Advent III, Year A
The Rev. M. Fletcher Davis
Preparing for Love
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. [Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent, BCP, p 212]
The other day, I was greeted with a new Advent salutation – “Christ is coming! Look busy.” You can do better.
The spirit of Advent – this time of preparation for the coming of Christ – is marvelously captured in today’s Collect, one of the best known in the entire Prayer Book. Those of us of a certain age remember it from the 1928 Prayer Book where it was not used on the Third Sunday of Advent but on the Sunday next before Advent. It begins with the memorable words, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” What a super image.
At an interdenominational gathering of clergy, the meeting ended as usual, with prayer. One young pastor knelt, facing the chair he had recently vacated, and prayed aloud at length. It was lunchtime, the room was hot and the sun was roasting some of us through the window. And the young Baptist droned on. I didn’t know how to stop him.
What’s the protocol for that? A senior Baptist pastor did what I couldn’t. He cut him off, “Don’t ask him for any more. Just ask him for the grace to use what he’s already given.” That elicited a hearty A-men.
No matter how beleaguered we may feel, we don’t need more love from God. Christ loves us in good times and bad. He promised to be with us always, even to the end of time. [Mt 28.20] We’re a little like that young pastor – he already had all the love he needed.
However, we may need to be more responsive to that love. Too often we are so absorbed in our own agenda that we fail to notice, much less respond to, God’s presence in our lives. Can you even remember the last time you actually counted your blessings?
When I was an undergraduate walking through Harvard Square – where an academic once observed one can ignore more famous people than any other public place – a woman was chanting, “Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming.” As I approached her, I was too embarrassed by her antics to look her in the eye but she stopped me, poking her finger at my chest, asking, “Young man, are you ready to meet your Maker?”
Maybe she was crazy, but she asked an important question! How would you reply – especially if the question was asked by someone you respected and felt honor-bound to answer?
The usual question at this time of year is different – more like, Ready for Christmas? Bought all your presents? Got the house decorated? Travel plans in place? Cards in the mail? But her question is right on the mark. “Ready to meet your maker?” I sometimes think the spirit of Advent is captured in this scene: you are walking down a sidewalk and recognize the person walking towards you is Christ, in person. You know he is the one “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from [whom] no secrets are hid.” [BCP, p 355]
How do you respond? Do you hide behind the nearest bush, or cross the street hoping he won’t spot you? Or do you run up to him with a big smile and say, “What a joy to see you in person. I’ve been reading about you and talking with you every day in my prayers”?
Maybe judgment is not anything Christ says. After all, even though he knows all about us, he’s not a prosecuting attorney. Judgment can be as simple as a mirror that shows us ourselves as Christ sees us. He doesn’t need to say a word. We know that, as the Collect puts it, “we are sorely hindered by our sins.”
If we haven’t even spent the time and effort to count our blessings, how much less likely are we to examine the times and ways we have been unloving to others? Every missed opportunity impoverishes us, shames us, makes us more likely to hide than to greet our Savior with open arms.
That’s the great tragedy of our lives. The dark shadow of our own wills obscures the creative powers God gave us to love one another and to help him make the world a better place. Too often our desires and God’s will head in different directions, limiting God’s ability to fulfill his divine purpose in and through us. Truly we are “sorely hindered by our sins.” Let us confess that fact and surrender our willfulness so we may be eager to welcome and embrace the Incarnate Christ.
Advent means coming. We think of two comings, the first coming when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and the second when he returns in glory. But neither of those is our focus today. It is another coming, one far more intimate and transforming. Today we pray for the coming of Christ into the now of our lives so that we may, in the words of our Collect, “let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.”
But can God’s grace and mercy really help and deliver us? That’s hard to believe. How could God know us so well and still think we’re worth all the trouble? We speak the language of salvation easily – the incarnation and the resurrection, God our Creator and Redeemer, Christ and the cross. Our familiarity may sometimes belie our lack of understanding or worse our lack of will power to make God’s intentions our own. Sorely hindered we are. Why doesn’t God just give up on us instead of entrusting us to carry out his loving purposes on earth?
That delightful Irish-Canadian priest, Herbert O’Driscoll, said: “We hear John the Evangelist telling us that God gave an only son to us, but we don’t really hear why. Behind that ‘why’ is an unbelievable fact – God couldn’t help doing it! And the reason God couldn’t help doing it is that God loves us so much.”
So we pray that God will “speedily help and deliver us” – not just because we need help and deliverance but because so many others do too. Think of our sister and brother Christians in Bethlehem this year, walled off from other communities of faith, walled off from field and farm, from family and friends, from prosperity and hope.
Think of people who are victims of violence, people who are alone, people nearby who are sick and suffering. We pray in the words of St Francis, “Make us instruments of your peace.” [BCP, p 833] We don’t need more of God’s love. We lack only the will to act on the love we already have. Acting on it is what we mean by the term Christmas spirit.
The man sitting next to me at the counter poured the entire jar of sugar into his coffee then asked the waitress for more. She quickly surveyed the situation and replied, “Stir up what you’ve got.” Sounds like marching orders for all of us. Don’t let God’s love just fall to the bottom of your cup. Stir it up and share the sweetness of Christ’s love in the now of your life.
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