Waiting Patiently for Christmas: Sermon Preached on 17th December 2023 (Third Sunday of Advent)

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.16-24; John 1. 6-8, 19-28

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances…”

The supermarkets have been keeping Christmas since October. The big firms’ Christmas TV adverts came out just before Remembrance Sunday. We like to tut at them for their indecent rush to start the festive season, yet by this stage, we ourselves have all been to about fifteen Christmas parties, sang about fifty carols, and eaten nine thousand eight hundred mince pies. Even St John’s is full to the brim with beautifully decorated Christmas trees.

Yet according to the Church it still isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent, which is supposed to be a time of waiting, a time of reflection and spiritual preparation before Christmas, sort of like the junior brother of Lent. It’s hard to preach about keeping Advent faithfully rather than jumping the gun with the secular world when the building is full of angels and stars. It’s harder still to keep any sense of this being at least something of a season of fasting when David Evans is offering you another hot mug of his delicious mulled wine, sourced directly from Germany.

I’m not in a position to give you a lecture from the pulpit about keeping Advent properly, because I haven’t been keeping it very well myself. Indeed, pretty much the whole Church, across denominational boundaries, celebrates Christmas with the secular world during Advent, then during the Twelve Days of Christmas, supposed to be the time of feasting, it joins everyone else in having a good slumber.

I think it’s a great pity, because Advent is all about waiting patiently, sometimes in surroundings that are very dark, for the light of God’s eternal Word to enter into the world. And when that Light did enter the world, it didn’t do so in a blaze of glory, but almost entirely ignored, in the form of a tiny, vulnerable, baby. Given how dark the world has become over the last few years, we as Christians could do with preparing ourselves spiritually to be proficient at waiting patiently, and looking for where light is entering the world, vulnerable and much ignored. If we could be better at that, we could also be more of a blessing on our secular neighbours.

It’s also a pity because patience is, in and of itself, a virtue, and one that our culture and our technology and the structure of our economy makes very hard to cultivate. Advent is a season where we should be trained in patience. It is a virtue whose benefits are not only spiritual – for making the most of our lives, even in the most selfish terms, requires patience, and if we wish to live in a society that manages to be both diverse and tolerant, yet well-ordered at the same time, it requires much patience from everyone.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances”. Such a simple phrase from St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. Yet it seems obvious that this is a call to be patient in the face of difficult circumstances.

Who were the Thessalonians, why was St Paul was writing to them, and why might their circumstances have required patience? They were residents of the city of Thessalonica, a place that remains very much a part of today’s world, the second largest city in 21st Century Greece, roughly comparable in size with Bristol. In St Paul’s time, Thessalonica was already an important city, and a wealthy one, capital of the Roman province of Macedonia.

This letter to the Christians in Thessalonica is more than likely the oldest part of the writings that came to make up the New Testament, dictated by St Paul in the year 50 or 51. We also know from other parts of the letter that these Christians were probably all gentile converts, and they had probably faced some degree of persecution. That explains why St Paul wanted to write to encourage them to keep going.

Given that Thessalonica, as a rich provincial capital in the Roman Empire, would have had a considerable diversity of peoples and beliefs, why might this small group have faced persecution? Well, for starters, their faith in Christ would have meant that they no longer participated in important local pagan cults – for example, we know Thessalonica was the stronghold of devotion to Isis. Nor would they have participated in the cult of the Emperor. None of this would have endeared them to politically and economically powerful interests. When faced with a choice between Christ and Caesar, the Thessalonians chose Christ. While Paul often told off the congregations he wrote letters to, with the Thessalonians his tone is almost always encouraging and gentle. Paul’s world involved a considerable degree of darkness, and even this monumentally self-confident figure must have often doubted himself. The Church in Thessalonica was clearly a ray of light to him, perhaps a group of people that helped Paul himself to wait patiently for the Lord.

Our Gospel reading, about John the Baptist’s ministry, is also all about patience. The world of pious Jews in first century Palestine was pretty dark – foreign occupation, corrupt and cruel local leaders, internal divisions. People were looking for a light in the darkness, and John the Baptist seemed like he could be it. He wasn’t like the usual run of powerful religious figures, obsessed with status and comfort. Instead, he worked on the far side of the River Jordan, far away from the centre of religious life in Jerusalem. But when people asked was he the Messiah or a prophet, he said that he wasn’t. Someone was coming after him, who was so great that John said he was unworthy even to tie the thong of His sandals. People would have to be patient of a little while longer – but a truly remarkable light was about to shine in a dark world.

Here’s the thing that’s easy to miss. It’s not just John and his hearers who have to be patient – but Jesus is also patient. He respects John’s mission, and He respects that He too must wait for the appropriate time to begin His own public ministry. If we take seriously that Jesus is God made human, then patience isn’t something that God imposes on us, as lesser beings who must wait their turn, but something that God Himself embraces. When we are patient, and I admit it’s not something I find easy, then we share something of the nature of God Himself.

In embracing patience, we play our part in creating a truly free society. We embrace something of the nature of the God who gave us and every human being free will, and creativity, and the right to use their own God-given gifts, and to make their own mistakes. In a patient world, we do not only embrace our own calling from God, but we give space to others to fulfil the missions that God is calling them to, missions that may be very different from our own, just as Jesus patiently waited for John to fulfil his mission before beginning His own. Patience and freedom are intimately linked, each sustaining the other, both gifts that need to be cultivated and tended, both gifts that are easy to lose. Yet in this dark world, each is needed to see the little lights that are all around us, if we only take the time to look.

So this Advent rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, and then you can be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Enjoy your parties and your carols and your steaming mugs of mulled wine, but never forget that we wait in this Advent season not for a huge party, but for Light to enter into a dark world, Light that is often small and vulnerable and ignored by almost everyone.