We are in the season of school concerts, carol services and nativity plays. The other week years 7 & 8 from Temple Moor came here for an Advent Service - all 460 of them - and on Tuesday morning Whitkirk Primary are coming into the church in a couple of batches. During the week I was in another school watching their plays. As I watched I had one of those light bulb moments, when something became clear or at least came more into focus. I was struck by two themes in one of the plays and both of them highlighted for me that the Christian Gospel is still radical today.

The first was the whole sense of God having a plan and our lives being held by his purpose. I just don’t see this reflected in the lives of many people. There is a prevailing mood that seems to have a very lose grip on any notion of purpose, as if deep down we fear we might really live in a meaningless drift from obscurity to oblivion. So much of our common life, our culture, seems to behave in a manner that does not believe that there is anything behind or beyond what we can taste and see and smell now. There is a cynicism in this which can sap the joy out of living. J K Rowling has a good image for this in the Harry Potter books with the dementors who suck out the joy of living from all around them. This is a darkness that can be very oppressive and it is one of the darknesses to which the light of Christ comes.

The second part of the play to light up my brain was a phrase about not taking the seed of life for granted. I see a lot of taking for granted around. For all the wonder of medical science and technological gadgetry we have come to expect everything and have lost hold on gratitude and thankfulness. The seed of life is sacred and that holiness is within us and comes among us in the Christ child.

All is not lost of course. Marks and Spencer realise that there is a longing for magic and sparkle and if we want to see where social trends are going adverts provide a good barometer. But we won’t find this longing fulfilled in consumer goods, because they don’t fill the spiritual void, the darkness of cynicism and taking for granted which lies behind the desire for magic and sparkle.

With that in mind I want to jump at this point to think for a moment about our Eucharistic ritual. Some of you may have noticed that a fourth bell has been introduced at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and I want to say a little about that. There is a connection between it, the hope of Advent and what I have just been saying, which I hope will become clear.

The ringing of bells during the Eucharistic Prayer is there to highlight what is going on in the words. So we ring the bell when we call on the Holy Spirit to come among us that these gifts may be transformed into vehicles for us to share in Christ’s body and blood; into the tokens of his saving and life giving passion which the Eucharist commemorates; that through them we may be spiritually fed. There is also an invocation of the Holy Spirit on us too that we may be transformed into the body of Christ in our lives of service and Christian living. We don’t ring the bell at that point, though sometimes the two come together, but they are linked and it is the same Holy Spirit that is invoked in both. So the first bell is for the transforming power of the Holy Spirit who makes us into a dynamic community, a community who believe in purpose and proclaim God’s purpose, and seek to live in accordance with it. So I’ve not gone that far away from where I started.

Then there are the two bells at the elevations after we recall the words Jesus used over the bread and wine at the Last Supper - the Institution Narrative to give it its liturgical name. These highlight that in this act we are commemorating and following Christ’s call to ‘do this in remembrance’ of him. The bread is for us his body; Christ feeds us with the gift of himself. The wine is for us his blood, poured out for us on the cross, his life given and shared.

But the prayer continues and does not end there. That is not the end of it. It goes on to look for the final consummation of all things, and proclaims Christ’s presence in other ways too. The prayer of consecration is not over until the great ‘Amen’ at the end and whatever you believe happens to the elements is not affirmed until we get to the end. It is appropriate to have a fourth bell to say ‘it is finished’; to proclaim our confidence in God’s salvation, in being held by the purposive love that sends his Son, that holds us with light in darkness.

The final elevation is a celebration of confidence in the future because this is God’s banquet and he is the host who calls us sit and eat. The bells are to highlight this affirmation of final consummation when all things will be gathered in the Kingdom to come and to celebrate the signs of its dawning in our midst.

The ‘Amen’ at the end is one of the oldest elements in our Eucharistic Liturgy and can be found in the earliest liturgies we can trace. It is followed by a silence and sometimes a very long one. This is the most appropriate response to the door between heaven and earth being opened, which we affirm and proclaim in this Eucharistic celebration. There is a passage in the book of Revelation (8:1) where the Lamb who was slain, a clear reference to Jesus, is the one worthy to open the seals in the book. After he opens the seventh there is silence in heaven for half an hour. The opening of the final seal brings the final consummation of all things and in the face of this all our busy-ness and messing around is silenced.

Our first reading gave us the image of ‘garlands instead of ashes’, of the ‘oil of gladness instead of mourning’, of the ‘mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit’ (Isaiah 61:3). These come to a people feeling that everything is lost, that all around them is darkness and who have lost hope. This comes to a people perhaps beset by a financial crisis and with some hard challenges and choices in front of them. Sound familiar? We are a people who treasure and love an institution at a time when institutions are not cool. We are a people being asked to find more and more money to stand still or even fend off what can feel like an inevitable incoming tide of decline.

Into this, enter stage left John the Baptist pointing to future glory dawning among us (John 1:6-8, 19-28). That future glory is not fully seen until the final consummation but we are given enough to be going on with, indeed in Christ our hopes are fulfilled beyond our dreams and in ways that surprise us! We can have confidence in the future and trust in the promises and purpose of God which will and does hold us.

Exactly where this will take us, none of us know. All we are called to do is to trust in the purposes of the one who comes to a world which lives the darkness of scepticism and takes so much for granted. All we are called to do is to celebrate the light of hope and promise, the true magic and sparkle of the final consummation of all things, and to trust in that. All we are called to do is have confidence in God’s future, the future of the one who comes among us and holds all things.

© Ian Black 2002

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