St George’s Cathedral
Hope in Advent
The Revd Rhys Roberts-Brown, Assistant Curate, St George’s Cathedral
Hope is a strange thing, both continuous with what is already present around us, and yet profoundly discontinuous.
The hoped-for continuities are obvious enough, perhaps. Where there is joy, we hope it spreads and endures. Where there is delight, we hope it continues, freed from dismay. We hope for love to wrap its arms around all of creation. These are hopes born from the foretastes we are given of a final, restored Kingdom, whether we live in strong communities bearing Christ’s light or, for any number of reasons, we find ourselves in isolated and darkened corners of the wasteland.
But there are also hopes for what seems utterly discontinuous with our present experience, those hopes so often articulated in Scripture. War shall cease; suffering will be abolished; hunger, thirst, and slavery to the powers of this world will end. The long night, ever farther spent, awaits the coming dawn to chase away the darkness.
Advent is a strange season because it plants us in hope for something that has already begun, and yet is not complete. Christ has come, lived, died, and risen again, becoming what the world is, so that the world may be joined to God. The light has broken in, the New Creation has dawned, and yet the world still waits for its full unveiling.
For even now, our joys are often interrupted, our delights fragile. Love suffers endlessly for its poor objects, the weak, the destitute, the weeping. The Church knows this pain, for she lives between promise and fulfillment, between the light already given and the light still awaited. We are so often confused and lost, and yet even this bewilderment can become a form of faith: a waiting that participates in the patience of God.
In Advent, we remember the time before Jesus’ earthly ministry, the long exiles of Israel, when God’s people wandered through a darkened wasteland yet were continually sustained by divine providence. In those wilderness years, God’s presence was often hidden, but never absent. So too with us. Advent draws us into that same waiting and wandering: a time when we do not yet know in full, but in which we are already held by the One who has come, who is coming through his Spirit, and who will come again. In anticipation, we ready ourselves.
To recognise this season of hope and preparation, the Cathedral is holding an Advent Carols service on the evening of 30 November at 7:30pm, wherein we sing Advent hymns, hear choral works and Scripture that focuses on the anticipation of Our Lord, as we are invited to participate in that anticipation of his arriving daily in our hearts and his coming again in glory.
We will also be hosting an Advent study led by The Revd Dr Sue Boorer, Cathedral Scholar, on Visions of Hope in the Prophets, Saturdays 6, 13, 20 December, each running from 9:30am to 10:30am in the Lower Burt Memorial Hall.
We welcome you to join us throughout the season, as we anticipate the coming again of Christ, through the lens of hope provided us in the Scriptures and tradition.
