure that has been lying there all along.
The point of the story? The treasure isn’t far away. It’s right under his nose.
And for us - it’s where we are.
God isn’t something out there – something (or someone) else that we need to catch and add to our already busy lives. God is within us already. God is the deepest part of every human being.
So why then are there atheists? Why are there people who have no sense of the spiritual?
It’s because we aren’t listening to God.
We have cut ourselves off by not listening.
We have cut ourselves off by being too busy to stop and become aware and tune in to God’s voice.
Advent is a season that asks us to do something about this.
When we are quiet, God can break through to us.
Susan and I loved watching The Big Silence programme on BBC2. Abbot Christopher Jamieson challenged 5 very different people to go on a silent retreat and to build a period of regular silence into their lives. Only one of them had a religious faith and that person was wavering in her faith. They were monitored over months. What was amazing was that all of them (after initially struggling with it) encountered God through the experience.
Advent is about having the eyes to see Jesus now.
Jesus is coming again. And its today! And it’s this Christmas!
Some Christians talk about Jesus coming into our world twice. They say Jesus came to our world two thousand years ago and he will come again in the future in the event known as the “Second Coming”.
Now I’m happy to leave what happens in the end of history to God to sort out and I dare say Jesus will be part of that.
But the truth is that Jesus comes to our world again and again and again.
It’s a repeated thing. And we encounter Christ when we are ready to recognise him.
Jesus puts it like this..
Two women are working grinding meal - one is aware of Christ, the other sees nothing.
Two men are working a field - one sees Christ, the other sees nothing.
When Jesus talks like this I don’t think he is talking about the final end of the world. I think he is talking about what happens every single day of life.
Jesus comes to us all. Every day. Jesus is here for us all.
Some people are aware of him and others miss out.
Some are ready to receive him. Others are blind and deaf to spiritual realities - or too busy to notice.
Two men will be working side by side in a factory, one will be aware of the presence of Christ, and the other will plod through the day like a dismal slave.
Two friends will be walking in the hills; one will find the glory of Christ among the heather, the wild flowers, the breathtaking views and the birds soaring overhead, the other will note the time of the climb. For one it will be a spiritual encounter. For the other the hike will merely be a good physical work-out.
Two immigration warders will be working in a interview centre for asylum seekers. One will see a troublesome mob that have to be kept in order, fed and held in detention, while another will find Christ coming to her with a hundred desperate faces.
Two people will be sitting in the same church, singing the same hymns, hearing the same Scripture readings. One will become more aware of the presence of Christ near at hand, another may simply fulfil a weekly habit and leave unmoved and unchanged.
Advent is about having the eyes to see Jesus now.
And finding time to slow down, strip away our frantic business,
take some silence and discover that God is at the heart of who we are.
To be aware of God in our lives;
to be aware of Christ.
There isn’t anything better or more important than that.