Despite newspapers running features on the prospect of another Credit Crunch Christmas, I have to confess that there wasn’t a lot of sign of it yesterday in Oxford Street which was packed with shoppers hunting for bargains. I was reminded not so much of the season of Advent beginning as the actress Joan Collins who perhaps was more accurately describing our society’s mantra when she said; “Whoever said money doesn’t make you happy didn’t know where to shop”.

Even in straitened economic circumstances, the most obvious thing for me to say from a pulpit in the weeks before Christmas is that the festival has become too commercial, that it has got out of hand, that we’ve lost the meaning of Christmas, despite the Salvation Army band playing on Regent Street yesterday determinedly reminding us that the angels did sing “Glory to the new born King”.

The most obvious thing to say is that Advent is ignored and we should get it back into our public conversations.

It is an obvious thing for the Church to say; and those of us who follow Jesus Christ in our own lives should and do say it often.
But before Christians get too judgemental, we should pause and ask ourselves how we know that the season has got out of hand in our society; it’s because we’re in it. I was able to observe all the goings on Oxford Street yesterday because I was there, shopping myself. We are rightly in the world, and have had a share in making it as it is today.

But it is the sense of nagging discomfort with the world that is important in this season of Advent; this season of prophecy and large questions and end times.

It’s easier for us to suppress our momentary disquiet at the extraordinary level of consumer spending that continues around us; and justify our own spending by allying it to our love for our family and friends, our cementing of relationships, perhaps even our sense of fun and our genuine need at times for pointlessness.

But it seems to me that many people inside and outside organised religion do feel a certain sense of disquiet, a sense of dislocation, of dissonance as they see the wildly energetic advertising campaigns, the raised expectations in their children, the over anxious recipes published to make sure that our hospitality is judged imaginative and generous.

Our disquiet is deep. It can be translated into many phrases; from a Scrooge-like humbug to a pleading with relatives not to spend too much money on us. A story in the national press this week identified what some department stores are calling “manger chic” – that is, parents spending a lot of money on clothes for their children’s nativity plays, for example, a grey duffle coat is easily turned into a donkey costume - and they have sold a number of fake fur throws to make children into sheep. The department store commented “parents have told our personal shopping teams that they feel they have to teach their children to excel at everything from an early age.... the amount some spend.... would enable baby Jesus to leave the stable and check into a 5 star hotel” (source The Guardian newspaper 4th December 2009).

Without this turning into a “things aint wot they used to be” sermon surely some of our calling as people of faith is to look honestly at our excess, even in challenging economic circumstances and allow our faith not our fear to guide us.
Our dis-ease and disquiet about our greed isn’t Scrooge inside us – it’s Advent. It comes from a deep and human resonance with our Creator. And we should listen to that voice inside us that confronts our consumerism.

On Thursday of this week, St Paul’s as many other churches was full of Handel’s music as the choir sang his oratorio Messiah. We heard the tenor soloist sing some of the most beautiful words from the Hebrew Scriptures set to sublime music: “Comfort ye. Comfort ye my people”. The prophet Isaiah had written these words to the Israelite people who were at the time in exile in Babylon. What did the Israelite people need in exile? They needed words of comfort, hope and consolation. So we heard God’s instruction to the angels and prophets; “Comfort my people; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.”

These are words of comfort of hope, of pardon and peace. These are words people need when they are exiled from all that is familiar, when they are far from home.

By the same token, it is precisely when we feel a sense of exile, alienation from our own society, we find the voice of our prophetic selves. When we know the sense of being on the outside looking in we begin to tap into the Advent spirit of John the Baptist and Jesus calling us to a simpler, less materialistic life.

And the exile experience can be learned even by those who have never experienced it.

A church group taking part in a poverty awareness exercise were cast adrift alone in a city centre for a day. They were each allowed 50 pence to spend on food. Cheque books and credit cards were left behind. 8 hours and 2 mealtimes later they returned to share their experiences.

After 4 hours one had experienced significant emotional distress, Despite the fact that they knew the exercise was temporary and that they had chosen to do it, they felt alienated from everyone around them.

“I felt I didn’t belong. I was on the edge. It was as though I wasn’t there. It made me realise how much having money and the freedom to spend it made me feel part of society”.

There are many in London today and particularly at this time who are in economic exile from the consumer gorging that takes place in the run up to Christmas.

Advent is a season for people in exile; And what do people need in exile? The promise that Isaiah made and John the Baptist repeated in our gospel today: “Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low”. God’s promise to all in exile is that no mountain shall be high enough to separate us from comfort, hope, pardon and peace.

It is part of the gift of Advent that we are called to stay with our own sense of exile and unease. Don’t ignore it or be embarrassed by it. Listen to the prophet inside you; that calls you to live more simply. Give it some airtime in the commentary on life that runs in your head and see what decisions you might make in these weeks leading to Christmas.

Without I hope being too fanciful, I reacted to one particular toy yesterday that is very popular with children of 5 and upwards. I thought perhaps it was a toy for Advent.
A Bionicle is a small fantasy creature with wings and legs and large eyes that can be made into different shapes. Inside when you open it up, there is a little heart; its soul. A gentle, vulnerable presence inside a brightly coloured, cosmic beast from the imagination of children. By playing with this toy, children are encouraged to express their human need for special beings, and just perhaps it helps to prepare them for stories about angels and apocalypse that are so much a part of an Advent faith.

So Advent does not call us to hate all that we see or to judge it. There is much that is wrong with the world, and particularly at this time of year its injustices seem more evident; Advent calls us to read the signs of the times confidently and without despair. We are also called to recognise that the exiled voice of disquiet inside us is the voice of the prophet crying and preparing the way for the coming of the Prince of consolation and peace; Jesus Christ. In doing so, we ally ourselves with Christ, who turned over the tables of money changers in the temple; and who can be found today with all those in exile from a society that believes the more we have the happier we will be.

May Christ when he comes find us watching and waiting. Amen.

Amen