Advent

I wasn’t expecting Rico’s sermon in December to start with a story about clearing out his parents’ house after they’d died. At best, I was expecting a rugby-themed anecdote with which I’d have no emotional connection whatsoever; at worst, I anticipated some kind of Christmas story with which I’d cope by distancing myself emotionally and armouring myself up against the darkness and sorrow that loiter with intent round the back of light and joy at this time of year. 

But it was so much worse than that. As he talked about putting his parents’ old mattress in the skip and crashing the removal van, I reconnected with the memory of smashing the wing mirror in my own discombobulated efforts to park near the funeral director’s just after mum had died. And I found that my defences were utterly inadequate at containing the flood of emotion gushing out of the fact that my parents’ home – a place of so many memories and experiences – is no longer that or there. 

It had been a while coming. Afterall, I was in a church in which both sadness and happiness coexist: happiness from time there with family and friends over many years; sadness because I’ve mourned there with and for people I’ve loved and who I still miss awfully. I suppose I go to connect with the former but I wonder if the memories of funerals and thanksgiving services, and the absences to which they point, mean that every time I’m there I’m somewhat self-harmfully picking off a protective scab and disturbing fresh grief. 

Perhaps going back there is making it worse for myself, but it’s no different to daily life where past and present, joy and sorrow, intertwine constantly; passing the crematorium on my daily way to work is a case in point. There’s barely a street in this area that I’ve not walked down with mum and therefore it’s always a real possibility that I’ll be hijacked by a memory whose happiness can no longer be detangled from its associated pain. 

And maybe that’s why the sermon’s opening anecdote so completely floored me: there was a lot of pent up stuff just waiting to erupt. So, rather than sitting in a cosy church, looking up at the beautiful tree and experiencing a warm fuzzy Christmas feeling, I fled blindly out and plonked myself down on the cold stone steps, my body heaving with uncontrollable sobs. 

Blooming advent. It’s one of those thin seasons when the eternal and the time bound draw too mind-bogglingly close to each other. You stupid girl, the harsh voice said, why did you come in the first place? You know you can’t really do carol services at the moment. You know it pains you too much to ‘remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number’. And yet, at the same time, if not here, to whom should I go? I’d already come burdened with the shame of alternative coping mechanisms which hadn’t worked either. 

Of course, intellectually, I understand how the advent message is one of comfort and that there’s something precious in the reminder that those who have walked this same path before are alive, somewhere, pain free. And that we’ll see them again and all this stuff will get fixed. But this has been a couple of years of bereavement upon bereavement upon bereavement. That multitude is full of names and faces of people who I wish were still here and whose memories evoke a deep sense of separation and of wishing to hear their voices, to hold their hands, to talk things over, to laugh, to do normal life together, to just be in the same place. I fiddled with Frances’ necklace as I thought too of my church in Oxford, grieving at that moment their new loss of Gwyneth, and I was mindful of those in the same building as me who were facing terminal illness and for whom this Christmas on earth could well be their last. 

Slowly, I tuned back into the sermon, emptied of tears and stripped emotionally bare, and I heard an iteration of the words in that prayer describing the multitude as those ‘whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom we for evermore are one’. Back to the season of incarnation and the reminder of real moments in physical time which have unlocked the way to a continuous and redeemed eternity. And behold, a mystery: that through our alignment with Jesus’ dispossessed birth, his mortal life, his physical death, his historical resurrection, we too can be changed and raised imperishable. Death, where is your victory? Not here. 

In that moment, I was reminded of why I’d chosen to be there and put myself through it: because, in this season of remembrance and hope, I needed to be in a place of community, truth and faith, as hard as that engagement might be. Feeling both stung and vanquished, I was nevertheless physically and spiritually embraced by the two friends who had seen me leave and not let me go alone. Friends who also know the recent pain of loss, who live too with haunting and unanswered questions about death’s unknowns and life’s confusions, and who inspire me in my quest to engage deeply and creatively with both the beauty and brokenness of the world. Friends who chose to sit with me on a cold floor, their presence incarnating the sermon’s call to let God love me and being bearers of the true light that shines in the darkness. 

And so, depleted and tear-stained but not entirely overcome, I could return with them to sing the final carol with its profoundly simple words, overly familiar yet new this morning. Looking back while pointing forward; already but not yet; messily here while gloriously there. A child in a manger, a mattress in a skip, a forever home. Advent. 

 

Once in royal David’s city

stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby

in a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild,

Jesus Christ, her little child.

 

He came down to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all;

and his shelter was a stable

and his cradle was a stall:

with the poor and mean and lowly

lived on earth our Saviour holy.

 

For he is our childhood’s pattern:

day by day like us he grew,

he was little, weak and helpless,

tears and smiles like us he knew;

and he feels for all our sadness,

and he shares in all our gladness.

 

And our eyes at last shall see him,

through his own redeeming love,

for that child so dear and gentle

is our Lord in heaven above;

and he leads his children on

to the place where he is gone.

 

Not in that poor lowly stable

with the oxen standing by,

we shall see him, but in heaven,

set at God’s right hand on high;

there his children gather round

bright like stars, with glory crowned.