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Advent
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 9th December 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
The theory is that Advent is about waiting and preparing for Jesus' birth.
The reality is that December is even busier than the other months of the year:
• fairs and functions making the most of the beautiful weather
• Christmas parties and carol services
• preparing to travel if we are
• getting ready for Christmas.
So Advent is a good time of year to remember what we really value,
• what gives us our identity,
• what feeds our souls.
I'm going to talk about prayer.
Some of you have heard this story before:
Two friends are walking down Queen's Road Central (Hong Kong).
It'shard to have a conversation thanks to all the noise and bustle around them:
• cars and buses; taxi horns;
• many other people out doing their Christmas shopping;
• bright lights and distractions in the shop windows.
One of the friends suddenly stops.
"Wait!" he says, "I can hear a grasshopper."
"What!" replies the friend. "All this noise and think you heard a grasshopper?"
The friend is a monk who lives in the countryside.
• His ears are attuned to natural sounds.
The monk friend looks around, listening intently, then bends down and picks the cricket from between the cracks in the pavement.
His friend is amazed.
The monk says "lend me a coin."
He throws the coin in the air.
It lands on the pavement with a jingle and all the people nearby stop to look at the money.
The two friends look at each other and the monk says
• "What we hear depends on what we value and on what is real to us."
I had a strange experience this week.
I heard a watch ticking in my office.
I don't wear a watch,
• but there is one on the floor in the place I pray.
I've never heard the watch before,
• even when I'm sitting next to it.
I haven't heard the watch since.
• The fan of my computer is too loud.
I think I heard the watch because I hadn't prayed that morning.
I try to start the working day by praying.
This means trying to make sure that the first thing I do when I get to my office is sit in my "holy corner".
If I turn the computer on first,
• or start looking at things on my desk,
• I loose the battle.
One thing leads to another,
• e-mails come in,
• meetings happen
• and another day goes by.
It's no good me trying to be peaceful at home before going to the office:
• Samuel, Josh and Phoebe put pay to that.
• And I usually feel too sleepy anyway.
In this I'm encouraged by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He has said he finds it difficult to find time to pray in the morning when he's getting his two children ready for school.
So I heard the watch ticking.
This was nothing spooky.
No special message from God.
Just, I think, my heart yearning for a few minutes peace and stillness.
"In daily life, there is so much to do and so little time.
"You may feel pressured to run all the time.
"Just stop!
"Touch the ground of the present moment and your will touch peace and joy."
Thich Naht Hanh
It's so easy to feel guilty about prayer.
Don't.
Do try to pray regularly,
• but don't feel guilty about it if you don't manage to.
It's good to pray,
• but our lives are overloaded with things to do.
Most of us are far too busy.
It's easy to feel guilty if we don't pray for a long time.
Again, don't.
If you can only manage two minutes, then do that.
There's a spiritual group promoting "Just a Minute".
They encourage people to pause during the day for just a minute and to be silent and still;
• taking a brief break from your outer activities
• to slip into a quiet space inside.
That's stressed out city executives,
• busy mums
• or retired people.
It can change your life –
• or at least your day.
For BBC Radio 4 listeners, Just a Minute has other connotations.
The panel game in which contestants have to speak for a minute on a subject
• without hesitation, repetition or deviation.
It's fast paced, with lots of interruptions and mostly hot air!
So it's a good analogy for most of our lives.
Just A Minute of silence is a great antidote.
Father Christmas is mentioned regularly at home at the moment.
We don't yet have an actual list for Father Christmas,
• but I'm sure certain young people have mental lists.
We often treat prayer like a Father Christmas wish list, don't we?
"Dear God, I know it's April and not nearly Christmas, but I need these things…"
I heard this week about someone who prays for the bus to come soon.
It's a "no lose" prayer –
• eventually a bus is bound to turn up.
But do we really believe that God will make a bus driver put his foot down to make the bus arrive sooner?
The Father Christmas wish list approach to prayer is the prayer of children
Like the little boy who popped his head round the door and said, "I'm going to bed now and I'll be saying my prayers. Anybody want anything?"
Prayer is not just about what we ask from God,
• it is about what God asks from us.
What we all really need is more stillness and silence.
For this, prayer is not about learning some technique.
It's more like sunbathing.
The key thing about sunbathing is that you just go and lie in the sun.
You don't have to learn a technique.
You can't do anything to increase the strength of the sun.
You don't have to believe a load of scientific facts about the sun before you can benefit from it.
You just have to go to the right place and lie in it.
The sun does the rest.
It's the same with prayer.
You don't need a degree in spirituality to pray.
You can't increase the strength of God's love.
You don't have to know a lot about God
• or to believe much
• before you can pray.
You don't need to know special words.
In fact, its best if you don't say anything at all.
Just turn up and God will do the rest.
We are very good at excuses for not turning up.
We also spend so much time rushing around that the idea of lying in the sun seems self-indulgent.
We have to organise, entertain, tidy up, get ready, worry…
And we have increasingly chaotic lives.
We live under the tyranny of speed,
• trying to pack more and more into the same number of hours.
There's a deep need for our society to be cured of its addiction to busyness.
I know that feeling of guilt if we dare to pause for a few minutes.
But no one says that if a Mozart symphony was played 25 percent faster, we could squeeze another piece into the concert.
Life has a proper speed.
Most of the time we are way over the speed limit.
God's speed is the speed of love,
• the speed of the spirit –
• slow.
Sunbathing needs a little preparation, but not much:
• a towel, some sun cream.
When we pray we might need a candle or a Bible or an icon or some music.
But basically we've got to slow down,
• perhaps for just a minute,
• and open ourselves up to the source of light.
God does the rest.
For Advent, I recommend a bit of sunbathing.
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