Advent 4 The Lord is Near – Receiving 22nd December 2013

We’re using the last programme of our Advent series ‘The Lord is near’ that’s been following the journey to Christmas in Horsted Keynes with the hundreds of thousands of listeners to Premier Christian Radio.

If Christmas is about welcoming Christ, Advent shows us the way. Four ways – it’s a call to repent, believe, ask, receive - and in our last programme we’re looking at receiving.

Christmas means Christ’s Mass so receiving Communion in bread and wine is at the heart of what’s otherwise become a commercial feast. Whereas 50 people make their Communion every week in St Giles there’ll be 150 on Christmas day and an overall attendance of 500 at services, a quarter of the population of the village. Hinting at what receiving Communion entails these words from John’s Gospel will be read at Midnight Mass: ‘to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’.

On the last Sunday before Christmas the Lady Chapel of St Giles is the focus. It’s got a window showing the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary which made her the first mortal to receive Christ.

Let’s hear part of a beautiful Advent carol telling the story of that visit.

Hymn: The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (Annunciation Carol)

Fr John:  In the last week of Advent the Virgin Mary’s placed centre stage as reminder of the Christian call to receive from God. How could Mary be God-bearer without receiving from God – and how can we carry out what God wants of us without our receiving from him?

There are various ways of receiving from God - Scripture, Holy Communion, Christian fellowship – of which, day by day, prayer is fundamental. The Bible tells us Mary ‘treasured God’s words and pondered them in her heart’ and that’s a lovely definition of contemplation.  Each day, either at home or in St Giles, I spend an hour of prayer which includes contemplation. One of the encouragements within my ministry of late has been to connect with people rediscovering the ancient wisdom of contemplation, to balance the activism around in the world and in the church.

‘What is this life, if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’

Jamie Large speaks about how he has found value in the discipline of contemplative stillness as an aid to centring and energising his life and how such contemplation can enrich our approach to the Christmas feast.

Fr John: Let’s listen now to St Paul’s heartfelt call for us to receive the indwelling of Christ:

Female voice from Premier staff.

A reading from the letter of St Paul to the Ephesians, Chapter 3  

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Here end the reading.

Fr John: The last days of Advent are busy days for clergy as, besides planning Christmas services and the decorating of church they make themselves available to individuals seeking to make their Confession before the Christmas feast.

Mary Mitchell-Gogay describes what is involved in making a sacramental confession and how her own receiving of Christmas Communion is enriched by it year by year.

Fr John: The words of our last hymn are taken from the age old refrains used at evensong in the last week of Advent: O come, O come, Emmanuel

Song: O come, O come, Emmanuel

‘Rejoice in the Lord always;’ Paul says to the Philippians, ‘again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.’ As Christmas approaches it brings joy to believers for ‘the Lord is near’ and ‘in his presence is the fullness of joy’. (Psalm 16:11)

That joy is built on repentance and faith. It comes as we turn from our woeful shortcomings to welcome afresh the embrace of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It comes from asking him to come near to us and from receiving all he’s got to give us, not least in the Sacrament of his body and blood.

In this last week of Advent I’m asking God to give me a bigger vision of himself, more to his dimensions and less to mine. With Mary I want to magnify the Lord so he increases in my reckoning, and I decrease in that same reckoning! How else can I prepare to be a channel of his love towards all who’ll seek him in the worship I’ll lead in the next few days.

Repent, believe, ask, receive – this is the invitation of Jesus coming Saviour and Judge – cast out your sin, that I may enter in to be born in you afresh, so you may know my love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God

Let’s end with the Advent prayer to the One who comes near to us as Lord and Saviour:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ  came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.