Christian Comment with Brian Stanley, Randwick Church LMT

“REMEMBER, remember…” we used to sing.

I know Guy Fawkes – even the TV version - is over.

But that date, followed closely by Remembrance weekend, hasn’t stopped our continuing focus on looking back.

Indeed all human progress is based on it: we walk backwards into the future, daily, trusting that what we have already achieved will help us on our continuing journey “Not as cold as this time last year…”.

We try to control what is coming by comparing our hopes to the past.

Our temperate zone has four seasons annually; and the Christian Church is also firmly fixed in its cycle of repeated celebrations: Easter, Whitsun, Harvest, Christmas – each with its anniversary story to be re-invigorated for our day.

Sometimes, of course, looking back is a traumatic experience – for refugees, divorcees, the bereaved, the imprisoned.

New readers are surprised that the Bible is so full of disasters, a nation and individuals exploring what went wrong, though the New Testament is more upbeat – Easter for example, where despair is followed by hope.

It’s one reason perhaps why the season of Advent feels like a strange pairing: the ‘threat’ of the end of the world as we know it, in parallel with the miracle of Christ’s coming as a new-born human.

Yearly we re-enact that extraordinary tableau – the fragile Jesus, with his semi-refugee parents in a cattle basement, and feel the need to celebrate anew.

And that other Advent – Christ’s return in glory – are we too nervous of our own spiritual story to welcome that Coming?

As we walk backwards then towards December 25, looking over our shoulders in eager anticipation, we must surely do our utmost to make our celebration more significant.

Folk memory can diminish original truth: Guy Fawkes into fireworks, battlefields into poppies, Christ’s birth into Christmas tree presents, and the Second Coming into newspaper warnings of more future conflict in the Middle East.

Remember, remember, the Christian message of love and hope is not just for Christmas, and is increasingly needed in tomorrow’s world.