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Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
November 27th 2022 – Advent Sunday
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Fatal Distraction”
After the long trudge through the green Sundays of Trinity (now nicely but ineffectually called Pentecost) we come to this triumphant, startling Advent Season… bathed in purple, impatient with distraction, demanding our attention… but, friends know this, we are engaged in a counter-cultural battle to be enjoined with spiritual ferocity as we are assailed by Christmas songs, gifts, decorations and even, yes, aromas.
To adapt, with apology, words of the erstwhile Newport resident Clement Clarke Moore
Twas the season ere Christmas, they called it Advent
Despite cries and laments, Rector would not relent –
No carols, no holly, no jingles, no wreaths
All in the hope that we’d observe Advent… pleaths!
Yesterday I heard for the millionth time… for normal delivery press 1, for urgent delivery press 2… and to this the Lord adds for Advent Delivery press 10! Here in this exciting season, our Lord God is urgently trying to catch our attention and dismiss all distractions from us.
Today, Isaiah 2, the prophet Isaiah shares with us the great Advent hope when “they will learn war no more”, a hope that seems increasingly distant and yet available to us even NOW (the great Advent word) as we constrain ourselves, by the grace of God, to “learn about, train for, play at war no more” in our relationships in family, at work, in church and in nation. Consider the myriad of opportunities we have even today to make real this future Advent hope. Despite all the contrary in our nation and in our world, Isaiah urges us to “come, let us walk in the light of the Lord… the light that speaks of endless peace and warfare no more. This Advent Hope shines brightly in the shadows of huge and random conflict – at home and abroad.
But there are “fatal distractions” at work that grab our attention, diffuse our focus, dilute our will and mislead our steps.
Listen to these words of Pastor Mike Slaughter: “Thanksgiving in our American culture heralds the start of the Advent Season. Paradoxically, the season celebrating the humble birth of Christ is ushered in with the blare, glitz and materialistic glamour of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales. How easily we forget that Jesus was not the messiah most people were expecting, nor the sugar daddy for which many still hope. Jesus was not the savior that came shimmying down the chimney, but the One who came demonstrating a lifestyle that follows the way of the Cross. Our cultural (and I would add precipitate) celebration of Christmas is full of “fatal distractions.”
St. Paul, in Romans 11, using short sentences for once, describes such “fatal distractions” as “reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy.” The Advent Hope speaks of liberating self-control, of freedom from excess, of the vanquishing of petty jealousies and chasing after false gods of consumerism and yet… we are distracted, and distracted mightily and fatally. It is difficult to be focused if we are overwhelmed by surfeit, excess and glut.
As a young chorister in a London Anglican church, I still remember the fear I felt as the preacher, tall and stern, spoke of Matthew 24 “two will be in the field; one taken and one left. Of two women grinding meal together; one taken and one left.” But now, thank God, I understand that Jesus meant not to nurture fear but rather to encourage readiness, alertness, awareness lest “fatal distractions” blind, deafen, emasculate our Hope to come breaking even into the NOW of our today. Our Advent though not immediate is imminent!
Friends we are beset by so many “fatal distractions”, it is an intrinsic part of our humanity and I say this as one who needs an agenda in order to keep on task, disciplined and orderly. All too often, as I digress in conversation, my patient spouse will ask despairingly, “So what are we talking about now?”
Perhaps we need revert to the quaint though effective practice of wearing a wrist band, a rubber band, that we snap from time to time to jolt us into reality; to remind us of the important; to ensure our sanity in a mad, mad, mad, mad, world… I searched Washington yesterday for purple rubber bands to distribute to you all today… your wrists are pleased, I could not find any,
But now I see… the purple, the starkness, the counter-cultural “wrist-band” of Advent “brings us back to reality” and “reminds us of something we need to remember” – that Christ is coming now, today, tomorrow as well as coming in some eschatological, apocalyptic final NOW.
For decades I have avoided as much as possible even thinking about the folksy melody and banal lyrics of “Kum Ba Yah” but today I see them as the Advent carillon call; that though embroiled in the fatal distractions of our lives and especially of this season we pray in earnest, “Lord, come by here.” This can be our Advent prayer in moments of being overwhelmed, sickened, dismayed and nearly lost… “Lord, come by here.”
“Fatal distractions begone”.
AMEN