Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The First Sunday of Advent
How would you define hypocrisy? Let me give it a try. Hypocrisy is saying one thing and doing another, professing with your lips something as being the truth, and then living as if the opposite is true. In our faith, hypocrisy is saying that the most important thing in life is living according to the law of love for God and for one another, and then living a totally self-centered life. It’s coming to church and receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, whose death is not only a sacrifice for our sin, but also an example of godly life, and then going home and saying hateful things to the people closest to us. Hypocrisy is keeping your religion separate from your daily living.
If you accept that definition, then we are all hypocrites at one time or another. We all fail to live up to the hope of our calling. In the words of St. Paul, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” For the Christian, hypocrisy is a given in some ways. The point of the religious life is to strive, by the grace of God, to reduce the gulf that separates what we profess with our lips from what we do with our lives.
We start a new year today. Obviously it’s not a new year in our calendars, but it’s a new Christian year. The Church Year begins on the First Sunday of Advent. It is one of the many new starts that God gives us. We are given a new start every time we confess our sins and receive absolution. We are given a new start when we receive Holy Communion. Our loving and merciful God gives us a new start whenever we ask for it. Advent is one of those new starts.
Ironically, Advent also provides us with a tremendous temptation to hypocrisy. Perhaps more than any season of the Church Year, what we say and do at church is at odds with everything that is going on around us, and in which it is impossible to avoid participating in one way or another. And let’s face it, most if not all of us don’t want to avoid it. We enjoy the secular observance of Christmas that takes place in Advent, and most Christians aren’t disturbed in the least about the difficulty in keeping Advent with Christmas being celebrated in our culture at the same time. What happens is that Advent ends up not being kept at all in most Christian households. Thus, what we do and say in church ends up being entirely divorced from what we do and say in the rest of our lives, which is the very definition of hypocrisy.
In an effort to help us avoid the temptation to hypocrisy, let’s take a look at what exactly the season of Advent is about. It is a season of preparation to receive Christ anew when we celebrate the birth of Christ on the Feast of the Nativity on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And it is a season of preparing for the coming of Christ at the end of time, when he will come again to judge the living and the dead. This Second Coming is the focus of the Gospel appointed for today, when “we will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”
For centuries the Church has taught that the way to prepare rightly to celebrate Christmas is the same way that we prepare to receive him when he comes again in power and great glory to judge the living and the dead. The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent says it succinctly and beautifully: “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 which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal…”
The petition in that collect gives us our focus for the season: “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” That is just another way of saying, “Give us grace to repent,” for that is what repentance is, casting away those things in our lives that take us away from loving God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and from loving our neighbor as we love our very selves, and then putting on those things that enable us to be more loving of God and others. True repentance, then, is not just being sorry for our sins and committing ourselves to forsake them, but it is also replacing those behaviors with acts of love. In a nutshell, that is the theme of Advent. By the way, you have already said you agree with that goal if you said Amen to the Collect at the beginning of the mass. Amen is the Church’s word for “I agree.” I agree to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, by the grace of God.
So, how do we observe rightly the season of Advent, so that it truly is a time for casting away the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light? First of all, we need to acknowledge and confess the works of darkness we have committed. Take time this Advent to make your confession, if not to a priest, then at least in your own prayer life. Write down, to the best of your recollection, all of the works of darkness you have committed since your last confession, both sins of commission and sins of omission—angry words you spoke to your spouse, dishonest dealings in your business, failure to ask forgiveness for a wrong you committed, and so on. Use the Decalogue as a guide to help you recall your sins, and the explication of the Decalogue in the Catechism is a thorough way to understand the Ten Commandments. Confession is an essential part of Advent.
Make sure you attend worship on Sundays and consider adding a weekday mass or more to your activities during this season.
Put an Advent wreath on your table at home and do Advent devotions when everyone in the household can be present. The Advent devotional guide in the Pelican is an excellent resource.
Refrain from decorating for Christmas until after the fourth Sunday of Advent. This is particularly easy to do this year since there are several days following Advent IV before Christmas Day.
You will be going to parties most likely this season, but when you do, remember that you are a child of the light in how you conduct yourself (That’s a good rule year round, by the way!). If possible, put off having Christmas parties yourself until the twelve days of Christmas, which start on the 25th of December and end with the Feast of the Nativity on 6 January.
Confess your sins, be faithful at mass, keep Advent in your homes and in your prayers, and conduct yourself as children of light. Our loving God has given us a fresh start in this beautiful season of Advent. May we receive it gratefully, and use it, by his grace, to the nourishment of our souls, that when our Lord Jesus Christ comes again in power and great glory to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.