St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A Sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce W. B. Jenneker in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on the First Sunday of Advent, 30 November 2008

What we gather to do here Sunday by Sunday is urgent business. Sometimes we think it is only about beauty or decent living or a healthy world view and a tidy faith. But what we are about here is urgent business, and what draws us to this place and to the faith for which it stands is urgent business.

For the first Christians that urgency was dramatic. For many of them it was unavoidably a matter of life and death. They saw the darkness of the world looming over them, they felt the sting of its cold, they knew the emptiness of its promises. The darkness that was encroaching upon them was not merely the other-side of light. The cold they knew was not just in the air, and the emptiness all around them was not only the death of the year.

Souls dark with sin, hearts cold with the dread of fear and the shudders of anxiety, lives empty of promise, of the good and the true: all of these they knew, those first Christians. And just as the bright light of the sun returned each year to pierce the darkness, first with just a flickering glimmer and then growing stronger and stronger until the day was longer than the long dark night, just so they believed that the light of Christ was conquering the darkness of sin, and evil and death.

The darkness and its conquest by the ever returning light of Christ became for them a principal image that anchored their faith. Light piercing the dark night, to render it radiant and hospitable, became for them an icon which could hold in a simple picture the truth that set them free from all that threatened to diminish or destroy them. The transformation of the darkness by the light came to remind them of the resplendent power of God that moved them from selfishness to generosity, that enabled them to turn from denial of unpalatable reality to a hard grasp of the facts, that empowered them bravely to risk the goodness of life rather than live in fear of its calamities.

They lived in the far north these first Christians, who first discovered this truth of Christ in God. For them the year's ending was not merely a movement from September to December, but a journey into darkness, a journey which left sunshine and light, warmth and open skies behind them, plunging them into deep, threatening night, night that was long and dark and cold.

They were northern folks, those first Christians who discovered that the meaning of God could be read in the return of the light. Their ancestors in the cold frozen lands of northern climes had laid hold of this truth before, by the names of other Gods. In the midst of the winter cold, they longed for warmth; in the midst of the winter dark, they longed for light; in the midst of the winter death; they longed for life. Around them there was one sign only that dared to proclaim that life endured, that more than merely surviving winter, life was enduring, invincible, triumphant. The trees of the primeval forests remained green when all else died. They looked to those trees with much hope and no little joy, drawing confidence from the bright green needles. Then they cut from those verdant boughs tufts of fragrant greenness, and wound them into a strong green circle that had no end. And so they made a rich, healthy, aromatic sign that the powerful goodness of life endures even when darkness covers the earth. And if this was not enough to capture the mystery of life's resilience, they made sure that there was more than one type of green leaf in their wreath giving it the luxury of more than one fragrance. This little circlet of life was more than a talisman. Indeed, it was indeed a foretaste of God's sure and extravagant provision that is inexhaustible, unconquerable, eternal, sure and true. And then, to crown the wreath with promise, they decked it out with sturdy lights to be lit one by one as the bright stars come out one by one to light up the night sky. With each lighting those northerners made a bold and daring wager that no darkness could for ever hold the light captive, that no cold could freeze for ever the warmth deep down in things. that no death could ever and ultimately overcome life.

As Christianity came to those cold northern lands and holy men and women sought to tell the mystery of the Light of Christ these folks who knew the cold, dark, lifeless winter bethought themselves of their wreath and knew the meaning of the mystery

Our world is much, much smaller than it was for those huddles of cold northerners thousands of years ago. What happens in cold, northern St Petersburg or Fairbanks or in Nepal or the far reaches of northern China unfolds on our TV screens and takes up residence in our living rooms. And our experience is not at all differenct from theirs. There is a darkness all over our world. Another massacre in India, this time in Mumbai, and with it the numbers of those killed and wounded in the violence of civil strife in that country run in to the thousands. From the Gaza Strip to the flatlands of the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Sudan to Zimbabwe, the glowering darkness encroaches. There is darkness all over the world. Crime and corruption increase, as much because good people are tempted into evil deeds as because in our greed and selfishness we have all condoned the abandonment of law and order.

There is darkness all over the world because we have held life too cheaply. As we celebrate the freedom from slavery won by decades of hard struggle, we acknowledge that in our nation, on our continent and across our world buying and selling people continues – especially trafficking in women and children. As we join with people all around the world to recommit ourselves to fight for the eradication of HIV and AIDS, we acknowledge that too many have died, too many are suffering, too many are dying, and our response is too little too late. As we keep Sixteen days of Activism against Violence Against Women and Children, we acknowledge that brute macho strength and sexist male arrogance prevails. The light has gone out all over our world.

In the small world of our own lives too, the light has gone out. Reckless speeding butchers thousands on our roads and road-rage makes driving on them risky business. Acquisitiveness and competing with the Jones' shackle us to enormous debts that leach the joy of living from us. Jobless and without direction we flounder about, confused and in pain about life we lose ourselves in drugs and sex. Frightened by the challenges of life we become manipulative, controlling and autocratic. The light has gone out all over our world.

And so we too, here where summer is already with us, gather up green boughs and shape them into a endless circle, a sign that life endures, that the vitality at the heart of things survives the changes and chances of life. And then, boldly holding on to the promise of life, we place on our green wreath candles to flicker like the stars that pierce the dark night. And then we stand, gazing at our Advent Wreath, affirming that all is well since all is in the hand of God. Neither sickness nor death, neither good fortune or bad, neither tragedy nor triumph defines us. We are defined by one reality only – that the Love-that-holds-the-Universe-Together holds us, giving us life, bringing us hope, keeping us safe. No matter how deep the darkness. No matter how bitter the loss or how keen the pain.

On the First Sunday of Advent when the year of our life in Christ turns, and the story of our life in him begins again, we look to the dark world with all in it that is threatening and full of despair and we weave once again a wreath of promise and deck it over with lights to ready ourselves for the coming of the Light of Christ so that he who came once to be born in a stable may come again, with great power and glory, to be born in our hearts and to reign in our lives.

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