[A sermon delivered to the Oxford Unitarian congregation via Zoom on the 13th of December 2020]
(Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 and Luke 1:46-55)
When I preach during Advent, I have been known to have a bit of a moan at people who to skip observing the quiet solemnity of Advent and instead, choose to plunge headfirst into the manic merriness of Christmas earlier than they liturgically should.
This is not going to be one of those occasions.
Yes, people this year have been buying their Christmas trees and putting them up earlier than ever. Christmas music seems to have appeared on the radio earlier than ever.
As someone who comes from a family that puts their Christmas tree up no earlier than Christmas Eve, I can be quite traditional and, dare I say it, even conservative in these matters. I should be beside myself in a fit of rage. How dare people desecrate my beloved Advent so openly!
Yet I am not beside myself. While I continue my usual restraint in these matters, I have been delighting in people’s obvious longing to create as wonderful a Christmas as they can in these troubled times. If that means starting it early in order to be able to fully appreciate it – so be it! Many people have decided that, due to the pandemic, they need to experience some early Christmas cheer in order to get through the year. Who am I to deny them the hope, warmth, and joy that Christmas beings when they feel they need it?
At the start of the pandemic we were in Lent. Many ministers in their Lenten sermons began to describe this past Lent as the “Lentiest Lent” we had experienced. Indeed we all had to give up far more than we originally bargained for. The Lenten course I was leading in college in person moved online as students were sent packing. Many of us went into Lent wanting to give up cigarettes, chocolate or booze but we all ended up giving up so much more. Many of us gave up our social lives, others gave up seeing their family so that they could keep serving the public during difficult times, I gave up being able to hold my fiancée just so I could keep her safe.
For many of us, Easter never came. I ate all my chocolate (all be it at a slower pace than usual) yet gained none of my usual satisfaction or happiness in doing so. For many of us there was no Eastertide wonder at the renewal of life. Instead, Easter marked for me the beginning of a Summer of (what might well have been) Long COVID related depression and brain fog that consigned me to bed for sometimes days at a time when I really needed to be finishing of my coursework and revising for my exam. I passed and survived both – but only just. For many of us, as we all witnessed the premature deaths of friends, colleagues, and family members, there was no liturgical celebration of resurrection that could satisfy us. For too many of us, 2020 has been an Easterless year. I am not surprised at the determination that people have showed that it should not be Christmassless as well.
Yet I do encourage us to pause here, in Advent, just for a little bit. Advent is traditionally a time of fasting – yes. But I promise not to keep you from your minced pies for too long.
Advent is not just a dour time of austerity and spiritual reflection. It is also a time of hope and looking forwards.
With a vaccine program quickly gearing up we can now allow ourselves to look forward with hope in a way that we night not have allowed ourselves to so far this year. Yet, in taking the time to acknowledge the “not quite here yet-ness” of mass COVID immunisation through mass vaccination, we should take the time to appreciate the hard work of our NHS workers and clinicians and scientists throughout the world and their relentless work and herculean effort in bringing the end to the pandemic within out sight.
In our waiting we would also do well to remember the other types of sickness, the social ills, that this pandemic has brought renewed attention to.
I am fortunate that my Dad helps charities who provide services to those who suffer from drug and alcohol addiction to get their messages across to politicians. Though him I’ve had a little insight into how the lives of those at the very bottom of the social ladder have been affected by this pandemic. The picture is mixed but surprisingly so.
While all drugs and alcohol charities have had to work hard to keep their services going, some have reported that many people who they had previously tried and failed to motivate to access their services are now voluntarily approaching them and referring themselves to get the help they need to get clean from drugs and turn their lives around. What has caused this sudden change of heart in so many people?
Very early on in the pandemic, the urban homeless population was identified as a major risk in spreading the virus. This lead the government to quickly take advantage of unused space in hotels to make sure everyone, including those who had been living on the streets, had somewhere inside to stay when lockdown came. So while lockdown meant chaos and uncertainty to many people, many of our most vulnerable homeless population were able to be introduced to a time of what was, for them, relative peace and stability compared to what they had been used to.
Who would have guessed that when these people ceased to be treated like animals in the street and were given a safe, dry, and warm place to sleep and live and hot running water to wash in, many of them no longer wanted to get out of their heads on drink or drugs. Even the little bit of hope that they were given in a time when there was little hope going around gave many of the most hard-hit people in our society the motivation to say yes to life and the desire to start truly living and experiencing the world again. When provided with somewhere to call home people began to be treated as human, they began to feel their own humanity again and with it a desire for that feeling to no longer be impeded by substance use and abuse. When homelessness is treated as the public health problem that it always was and people in need were treated with a little kindness, the imposable became posable.
Yet what world are we creating for these people to fully see when they sober up? A world that rips the support out from under their feet will be a world that we will not be able to see them grow old in. Many of the charities that help addicts are concerned that if they are simply left to the mercy of our streets once more then many will feel forced to return to substance abuse again. I say we should give them a future to hope for – one that starts today.
While the wealth of the billionaires has grown during the pandemic, we in knowing the pain and suffering of this pandemic we have gained some insight into the lives those on the margins of our society who’s very precarious existence implies pain and suffering. We have the opportunity to make the world anew. We can do the work of Isiah and “bring good news to the oppressed”, we can build a society were the powerful are brought down from their thrones of greed and the poor and lowly are exalted in a genuine love that they have only been able to dream of experiencing.
If our Advent reflection can help us realise this, then our long Lent will not have been in vain and this Christmas coming will be remembered as a very merry one indeed.
