Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Advent

Sunday 27 November

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

Being the best

‘Remember me for my football’. And so we shall. In the sixties I met George Best once in a queue waiting for airline tickets. He was travelling to Manchester. He was beginning to become known and admired for his football skills. He told me things were going well and I got the impression of a good humoured and kindly man who was prepared to put up with the likes of me, all starry eyed and full of admiration for the boy genius.

Now he is gone. I have lived long enough to see his career from start to finish thanks to television and newspapers. I have watched his roller coaster private life splashed across the front pages of the tabloids. I have seen him ravaged by illness. I have waited for news of him with football fans around the world as his life came to a close. And all the while we remembered his football.

We remembered the best of George Best. Yet for so many years how we agonised over the paradox that was his life –a creative genius on a football field, a genial man off it and yet flawed and destructive in himself.

This paradox in human character is always with us – on the one hand there is a side that is destructive of all that is good, even to the point of destroying our own potential and well being, and on the other hand there is the capacity to reach for the stars, to be the best we can be and achieve great things, even contentment, happiness and peace.

When the children of Israel lost their way in life and got into all kinds of destructive habits and lifestyles, Isaiah said they were like shrivelled leaves “swept away in the wind”. Their way of life and lack of trust in God brought them to a point of despair so they cried out: “How can we be saved?”

They were frightened and tossed about by all kinds of useless and false values. They were ultimately overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness.

Just outside Anchorage, Alaska, there is a place called Turn-again Arms. This particular area has one of the fastest tide rates in the world. The tide rushes in and out at about ten feet per minute. The water is so cold that if you got caught in it you would die within a few moments.

When the tide is out, there is a huge flat area of mud. It looks like a great place to ride off-road vehicles. But this area – called the mud flats – is not just mud but also glacial silt. When the tide rushes out, the water that is left settles quickly.

When it settles, it leaves air pockets, and those air pockets form vacuums. You never know where they are and they are never in the same place twice. If you step in one of them, it will suck you in and you can’t get out. It’s not exactly like quicksand but more like superglue as it locks you in.

Alaskan preachers point to the mud flats and say ‘Sin is like those mud flats’. It looks good. It is so inviting. You see it and you just want to get out there and have fun. But it turns out to be glacial silt. It sucks you in and ultimately ends up taking your life.

George Best was very witty but there was a hint of tragedy in his famous quip when he said: “I spent all my money on wine, women and fast cars, the rest I squandered”.

We all have our flaws – God knows. We all run the risk of skating across glacial mud flats. We all run the risk of living in a vacuum.

So much so we end up as individuals, as a society in a moral and spiritual wasteland. 

So when Isaiah surveys such moral and spiritual destructiveness his only hope is that God will help his wayward creation.

In the Gospel reading for this Advent Sunday, Jesus does not gloss over the costs and the dangers of this life. He warns us to prepare and to take notice of these dangers and, in short, to have our wits about us and to be determined to make the best of our lives and to be the best – aspiring to follow Christ in all humility and with hope that by God’s help ‘good will overcome evil’ – in ourselves and in the world.

But we need resolve. We need to live as people ready and willing to welcome Christ.

Advent Sunday, the beginning of the Church’s Year, is a good time to make spiritual resolutions. It’s a good time to wake up to the fact that we need to check our compass, question our motives and to keep our spiritual eyes open.

One of the best things about babysitting is the bedtime story.  Our granddaughter Miriam, like millions of children everywhere, must have a bedtime story. This lovely ritual begins with a moment of quiet anticipation, a waiting on every word.

Advent is a waiting place. But in a culture that doesn’t want to wait, that sees God as an argument to be understood, that sees moral and spiritual values trashed and that soaks up images of ‘success’ only to see them blow away, shrivelled and of no consequence, in such a culture the idea of waiting is dismissed, no matter that we may see the red light, we drive on.

But we do so at our peril. Advent – this waiting place in the Church’s’ Year –is the hush before the curtain rises on the truth of God, the quiet moment before the story begins.

It is a story of creation and wholeness, of sin and destruction, of redemption and forgiveness.  It is a story told in the lives of patriarchs, kings, prophets and apostles and of a baby born in a stable.

In waiting we may hear the story. Waiting in a way that sees us through the cold winters of doubt and disbelief to see the bulbs bloom in springtime; waiting through a pregnancy in a way that stirs us to prepare well for the child to be born.

This Advent then is a new beginning, a new opportunity to wait on the Lord in hope and expectation. The Advent wreath is placed alongside the shrivelled leaves of our failures. God’s truth is evergreen – ever with us. He comes to save us from our sins and to help us make the best of our lives.

George Best was the best footballer of his generation – a supreme athlete, a flawed genius for sure, but we will remember him for his football.

Lo! The Lamb, so long expected,

Comes with pardon down from heaven;

Let us haste, with tears of sorrow,

One and all to be forgiven

Amen