Collect:
Grant your faithful, we
pray, almighty God,
The resolve
to run forth to meet your Christ
With
righteous deeds at his coming,
So that,
gathered at his right hand,
They may be
worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.
Through our
Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives
and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
One God,
for ever and ever.
--
Advent is for waiting –
if people know one thing about Advent, it’s probably that. We’re waiting for Christmas, which isn’t very
long to wait and we’re waiting for Christ to come again, without knowing how
long that will be. Regardless, we’re
waiting. So why did our opening prayer,
our collect, talk about running? “Grant us the resolve to run forth to meet
your Christ.” That’s what we prayed at
the start of Mass. Running: it’s a
fascinating and compelling characterization of what Christian waiting looks
like.
It could be
a dangerous image, because it could give us the impression that we arrive at
the heavenly banquet under our own steam.
That Advent is all about our
running,
rather than God’s action. But when I
think about my memories of having been a runner, it’s not my own strength that
comes to my mind, but my need. If you’ve
ever done anything truly physically demanding you’ll know that moment, when
every muscle in your body, from your heart out, rebels against you and tells
you to quit, that you can’t finish this race.
And then the gift comes. “Grant
us the resolve.” The gift of knowing, in
a bodily way, that we can’t do this alone.
And God provides, but there is so much gift in those experiences that
inspire us to ask, that draw that prayer out of us, and it’s these we find in
running.
It’s not just
the resolve God provides, though, but the destination and the starter’s
pistol.
St. Paul gives
us an image in our reading from Romans that’s a little more poetic than a
starter’s pistol. He tells us God has
given us the dawn. We don’t live in the
full light of day yet, but it’s not night anymore. The darkness has begun to fade. So, we respond. We wake up.
We throw off our sheets, take off our nightwear, we wash and we dress
for the day. That’s Advent, to see the
sun’s first rays, long for the fullness of day and respond. Advent running is throwing off sin, taking
off fear and despair, and putting on virtue, seeking to live heavenly lives. Advent running is running towards Christ, but
not under the illusion that Christ is absent from our journey. The light that is dawning is Christ’s, is
Christ. And what Paul says we are to put
on, our running gear, is Christ too. We
have put on Christ in baptism, and in Advent we renew that, we throw off what
may have crept in and replaced it over these years and recommit to wearing
Christ as we run to him; showing Christ to the world as we run.
Our first
reading from Isaiah gave us an image of the finish line, and it was a little
more poetic than a finish line. Isaiah speaks of God lifting up a mountain. If God can do amazing things like making the
sun rise, God can lift up mountains. God
is doing amazing things around us all the time, as amazing as raising up
mountains, and stopping and seeing them, and worshiping the giver rather than
the gift, is how we get inspired to run.
We run because our hope gets fed.
We run because of this amazing dream that Isaiah has, his a poetic
longing for peace with justice, where all nations gather to learn from the God of Israel, where
the weapons of war are transformed into tools for feeding one another. We recognize that we’re not there yet, but
God has wrought his victory, and we respond, respond by running. We recognize that we can’t do this on our
own, but we long to be there, and we let our lives run with our longing.
“Grant us the resolve, the strength to run
forth to meet our Christ.” Our
destination is not just a dream or a mountain or a sunny day, but a person, a
person who showed us the power of love. The
collect continues, “Grant us the strength to run forth to meet our Christ with
righteous deeds.” Now, that too could be
misunderstood, as if meeting Christ and righteous deeds were two separate
things, as if we accrued enough righteous deeds to put on our resumé and
presented that as evidence we were entitled to meet our Christ, as if we’d collected
enough bottle tops. We’re not saved by
our resumé; we’re saved by Jesus.
No, the
righteous deeds aren’t the entrance fee; they’re the address of the party. In feeding the hungry, clothing the naked,
educating the unknowing, serving our neighbor in need, we encounter the face of
Christ. We just celebrated Christ the
King last week, the end of the last liturgical year, during which we mainly
read from Luke’s gospel. This liturgical
year, we’ll be mainly reading from Matthew’s.
When we come to the end of this liturgical year, in 51 weeks’ time,
we’ll celebrate Christ the King with the reading where he tells us to seek his
face in the poor served. “I was hungry
and you fed me.” “When did I see you
hungry, Lord?” “Whatsoever you did to
the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me.” That’s what Christian waiting looks like.
That’s running.
Grant us
the resolve, Lord, to run forth to meet our Christ with righteous deeds at his
coming.
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