Where is Advent in Advent? Where is Christ in Christmas?

 

Sermon. 14 December 2025. St George’s, Saham Toney

Advent 3 (Year of Matthew)

 

A word about why today is “Rejoice Sunday” / “Gaudete Sunday”, and why today’s candle is pink, or, as we are all sophisticated here, “rose”. We light the rose candle. The answer may be that it comes from another age.

 

The short answer is that the tradition used to be that the Introit – the very first piece of music was a quotation from Philippians, namely:

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!”

or in Latin

“Gaudete in Domino semper, iterum dico gaudete!”

So, you see: Rejoice/Gaudete Sunday.

 

The longer answer is that… this may seem to come from another age. In this age, in 2025, Christmas still means something in our society – and that’s putting it mildly. But how the secular Christmas and the Church Christmas fit together, is… difficult. I’m not making a lazy preacherly point about the dangers of “consumerism”. I’m referring quite particularly to timings. In the secular world (if we are honest), Christmas begins on 1 November. The moment the ghosts and ghouls of Halloween have been tidied away, at least the perfume adverts come out. And people throw themselves into it by December. Then, come (say) January 2^nd, they take down the tired decorations, and join a gym. In the secular world, January is the natural time to do a bit of pruning, to introduce a bit of self-discipline. So that’s: feast in December and fast in January.

 

In the Church (and I know this isn’t new to you), it’s precisely the other way round. Advent is (or is supposed to be) a season of penitence. Now, penitence doesn’t mean feeling bad about ourselves. That’s a misunderstanding. Very little spiritual growth comes up from the parched soil of feeling bad about yourself. Penitence means reflecting, taking time out, being still, being quiet, and noticing what emerges, what insights about how we are living we have. And, when we can just pause enough to be candid about ourselves, we can hurry to place ourselves under God’s forgiveness, we can receive God’s forgiveness, and find some newness of life. We can change things about our lives.

 

It is just the case that that stillness and quiet can go deeper, if we go without the things we normally rely on for comfort, reassurance, to get us through the day. So – it’s worth saying it bluntly – Advent is supposed to be in that sense about going without. It has been and can be called the “Little Lent”. Abstinence. Penitence… Scarcely Christmassy words. But this season of reflection then explodes into the joy of Christmas, and Christmastide, which lasts at least for 12 nights, but arguably goes on to Candlemas in February (40 days).

 

A little Lent. The next thing to say is that Church knows that it can be good for us to go without, and to be self-reflective and ask hard questions of ourselves. But! But we mustn’t place on ourselves a burden we cannot bear. So, when we have a reflective season, the Church is gentle, and allows ourselves to relax our discipline, roughly in the middle of said reflective season. We do this in the middle of Lent. That’s called Laetare Sunday, but you probably know it better as Mothering Sunday. And in the middle of Advent we do it on Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday… today. So the colour of the day is “lifted” from the darkness of purple to the lightness of rose – or, if you insist, pink.

 

What do we do when the Church calendar and the world’s calendar are frankly in opposition? Each sees the other as doing it the wrong way round. I don’t think we can simply ignore the world and make Advent a little Lent, and go without. If we end up not going to “Christmas parties” throughout December, or going to them but feeling guilty, we will simply convey to others that Christianity is the opposite of fun. But I also don’t think we can simply surrender, and start singing Carols in November. In truth, the Church year is like an intricate, delicate web, with fasts and feasts carefully set out. If we seek to cut out one bit, we may break the whole web. We may lose more than we think. What, then? How to find a good middle way? Well, I have given this some prayerful thought, and have some suggestions. They will be for next year now!

 

We might wish we did not have to face these questions. We might – not exactly to coin a phrase – we might campaign to “put Christ back into Christmas”. With Christ back in Christmas we can put Advent back in Advent! What do you think?

 

Now, that phrase – “put Christ back into Christmas” has been around for most of my life. I think I remember people saying in the 1970s/80s. Then it was meant as criticism for too much consumerism. Then in the 90s, there was, year in year out, a news item in the press claiming that some local authority or other had “banned” Christmas. It was never true. It was always the press putting two and two together and getting 22. But what is true is that the very idea that Christmas is the birthday of Jesus has receded into the background of wider culture over recent decades. And now this year the phrase “putting Christ back into Christmas” has taken on a third meaning.  

 

Yesterday, Mr Stephen Yaxkey-Lennon, who goes by the name of Tommy Robinson held an event in London (he called it a concert) to campaign to “put Christ back into Christmas”. It turned out to be rather modest. His account is this: he hated the church. Then he converted to Christianity in prison thanks to a chaplain (that can happen – I know that can happen), and now wants to make sure that others – indeed, the nation – celebrate Christmas, and that we rejoice in being a nation with Christian roots.

 

So far, so good. Of course, that all sounds wonderful. But it is not so simple. One of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s many convictions is for spreading hateful lies about a Muslim foreigner. And his public presence has been all about speaking ill of foreigners, and of Muslims, including Muslim Britons. So he’s long waved the flag and gone on about Britishness and Englishness in an intimidating way. And – and this is crucial – he hasn’t repented of any of that. There is no evidence that he has come to see that Christianity is all about care for the stranger, about hospitality… and about gentleness, about being vulnerable and not exercising power over others, about love, about a willingness to see and care for those who are harmed by the powerful or pushed out by the mob… and more simply is about respecting people and telling the truth.

 

Of course, repentance is ultimately a secret thing, a matter of the heart. But, when you’re a public figure, it’s fair to hope and to expect that something of that repentance will spill out into your public life. And in this case, it has not.

 

So, on this day when we remember John the Baptist, we need to remember the command he put to those around him:

“Bear the fruits worthy of repentance” [Matt 3.8].

“Don’t presume to say to yourselves: ‘We have Abraham as a father’” [v. 9].

Don’t presume to say: “I am a Christian in a Christian nation.”

But bear the fruit worthy of repentance.

 

When someone not only does not bear such fruit, but can express no interest in bearing such fruit, we have be aware of that. We need to be as wise as serpents. We don’t write the person or their faith-journey off. But we can be resolute in looking for those signs of an understanding of authentic Christianity in which flags and power over others don’t really figure.

 

Of course, we can only do that if we also spin the command of John the Baptist around to us.

“Don’t presume to say: ‘I am a Christian and have St George’s as my church’”. But bear the fruits worthy of repentance.

 

Now, one fruit of repentance – and there are lots – is joy, of course. We cannot all be joyful all the time. Life is not like that. You won’t find me pretending that it is. But we can, today, and over and over again, orient ourselves towards joy, so that when the time of full rejoicing comes, we are fit to rejoice.

 

And so let us say, on this Gaudete Sunday, this Rejoice Sunday:

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice! 

Amen.