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.

On the fierceness of the New Testament and the gentleness of the Old!

 

Sermon. 4/12/2022. Advent 2 (Year of Matthew)

Isaiah 11.1-10

Matthew 3.1-12

 

There is no football in this sermon.[1] I am not proud of this. I am not ashamed of this.

 

Here’s a thing that does involve some shame. Here is an attitude I think it is hard for us fully to shake off. I mean that sense that

·        the god of the Old Testament is a god of judgement, anger, war, and narrowness;

·        the god of the New Testament is a god of forgiveness, love, peace, and inclusivity.

It is a contrast deeply if quietly embedded in our society.

Even if Christians are now a minority in the country (as we are told we do), some notions are still around.

I suspect that this is one of them.

Bluntly, the god of the New Testament replaces the god of the Old, and it is good that it is so.

 

I have already said that some shame attaches itself to this habit of contrast. So my criticism is implicit already.

Let me be explicit:

this contrast, this antithesis is not a Christian belief.

It has no place in authentic Christianity.

It is at very best an oversimplification a tired Sunday-school teacher might stumble into, on an off-day.

But put more simply: it is heresy, pure.

The Christian claim is that (GOD) is One, and Revelation is one, from Genesis to Revelation.

From Genesis to Revelation, (GOD), the One (GOD),

is faithful, creative, loving, forgiving, is for us, is with us.

 

That’s not all, of course.

Another side to this is that when we think of human beings’ relationship to (GOD), we have to say: “it is complicated”.

And so, again, from Genesis to Revelation,

there is much that is attributed to (GOD)

and even much that really does seem to come from (GOD)

which is sharp, harsh, challenging and dark.

I say again: from Genesis to Revelation. In both Old and New Testaments.

 

Why do I say this now?

If ever we wanted to invert the usual contrast (the tired and heretical contrast)

between the god of the Old Testament (furious)

and the god of the New Testament (fluffy),

we could do a lot worse than begin with today’s readings.

I am thinking of the Gospel

and the text from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament,

chosen to mirror, or echo, or anticipate, or match it, from Isaiah.

 

Even if you were not paying 100% attention to these readings, 

I think even at a headline level, the contrast was clear:

John the Baptist in the New Testament (the New) brings warning and judgement;

Isaiah in the Old Testament (the Old) brings peace and healing.

That way round.

 

Let us look at some details.

In today’s Gospel, John, the prophet of (GOD) comes and speaks of… sin. 

Worse than that, he addresses people like this:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?... every tree… that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand… the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Stern stuff. It may be even sterner than we realise. From all that John says, we might want to rescue the promise of baptism in the Holy Spirit, and say that the promise of baptism in the Spirit is something good and hopeful and joyful. But I must ask you to curb your enthusiasm. We have to remember that the word for Spirit has a wide range of meanings. The Greek pneuma, like the Hebrew, ruach, means spirit, and it also means breath, and it also means wind. It is all about motion, about energy. So when John the Baptist promises one who will baptise with… wind and fire, he may actually be promising a fire fanned into flame, an out-of-control fire, a conflagration. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Contrast all of this (if we call it a message of crisis and purification, we are being kind) with the utterly stately-majestic poetry of the First Reading. A different prophet (not John but Isaiah) promises one who

with righteousness… shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth… The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

No judgement, no wrath, no fire, but welcome, peace and inclusion. 

Transformation beyond your wildest dreams.

Who would not long for such a meeting with (GOD) on these terms?

Again, some details. Again, if anything, our translation understates the peacefulness and transformation of Isaiah’s vision.

Our translation says of the one to come: “with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked”. That’s the translators choice. Every bit as close to the Hebrew is to say “with the breath of his lips he shall kill off wickedness”.[2]

The underlying idea is clear:

whatever striking there has to be, it is his mouth which will do it

(speech not sword);

whatever killing-off has to be done, it is his lips which will do it

(words not weapons).

And that in turn is 

because of the spirit of gentleness (variously described in the opening verses) 

which rests upon him.

In Hebrew, the ruach (spirit, breath) rests (nachah) on this one.

Ruach – nachah.

The breathiness is there in the very sounds.

And I think the play on words is intended.

And actually the root words are ruach and nuach.

I have tried – and failed – to come up with a translation that captures this play on words:

The spirit spends free time upon him…

The air is at ease upon him…

The wind whiles away its time upon him…

The breath abides upon him…

None really works. I look forward to your suggestions later.

In any event, that stressed idea 

of rest, of restoration, of peace and ease, 

extends throughout our passage in ways that the English does not make clear.

I give my own translation of the ending. It says:

“This one the peoples will seek out. And glory will be his place of resting.”

Our translation refers to a “glorious dwelling”.

But the word translated “dwelling” is… menuchah.

Menuchah… from (yes) nuach. Place of resting,

A place of resting for the one on whom the restful spirit rests.[3]

No judgement, no wrath, no fire, but welcome, peace and inclusion.

Who would not long for such a meeting with (GOD) on these terms?

So let me say:

we need the fierceness of the Old Testament

and we need the gentleness of the New Testament.

And...

we need the gentleness of the Old Testament

and we need the fierceness of the New Testament.

The Testaments are not easily contrasted, 

and are not to be contrasted.

(GOD) is both fierce and gentle.

The life of faith exposes us to things gentle and fierce.

And it is good that it is so.

As for what combination of gentleness and fierceness will best suit the England team today, I keep my self-denying ordinance.

Amen.  

---

[1] That evening England were playing Senegal in the first knock-out rounds of the World Cup.

[2] Hebrew: U-ve-ruach sephatav yamit resha’ – resha’ is properly an adjective meaning a wicked person/thing.

Greek (LXX): kai en pneumati dia cheilion anelei asebe – “And with breath through lips he will destroy an ungodly [person].

[3] These language points are indebted to Robert Alter’s translation, ad loc.

Sermon: "Lo He Comes" Revisited (Revisited)

5 December 2021. Advent 2.

 

Today I’d like to do something different, and mildly transgressive. I do mean mildly transgressive. So please moderate your expectations of fun. I’d like us to reflect on a hymn we will sing. (You see why I say mildly transgressive? It can be done. But if it happened week in, week out, with no reflections on the readings, more would be lost than would be gained.)

 

The hymn is the great Advent anthem, Lo He Comes. Perhaps some of you are mentally singing it. It is Charles Wesley at its finest. Great melody. It might also be said to be Advent at its purest. I mean it is entirely about the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time. There is not even a passing reference to Christmas. Surely, then, there’s a strong case for filling Advent with Lo He Comes.

 

And yet.

 

And yet. Let’s look at the second verse. These are the original words:

 

Every eye shall now behold him

Robed in dreadful majesty;

Those who set at nought and sold him

Pierced and nailed him to the tree,

Deeply wailing (deeply wailing, deeply wailing)

Shall the true Messiah see.

 

Who are those upon whom Wesley wishes wailing?

 

My contention is that Christian tradition points to the answer… “the Jews”.

 

The case is cumulative. First, I’d say that “Messiah” is itself not Christian language. Yes, I know, Handel! But, outside of Handel’s Messiah, Christians tend use words based on the Greek Christos, rather than the Hebrew, Mashiach. (Both mean the same: “Anointed”.) We are Christians, after all, and not Messiahists.[1] The references to selling the Messiah, and piercing him and seeing the one pierced, also have strong Jewish resonances. And, while we know it was the Romans, not the Jews, who actually crucified Jesus in history, the Romans had no concept of the Messiah. So the image of remorseful wailing, on seeing the true Messiah unveiled, works less well (if at all) if we have the Romans in mind.

 

I probably haven’t convinced you. So let me take you back to that Christian “tradition”. I am obliged to tell you that from very early days Christians, including the great theologians, including not a few of the great saints, had a tradition of saying “the Jews killed Christ”. And by “the Jews” they meant not just a bunch of people in 1^st-century Jerusalem, but all Jews, throughout space, throughout time. The liturgist Melito may have been the first, towards the end of the second century (c 16—170 CE). He’s been called the “first poet of deicide”. In his liturgy, he accused the Jews - collectively, all Jews - of “killing God”. If he was the first, he was only the first.

 

St John Chrysostom (the golden-mouthed) wrote a series of sermons in the late fourth century (386/7 CE) called “Against the Jews”. He accuses the Jews of being disobedient, carnal, demon-possessed. The tradition continues through Augustine, all the way down the Martin Luther. And our great saint-theologians have said that because “the Jews killed Christ” they are punished, damned and demeaned (descriptive). And they have meant that because “the Jews killed Christ” they should be punished, damned and demeaned (prescriptive).

 

Is this what you think of, if you sing the traditional words of this verse of this hymn?

Is this what modern worshippers think of?

Is this what Charles Wesley intended to convey?

I doubt it. Let me be clear: I doubt it.

 

But!

 

But the tradition of saying “the Jews killed Christ” has been so wide and so deep. It infected even theologians and saints. And it infected mobs and gangs throughout Christendom. It was so infectious that – again, I am obliged to tell you – over centuries, it was dangerous to be a Jew in Christian Holy Week. You were in danger of being attacked, by baptised, church-going Christians, because of that charge of “deicide”. Though the charge was never formally taught, it was strongly implied by the shape and the details of the liturgy of Holy Week. The tradition is so wide and so deep that – I say – it places a burden on us, today. We bear the burden of making sure we do away with – eradicate, destroy - all such implications, whenever they bubble up.

 

You may now be thinking: “If what you say about Christian history is correct, I can see how this verse, using these words, is risky, is suspicious. But! But, honestly, Patrick, you’re taking all of this much too seriously! I really don’t think that hard about what I sing.” Well, I’m afraid I don’t stand down. On the contrary, I will say: it is precisely what we say or sing without thinking about it that shows what we really believe. Let me give another example: “There is a green hill far away, without a city wall, where…”. You will have added mentally: “the dear Lord was crucified, who died to save us all”. And I even dare to suggest that those words you have supplied tell you important things about what you believe (or think Christians believe) about Jesus and his death, precisely because you didn’t think about them.

 

What we are not sure about, we have to think about. What we know in our bones, we don’t have to think about. They flow through us. They trip off the tongue. Those who don’t think about these words in this verse of Lo He Comes, then, often at least, “know“ things (presume things) that they may struggle to articulate.

 

I am sorry. Not so much a transgressive sermon as a harsh one. But there is good news. The good news is that we can sing the hymn with full gusto, relishing all its Wesleyan wonders. And! And we don’t have to change a word. We don’t have to – because the hymn-book editors have done it for us. (You see: it really isn’t just me who has found the verse difficult.) They have changed “Those who set at nought” to “We who set at nought”.

 

And let’s be clear here too. That is better theology. To stress: the change hasn’t been made to avoid giving offence to Jews (or anybody). The change has been because the notion that “the Jews killed Christ” has always been plain wrong. Disgustingly wrong. Sinfully wrong. On purely Christian terms. Historically (as I have said), it was powerful players in the Roman Empire who killed Jesus. Theologically, it is the sins of all of us who killed Jesus (our own murderous instincts, our own willingness to stand by). The sins of all of us, starting, as always with the household of faith. We. We who set at nought and sold him.

 

Still not exactly good news, I admit. In truth, why our sins killed Christ is an important theme, but one for another place. But I will say, most assuredly, that it does lead to good news. Good news, happily summarised in the very next verse of the hymn:

 

Those dear tokens of his passion

Still his dazzling body bears

Cause of endless exultation

To his ransomed worshippers

With what rapture

(with what rapture,

with what rapture)

Gaze we on those glorious scars.

 

Amen.

---

[1] I am aware that the Semitic languages do use words related to the Hebrew, Mashiach, but this is definitely a hymn of the Western, Latin tradition.

The faith of Gd; Gd's faith in us

Sermon. St Michael’s and St Mary’s, Little Ilford, 29.11.20

Advent 1

 

Isaiah 64.1-9

Mark 13.24-end

 

Happy New Year!

 

It is indeed a new church year, and today’s sermon might dwell on that. Today we enter today into the Year of Mark. However, there’s been quite a lot of chatter out there, about how people cannot wait for this year, this calendar year, 2020, to be over, as if some accident of the diary will make our problems go away. I think – I know – that is doesn’t work like that. Viruses, in particular, don’t do diaries. So I’ll wish you all the blessings of the new year, the year or Mark, and move on.

 

Today’s Gospel, and the First Reading which mirrors it, speak of hard times, times of tribulation, times of trial. This is, let us be clear, one strand of the Bible, running from the Prophets through to the Book of Revelation. Gd does not say that life will be easy. Today’s sermon might dwell on that. Sometimes the Church finds itself in such comfortable calm, such that it really needs to face up to the prospect of hard times. But! But that really isn’t us. We are already in a hard and narrow place, and we know it. We need some word of comfort, not of hardship.

 

Today’s Gospel ends with a command. The command: Keep awake! This is a timeless message. So today’s sermon might dwell on what it really means to be awake, to be vigilant. Only vigilance is a theme we are only too used to. We are vigilant, when we wash our hands, We are vigilant, when we take put on our masks. We are vigilant about everyone we meet, making sure we don’t get too close. We are vigilant when we choose not to meet people – a strange thing indeed. The very last thing we need is yet another demand to be vigilant, to keep awake.

 

Looking for some comfort, then, today’s sermon might turn to the Second Reading, the opening of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. St Paul praises the Corinthians in glowing terms. Here, then, is a word of encouragement for us. Except, except it’s not that simple. What may seem to be praise may not be. St Paul says the Corinthians are gifted in speech and knowledge, and every spiritual gift. But some say that this is St Paul damning with faint praise, because St Paul can’t think of any virtue to attribute to the Corinthians.

 

We need a compare-and-contrast exercise to bring this out.

·        St Paul gives thanks to God for the faith and witness of the Romans;

·        He gives thanks to God for the Philippians’ sharing of the Gospel;

·        The writer of the Letter to the Colossians commends them for their faith and love;

·        The Thessalonians are praised for (brace yourselves…) their work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope, and again for their growing faith and love;

·        Philemon is reminded of his own faith and love.

 

No such mention for the Corinthians. No faith, no love to mention, rather just spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are good things, but they are not faith and they are not love. St Paul is under-complementing the Corinthians, and is setting them up for the harsh words he’ll have to say to them later in the Letter. They love their “spiritual gifts”, but they neglect what really counts. So it may well be that there is no comfort for us, not even here.

 

Is there, then, anything, which might be of real comfort to us, now, now in our Coronavirus times? I suggest that there is. St Paul also says: “God is faithful, by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

Gd is faithful.

Gd is faithful and has called us.

Gd is faithful and has called us into friendship with Jesus Christ and one another.

 

Sisters and brothers, are these not the words we need to hear right now? We are at the beginning of a new Church Year, and/but with that we know that the strangeness and the pain of yesterday will be with us today and tomorrow, and – let’s name it – until around Easter.

 

Gd is faithful. Pistos ho theos, in Greek. It is worth dwelling on this, the faith of Gd. Yes, I got that right. There is faith in Gd, but there is also the faith of Gd, Gd’s own faithfulness. There’s a constant danger that we think of “faith” as something abstract. Some people have it. Some people don’t. It’s a thing. This is not the biblical way of thinking about it. Faith is always – always – relational. So it’s often said that a better translation is “trust”, because no one “trusts” in the abstract, but you “trust in” something or someone.

 

Pistos ho theos. Gd is trustworthy. That is our solid ground.

·        Whether the virus grows or diminishes in the coming weeks and months, Gd is trustworthy.

·        However different (small, narrow, unpeopled) our Christmas turns out to be, Gd is trustworthy.

·        However much we long for the chats we used to have over coffee, tea and toast, Gd is trustworthy.

·        Whether our supermarkets are full-to-busting or not, Gd is trustworthy.

 

I cannot persuade you that Gd is trustworthy, and, by the way, you can’t convince anybody by your words, either. We don’t believe that God is trustworthy because of some sort of scientific experiment we’ve run. It’s not as if we prayed for one thing, and refrained from praying for another thing, only to find that we got the first thing and didn’t get the second. It doesn’t work like that, at all. But our confidence that Gd is trustworthy is not nothing. We are those who find that the whole of life, of life itself, of the world itself, just makes more sense, just finds its shape, finds its depth, when we say and celebrate that Gd is trustworthy.

 

The scary thing about the trustworthiness of Gd – the bizarre thing about it – is that our trustworthy Gd trusts us. Even more bizarre is that Gd knows what Gd is doing. Gd willingly and knowingly places trust in us, feeble people and failing Church. That is the Christmas story that we are now inevitably thinking about. Gd comes to us as a human being, a baby, to be with us, as one of us, to show us what it means for us to be the trustworthiness of Gd in the world.

 

How we fail! We fail, but the invitation to become what we are called to become still stands.

 

Gd is trustworthy.

Gd is trustworthy, and has called us.

Gd is trustworthy and has called us into friendship with Jesus Christ and one another.

 

Happy New Year! Amen.

Light Shining in the Darkness: Advent, Hanukkah

 

Resilience in time of Coronavirus

Light in Darkness: A Case Study

from a Workshop for the International Council of Christians and Jews, led by the Theology Committee.

 

I will begin in the place which combines symbol with reality. A candle is often a light in darkness. Both Judaism and Christianity make use of candles in the darkness, and not least at this time of year, or in the season we are approaching. For Christians, Advent is approaching, which means that Christmas is approaching beyond it. For Jews, Hanukkah is approaching. Advent-Christmas and Hanukkah are all associated with candles, indeed with candles shining out in the darkness. But – so what? After all, Christian and Jewish practices echo and overlap each other all the time, and that can make for some false analogies, some “false friends”.

 

It happens that at least at the Branch level, CCJ UK has now a substantial weight of experience of running “Advent-Hanukkah” events [please remember the many variations of spelling of Hanukkah, if seeking evidence online]. I was involved - rather heavily involved - in the first time Lincoln branch (in the East of England) ran one of these, in 2008, and I’d like to reflect for a moments on the process of planning and realising that.

 

First, part of the motivation for this event was that we knew we had an open door at Lincoln Cathedral, and a note about that. Lincoln was the site of one of the infamous English blood-libel cases. A Lincoln boy called Hugh was killed in 1255, and his murder was slanderously attributed to Jews (near and far), who had allegedly killed him by crucifixion. In the Middle Ages there developed quite a cult of so-called “Little St Hugh of Lincoln”, with a shrine in the cathedral. (By the way, he was never formally declared a saint, and there is also an earlier, grown-up St Hugh of Lincoln, Bishop, who is properly revered to this day, and has no connection.) 

 

The cathedral has, since the 1950s worked to repent of this slanderous tradition, which latterly has meant working with the contemporary Jewish community (small but vibrant) and CCJ. We asked that our gathering be in the cathedral Chapter House (a meeting room, so not worship space, and with no religious imagery), and we were, as expected, welcomed. We saw gathering in this location in itself as being a way of letting the metaphorical light of reconciliation shine, so as to dispel the darkness.

 

 

Second, we were well aware that there are many ways of getting such an event wrong (perhaps too many).[1] One was to seek to offer a messy mush of the festivals, a kind of “Advehanumas”. We wanted to avoid this at all costs.

 

 

Indeed, we wanted to stay away from the whole debate about whether “multifaith worship” is either desirable or possible (about which people in the Branch had different ideas). We were this explicit: we are not offering an act of multifaith worship. Rather what we were offering was a meeting for experiential learning. Here was a chance to learn-by-seeing-by-hearing-by-doing, of Advent and Hanukkah, severally. The “taste” we were offering was to be genuine, and so Christians would pray Christian prayers and blessings, and Jews would say Jewish prayers and blessings. But the separation was to be clear, and explicit - out of mutual regard rather than suspicion or coldness, of course.

 

Third, we were as clear that we were not suggesting that the two festivals were equivalent. Hanukkah lasts over eight days (eight nights). Advent lasts long enough to include the four Sundays before Christmas. Hanukkah stands alone as a festival, about the rededication of the Temple after the successful Maccabean revolt, and a miracle (later) associated with that. Advent is a preparatory season, looking forward to Christmas. And – by far the most important difference – Hanukkah is a minor festival, and a family – a homely - festival, whereas Advent has great importance precisely as it is the preparation for the major feast of Christmas, marking the birth of Jesus Christ.[2]

 

I remember a conversation with someone about our intentions who said words to this effect:

 

“I am a recovering Religious Education teacher. I had to pretend that each religion had its own ‘Festival of Light’, and that each was implicitly a variation on the same theme. That’s how RE has been taught for decades in the UK: look at a generic theme, and find out how each faith offers a specific version of that theme. It flattens out all that truly shapes each religion, and does more harm than good.”

 

Well, there may (or may not) be a counterargument to be raised about RE as a whole, but, for the purposes of this event, this criticism was well received, and the only commonality we sought to draw upon was of candle-light-in-darkness-in-winter.[3] 

 

But that is not nothing. We lit the liturgically appropriate number of candles. I think (from memory) it might have been the fourth night of Hanukkah and the week following the Second Sunday of Advent. So that is five candles, with the shamash candle, for Hanukkah on the candelabra/hanukkiah, and two candles for the relevant Advent week. I should perhaps explain that these candles were set within an Advent Crown or wreath, with much greenery, four candles of darker colours around a central white candle, which have come to represent: (1) the ancestors; (2) the prophets; (3) John the Baptist; (4) Mary the Mother of Jesus, with the white candle lit to represent Christ - at Christmas itself.

 

But even as I say this, another sense emerges in which the two festivals – or at least these actions within them - are different. For the Advent crown is anything but ancient. It’s not – if I can put it this way – mitzvah at all; It’s entirely minhag, custom. The associations with the ancestors, the prophets,  and so on, is itself but one possible interpretation. The lectionary [RCL] readings for the respective Sundays of Advent do align with these themes in good measure, but not wholly. The themes can be replaced by others without loss, say: hope, peace, joy, love. (And, by the way, some of us are old enough to remember the older Advent themes: death, judgement, heaven and hell.)  But, we can surely see merit in the way thins have developed. Can it not be to the edification of Christians, to reflect on our interpretations, precisely of the ancestors and prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures alongside Jews?

 

Another side note if I may. Because the whole business of the Advent crown is only minhag (custom), we were comfortable varying things. In particular, this meant asking a Sikh friend from the local interfaith forum to light one of the Advent candles, which she did with pride and relish.

 

In keeping with our theme that we were offering an authentic if incomplete experience of the respective festivals, we “watered nothing down”. So the final Christian blessing was that for Advent, and ended with the Trinitarian formula. Again, then: an interfaith gathering, and not a multifaith service of worship. 

 

My own conviction is that the event was a success. Certainly, it has been repeated since then. It undoubtedly helped that we ended with copious refreshments. Here again, we stuck to minhagim: mince pies and doughnuts aplenty. But, even beyond the importance of that, the welcome from the Cathedral, aware of its past association with the blood libel, was no small part of it. We know, don’t we, that Christians involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue often first have to learn just how ugly major aspects of Christian lived reality have been, in order to demonstrate repentance away from all that. The Cathedral was taking that seriously.

 

Ultimately, though, I’d say that the “hero” of the night was the candle light itself. Candle light is of course a flame. It is fire. So it is elemental. And Jews and Christians share a tendency to be drawn to the elemental in our worship and practice. Because we share a strong conviction that we are – and are meant to be - creatures who worship by doing creaturely things with the simple things of Gd’s creation. And being elemental, the fire of the flame of a candle often speaks to those who have no practical connection to our faiths.

 

The symbol and the reality come together as one, when the symbol is light. In these strange and narrow days, may the light shine out in the darkness for us all.

 

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[1] Another way of getting it wrong would have been to have tried to cover all variations within each faith. So we inhabited our own geography, and the identities of the Christians in the team and likely to attend. I mean: we focused on Western Christianity, where the Latin Rite dominates (whether so-called or not). Advent in Eastern Orthodoxy is different in a number of ways, and does not have the Advent Crown described here (though it has plenty of candles, too).  

[2] The discussion within the workshop emphasised this difference – to the point of making me very conscious of something of an oversimplification here. I mean: this is very much the insider, liturgical-Christian perspective. According to that perspective, Advent is indeed the season of preparation and penitence and, yes, even fasting, which prepares the devout for the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord. This is its authentic importance. But one has to have quite a high degree of liturgical sensitivity to inhabit that. To most Christians “Advent” as such is not important at all, and is perhaps associated mainly with folk/cultural Christian/post-Christian items such as Advent calendars, which run from 1 to 24 December, taking no account of Sundays. That said, Advent-as-such does maintain high cultural relevance in Scandinavia and other parts of Lutheran Northern Europe.

[3] Again, a self-consciously British perspective. Others in the workshop spoke about the difference approaching these festivals in the Southern Hemisphere makes.