In the hills of northern Spain stands an old church with a very unusual statue of Mary in it. Down in the crypt she stands - La Madona de la O - the O Madonna or Advent Madonna. She stands in late pregnancy, heavy with child and full of hope for the future. Her pregnant fullness quietly announces God’s love for the world.
It is this Mary, blooming in late pregnancy, that also represents the church as she enters Advent. We like Mary are anticipatingly awaiting the arrival of her Son. We, like her, are filled with hope because of the child she will bear. The Advent church, with Mary, long for justice for the world, through this child whose name means ‘saviour.’ We, like Mary, know that with God this sense of hope and longing has a personal edge that affects us - it brings us into the searing light of God’s judgement, it calls us to change, and yet fills us with pregnant joy that the fulfilled hopes of God and us rest in this unborn child. As we prepare to greet the Christ child - how should I be?
Hopeful. Advent is the season where we long for God’s coming to us. For centuries faithful men and women throughout the Old Testament had watched and waited for God to come and liberate his people - freeing them from oppression, slavery, and occupation. With the angel’s words to her, Mary knew that generations of waiting were soon to be over. In this holy season as we anticipate remembering God coming to our world bringing justice and judegement, we need to be hopeful that God has moved the constant battle with evil and suffering, into it’s endgame.
The coming Christ is the one who can open the gateway closed by God at Eden because of sin and who stands at the door open in heaven inviting us in. In Advent, Christ is called the Key of David - a symbol of authority at the palace of Jerusalem - and it’s bearer had the authority to admit people into the royal presence. The key in question was a cumbersome affair carried on the shoulders, and the analogy between key and cross cannot be downplayed.
With the coming of God comes wild hope, but not a crazy utopian dream. Peace in nations begins with peace in people. Free nations begins with free people. Liberation of lands and political systems begins with liberating the human heart. Advent people are hopeful people, people who know that it is only the coming Christ child who can unlock the doorway to God and the doorway to humanity as God created it to be.
Trusting. Mary’s words to the angel. “Let it be to me according to your word.’ show a radical obedience to the will of God. In this holy season, as we anticipate remembering God coming into our world - restoring, healing - we too need to become people who trust God. As God entrusts himself to his creation in the vulnerability of a helpless baby, so we need to entrust ourselves to his will. In advent, Mary reminds us that her trust is not a blind acceptance. All that she had been told would happen had happened.
We need to trust God, as incredulous and unlikely as that might seem. God is trustworthy and true and does not revoke his promises. In Christ, all God’s promises already in place. His first coming at the Incarnation confirmed the reliability of all the Old testament prophesies. The enduring presence of of the Holy Spirit in his church, by which the endgame has begun, assures us that he will return again. God’s future has begun, here, now.
With the coming of God comes a need to trust him, but not a crazy utopian dream. What Mary knew, we must know. God has consistently proved himself to be faithful through the pages of scripture and the lives of men and women over the ages, all that Mary heard from the angel she saw fulfilled. Advent people are trusting people, people who have come to know that trusting God is not a last resort when all else fails, but the place to start.
Proclaiming. Mary’s words ‘My soul magnifies the Lord!’ remind that Advent’s purpose is to proclaim God in a world that largely ignores him. As a tiny baby, that is to say so unobtrusive in his humility, he needs to be magnified to been seen. In a world that ignores him and yet needs him more and more - the we need to sing the Magnificat in our live all the more loudly. In a world that gives status dependent on wealth, on body image, on clothing, yet longs for love, forgiveness, healing and hope, we need to proclaim him all the more.
Advent longs for coming of God to us, but it also is the time to remind us that God waits for our coming to him. At the incarnation he comes to us and will come again at the end of time, in the meantime he watches out like the father of the prodigal son - waiting to embrace us in eternal love.
Advent calls us to hear the hope of God, to trust Him and proclaim that hope - that things in our world and in our lives will not only be restored, but that God will do a new thing in us and amongst us personally and globally. Advent must be time to cry to God about the injustice of war, of debt, of a climate change, but also to expect, with sure hope, that God will bring a new spring shoot of faithfulness to grow in us, so that through us our world and our lives together can be transformed. Friends I still hope that the world would be a better place and that my life would and could be better - in Advent God reminds me that it will be. That’s not wild hope. That’s certain hope. Amen
