This is a dark time of year with its short days and long nights. The gloomy days of late November are giving way to the equally gloomy days of early December. It is also a dark time in our world with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, natural disasters, climate change and, the ongoing drip drip drip of hatred, negativity, shaming and lies which is social media.
In the face of all the darkness we need hope. We need hope. Our world needs hope. And what does the church say to the world? The church says, ‘Come! Wait with me! Hope for our world is coming.’ In the second, third and fourth weeks of Advent respectively we will claim that Peace, Joy and Love are coming too.
Seriously? Come and wait with me because better days are coming? What about now?
The truth is we wait for hope to come but hope is already here. We wait for peace, joy and love but they too are already here. How can this be? It is because we live in the paradoxical ‘already and not yet’ of God’s time. Advent is preparation for our observance of the birth of the Christ Child, the one who was and is the embodiment of hope, peace, joy and love. Advent is also preparation for the second coming, not of a child, but of the risen and ascended Lord. It is now but it is also not yet.
At the Sunday Eucharist, during Advent, we use a sung dismissal which each week focusses on one of the four themes of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. The first Sunday of Advent the priest sings ‘Go out in hope and serve the Lord,’ and we respond ‘hope shines as the solitary star, faith is the inner light. You and I together mirror the Light of Lights, and illumine the pathway home.’ The second week we reference peace, then joy and finally love.
In Advent we proclaim that God has called us out of darkness into light. Because, despite evidence to the contrary, and despite our own very human feelings of darkness, hopelessness and grief, God is with us. And we, who know peace, hope, joy and love in and through God, are called to embody those virtues, to make them present here and now, in our lives, in our communities, in our world.
The other side of being called is being sent. God has called us out of darkness into love, joy, peace and hope and God sends us out in the same way. Hope, peace, joy and love are coming. They are coming but they are also already here.
(Hope Shines as the Solitary Star from More Voices, #220, Words: Catherine Faith MacLean)
