Recent Sermons
A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by Revd Charles Mitchell-Innes, Vicar of the Close on Sunday 30 November 2008
Isaiah 64: 1-9 and Mark 13: 24-37
"ADVENT"
Isaiah 64: 1-9 and Mark 13: 24-37
Keep awake! Watch! Well, actually, the message of both our Old Testament and New Testament readings today is ‘Watch out.’ Isaiah: ‘But you were angry and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed; and shall we be saved?’ Or, to cite Mark, who caps Isaiah here, ‘Keep awake; or else the master may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.’ I’ve always wanted to preach a hellfire sermon: it’s an opportunity for stirring rhetoric, the recipients relish having the frighteners put on them, and it has a profound effect – for at least 15 minutes.
So let me start with an anonymous poem of about 1500. It’s an exchange between a sinner and God, who opens the conversation:
‘Who is at my window? Who? Who?
Go from my window! Go! Go!
Who calls there, like a stranger?
Go from my window! Go!
-- Lord, I am here, a wretched mortal,
That for thy mercy doth cry and call
Unto thee, my Lord Celestial,
See who is at thy window, who –
Remember thy sin, remember thy smart…..’
That is certainly what we are called to do in Advent, to think long and hard about ourselves, particularly those aspects which we’d rather put on one side at other times, except perhaps Lent. Remember thy sin. And as November days get darker, perhaps that’s easier to do than in blithe summer months.
But, with pen poised for my theological invective, I find on closer inspection that our readings simply won’t support my projected rant. How disappointing! Just consider the passage from that towering prophet and poet Isaiah. We have, indeed, become ‘like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth… and you have hidden your face from us.’ But then comes a thundering ‘yet’ – ‘Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter….Be not exceedingly angry, O Lord!’ So the question ‘shall we be saved?’ is not after all one expecting the answer no: quite the reverse. ‘You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways.’ In other words, rather than indulging in overmuch breast-beating our task this Advent is to consider God’s ways – His aspirations for us – and try to align our lives to them. We do this by making time for reading, (biblical and devotional), for prayer and for reflection. If you’re like me you may not find it easy to fit that in but I know it’s important to make use of Advent in this way. The focus is on reconciliation, not cringing in fear: for we are preparing our hearts to welcome a child, Emmanuel, God-alongside-us. He will reach out to us if we turn to Him in humility and love.
Jim was a young man – in his late teens – who lived with his parents in their small terraced house. He found both their way of life and the restrictions they placed on him petty and irksome. Often he would go out drinking with his friends until the small hours; and then when he returned home his worried parents would be waiting up, and there would be recriminations and anger. Sometimes, to avoid these scenes, he would stay out all night, half agonizing over his parents’ distress, half infuriated because of it. Then one night Jim came in, high on drugs and alcohol, started smashing things in the house and was violently abusive when his parents angrily protested. Next morning he packed a few clothes in a suitcase and left, for good. He roamed about the country, picking up jobs here and there, living a mean existence. Finally, he went to sea, as a crewman on a trader, and spent some years in and out of ports in the Far East. As time went on, he found himself thinking more and more about his mother and father – how they were, whether they were still alive or not – regretting his impetuous departure. Once, on leave in England, he almost phoned them. But he had not the courage to make the call: what if they simply hung up on him? It would be too awful and final. Instead, he decided to write to them. He told them which day he would take the train that passed the bottom of their garden: and he asked them, if they would have him back, to tie a white handkerchief to the tree in the garden. If there was a handkerchief, he would get out at the little station half a mile down the line: if not, he would go on, and never see them again.
Jim took the train out of London. Gradually the city gave way to suburbia and then the gardens running down to the track began to narrow. As the train approached the place where his parents lived, that had been his home, Jim could not bear to look out of the window to see if they had put out the handkerchief. Instead, he explained to the man sitting opposite him in the carriage what to look out for, and asked him to tell him what he saw. Then Jim covered his face with his hands, torn between fierce hope and despair. When he knew they must be passing the garden, and the train was slowing down for the station he asked his fellow passenger whether he could see the tree. The man replied, ‘I can’t see a handkerchief nor even a tree; all I can see is what is covering it – a great white sheet.’
The poem with which I started, in which God tells the sinner to go from His window, was only the first half, as you may have realized. In the second part it becomes clear that God wants him to stop looking in the window so that he can enter by the door and be welcomed. This is how it concludes (God speaks throughout):
‘Remember thy sin, remember thy smart,
And also for thee what was my part,
Remember the spear that pierced my heart,
And in at my door thou shalt go.
I ask no thing of thee therefore,
But love for love, to lay in store.
Give my thy heart; I ask no more,
And in at my door thou shalt go.
Who is at my window? Who?
Go from my window! Go!
Cry no more there like a stranger,
But in at my door thou go!’
Return to the sermons list.
So let me start with an anonymous poem of about 1500. It’s an exchange between a sinner and God, who opens the conversation:
‘Who is at my window? Who? Who?
Go from my window! Go! Go!
Who calls there, like a stranger?
Go from my window! Go!
-- Lord, I am here, a wretched mortal,
That for thy mercy doth cry and call
Unto thee, my Lord Celestial,
See who is at thy window, who –
Remember thy sin, remember thy smart…..’
That is certainly what we are called to do in Advent, to think long and hard about ourselves, particularly those aspects which we’d rather put on one side at other times, except perhaps Lent. Remember thy sin. And as November days get darker, perhaps that’s easier to do than in blithe summer months.
But, with pen poised for my theological invective, I find on closer inspection that our readings simply won’t support my projected rant. How disappointing! Just consider the passage from that towering prophet and poet Isaiah. We have, indeed, become ‘like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth… and you have hidden your face from us.’ But then comes a thundering ‘yet’ – ‘Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter….Be not exceedingly angry, O Lord!’ So the question ‘shall we be saved?’ is not after all one expecting the answer no: quite the reverse. ‘You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways.’ In other words, rather than indulging in overmuch breast-beating our task this Advent is to consider God’s ways – His aspirations for us – and try to align our lives to them. We do this by making time for reading, (biblical and devotional), for prayer and for reflection. If you’re like me you may not find it easy to fit that in but I know it’s important to make use of Advent in this way. The focus is on reconciliation, not cringing in fear: for we are preparing our hearts to welcome a child, Emmanuel, God-alongside-us. He will reach out to us if we turn to Him in humility and love.
Jim was a young man – in his late teens – who lived with his parents in their small terraced house. He found both their way of life and the restrictions they placed on him petty and irksome. Often he would go out drinking with his friends until the small hours; and then when he returned home his worried parents would be waiting up, and there would be recriminations and anger. Sometimes, to avoid these scenes, he would stay out all night, half agonizing over his parents’ distress, half infuriated because of it. Then one night Jim came in, high on drugs and alcohol, started smashing things in the house and was violently abusive when his parents angrily protested. Next morning he packed a few clothes in a suitcase and left, for good. He roamed about the country, picking up jobs here and there, living a mean existence. Finally, he went to sea, as a crewman on a trader, and spent some years in and out of ports in the Far East. As time went on, he found himself thinking more and more about his mother and father – how they were, whether they were still alive or not – regretting his impetuous departure. Once, on leave in England, he almost phoned them. But he had not the courage to make the call: what if they simply hung up on him? It would be too awful and final. Instead, he decided to write to them. He told them which day he would take the train that passed the bottom of their garden: and he asked them, if they would have him back, to tie a white handkerchief to the tree in the garden. If there was a handkerchief, he would get out at the little station half a mile down the line: if not, he would go on, and never see them again.
Jim took the train out of London. Gradually the city gave way to suburbia and then the gardens running down to the track began to narrow. As the train approached the place where his parents lived, that had been his home, Jim could not bear to look out of the window to see if they had put out the handkerchief. Instead, he explained to the man sitting opposite him in the carriage what to look out for, and asked him to tell him what he saw. Then Jim covered his face with his hands, torn between fierce hope and despair. When he knew they must be passing the garden, and the train was slowing down for the station he asked his fellow passenger whether he could see the tree. The man replied, ‘I can’t see a handkerchief nor even a tree; all I can see is what is covering it – a great white sheet.’
The poem with which I started, in which God tells the sinner to go from His window, was only the first half, as you may have realized. In the second part it becomes clear that God wants him to stop looking in the window so that he can enter by the door and be welcomed. This is how it concludes (God speaks throughout):
‘Remember thy sin, remember thy smart,
And also for thee what was my part,
Remember the spear that pierced my heart,
And in at my door thou shalt go.
I ask no thing of thee therefore,
But love for love, to lay in store.
Give my thy heart; I ask no more,
And in at my door thou shalt go.
Who is at my window? Who?
Go from my window! Go!
Cry no more there like a stranger,
But in at my door thou go!’