Advent Sunday I, 2023

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[I]n Advent, in that day, we all become – as it has been said – Jews once more. We relearn the lessons of the first covenant: that we cannot make God, however we long for him; that we must be surprised, ambushed and carried off by God if we are to be kept from idols. [...] The Christian in Advent needs to listen to that, listen to such a degree that this season becomes both a season of joyful expectancy and a season of ‘poverty’ – of the knowledge that we cannot talk and touch ourselves into life; of that deep poverty of the imagination which can only stand helplessly before the outrages and miseries of our world, utterly at a loss for a word of meaning or hope to speak. We are here at all, celebrating Advent (as the Jew celebrates the Passover) because there has been a word spoken, a word of unexpected interruption, a word that establishes for good the difference between the God we expect and the God who comes, a word that shows us once and for all what an idol looks like in face of the truth. (Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses, 2014)

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