Saturday, November 28, 2015
Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent
Year C ~ November 29, 2015
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Almighty God, give us
grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in
the time of this mortal life…
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
NOW in the
time of THIS mortal life. Not after We die, not at the end of time, but NOW – in time
– in THIS time, the TIME OF THIS MORTAL LIFE.
Anglicanism’s greatest liturgical scholar, the Benedictine monk, Dom
Gregory Dix called the liturgy the “sanctification of time.” For pagans, time
is the enemy. Time wears us down and wears us out. In the end, time kills us.
To be a creature of time is to be mortal.
Christ makes time holy. Liturgy sanctifies time. That is the Work of the People. Before our mortal
eyes, time is shot through with Life, the inevitable darkness bathed in light,
even NOW in the TIME OF THIS MORTAL LIFE. Therefore, one post-communion prayer
says We have beheld your Resurrection, O
Christ our God, We have seen the true Light.
Now, in the time of this mortal life, we cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light and
the time of this mortal life becomes
the Last Day, the Day of the Light Immortal. The works of darkness we pray for grace to
cast off are not so much our own squalid little individual failures but the
gloom that seems to surround us and infect us collectively, the gloom that can
penetrate our consciousness unto the despair that tells us darkness is the
ultimate reality and death is the end. God gives us grace to put that off now and put on instead the “armor of
light.”
This is a curious phrase, though, because we think of armor
as a protective covering – a garment we put on to shield us from wounding
assault. A “chink in our armor” is the
last thing we want – a flaw that will prove out undoing. But I think the
metaphor should be reversed. We need not so much to keep the darkness out as to
let the Light in! That is what our religion –epitomized by the Holy Eucharist –
is supposed to do – not to shut out but to let in. To let the Light into our
own hearts, to be sure, but also – and more importantly – to let the Light into
the world. Liturgical worship is an opening for transfiguring Light. THAT is
the sanctification of time, THAT is what the Eucharist does.
There are implications on every level of reality: the disarmament
– to be sure – of our own armored individual
egos, but also the real subversion of the reign of darkness in political
relationships, and the glorious illumination of the cosmos unto ages of ages.
Leonard Cohen, the great religious poet of our time, put it
this way:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
