Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent

Sunday 20th December 2009

Preached by Rev Paul Hewitt

We started our Confirmation Classes proper last Thursday evening and, I must admit I felt a little rusty. (As you know, we were to have Confirmation last year, so this will now be three years since we had a confirmation here in Glencraig). But over the years, you develop what you want to say and a way of getting across some eternal truths. At least you attempt to do this! It seems to be getting harder, though! You try to reduce the gospel message to the very essence of what it’s all about and you build out from there; or, at least that’s my theory. I base our Confirmation Courses on John Stott’s book, ‘Your Confirmation’ which neatly splits the course up in to three parts, Beginnings, Belief and Behaviour. ‘Beginnings!’...Where would you begin?

I sometimes wonder have we complicated our faith so much that we really don’t know what the basics are, or perhaps we have got them confused and altered so much that perhaps we may have even forgotten the basics. Every Confirmation Course presents the challenge of conveying mystery! How can we ever convey ‘mystery’ when the world demands answers? And how can we effectively convey ‘mystery’ to young people of 12 or 13 years of age? Is there any room for mystery anymore? How do I convey the mystery of the incarnation which we’re about to celebrate this Christmas; Jesus as fully God and fully man at the same time. Where would you start with that one?

A man who was accustomed to giving orders and having his own way was travelling to an important meeting. He decided to take a short cut and found himself thoroughly lost. He asked the first person he saw, a young child, for directions.

“Boy, which way to Dover?” he gruffly asked.

“I don’t know,” the child responded, a little embarrassed.

“Well then,” the man demanded, “How far to Brighton?”

“I don’t know that either,” the child answered.

“Is there someone around here who can give me directions, then?” the man raised his voice.

“I don’t know,” shrugged the child.

The man’s questions got angrier as the boy kept responding with the same answer. Finally, the man lost his temper and shouted, “Well you don’t know much, do you!”

Then for the first time, the boy smiled. Looking up the winding road to a little house where the evening light glowed through the window and where his brothers and sisters played in the yard, the boy said, “No...but I ain’t lost!”

You know that story, I’m sure, in many different guises. We may not know how to explain the mystery of the incarnation; that it took Augustine 70 volumes of writing to describe the Trinity, and still didn’t get to the end, how then are we going to explain the very basics to a group of young, modern people?

There is one sure thing, however. We may not have all the answers at our finger tips, but the one sure thing we have in our faith and in our love, is that we ain’t lost!

In an impatient age that demands answers and doesn’t have time for mystery and wonder, we live with an uphill struggle, or else we need to change our approach. The historian, Will Durant said, “The greatest question of our time is not communism verses individualism; not East verses West; it is whether man can bear to live without God in an age which has killed him”.

The point is a powerful one. Most people in the Western world live as if God is dead. Everything seems fine on the outside; we’re all enjoying ourselves, we’re all having a great time. In fact many live so well that they are in a kind of utopia. When Christmas is over, we just move on the next thing and everything is hunky-dory! Is it?

Alright, we may not have all the pat answers this world demands, but we ain’t lost. We have purpose and direction and meaning, given to us in our faith and in our commitment to our Lord, and there is nothing that can take the place of that. In fact, there is no romantic idealism about searching for utopias. We’re actually tired of searching for utopias which disappoint – the literal meaning of the Greek word utopia is ‘nowhere-land’.

We’re all on a journey and we need to be going somewhere; even if we don’t know all the answers, at least we know we’re not lost! Ok, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, ‘Now we see but a poor reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully...”

Now, this is the Sunday before Christmas and you all have a lot on your plate. I was told last evening to keep this short, and you know that I am of the George Burns school of thought when he said that a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible!