Waiting still upon God on Stir-up Sunday

November opened with All Saints' Day, rejoicing with the Communion of Saints in "those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee". In mid-November, in these Islands, we had the sombre, emotive observance of Remembrance Sunday. Friends in the United States have just celebrated Thanksgiving, a day with deep cultural resonance, giving thanks unto God "for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them". Next week we will be readying ourselves for Advent. For many of us this will mean the Advent Procession in the darkness of an early December evening. Christmas carol services will also be fast approaching (no matter what the online Anglican/Episcopal 'Advent Police' insist). 

It is a liturgically crowded and busy time of year, with feasts and observances rich in meaning. This is precisely why I value Stir-up Sunday and do not observe the 'feast of Christ the King' on the Sunday before Advent. At November's end, on the cusp of Advent, it is good to have a Sunday which quietens us, between the observances of November and the short weeks that bring us to Christmas. 

A loud, gaudy feast of Christ the King, with its pretensions giving rise too often giving rise to dramatic, urgent, and predictable claims by both ecclesiastical Right and ecclesiastical Left is, well, much too noisy and brash. It is good to still ourselves at November's end, not to gorge ourselves on yet another liturgical feast before Advent. 

What is more, as Rowan Williams warns us, there is good reason to enter Advent not brimming with enthusiasm and confidence, the enthusiasm and confidence that observance of the feast of Christ the King often seeks to engender:

Advent ... sets out before us the richness of religious eros; it is a season of beautiful, elegiac hymns, voicing our longing.

Without a recognition of our spiritual poverty, states Williams, Advent can therefore too easily entice us, to easily "become another vehicle for human self-reflection". 

It is out of a recognition of spiritual poverty that we therefore pray on the Sunday before Advent, "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". We need prevenient grace to stir us in heart, mind, and soul, for we our impoverished. Yes, even at the end of the liturgical year. Even at the conclusion of the yearly cycle of feasts and fasts, of times and seasons, we are impoverished, utterly reliant upon grace alone:

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

Surely it is the case that Stir-up Sunday captures this in a way that the intentionally triumphalist feast of Christ the King cannot.

What, however, of the contemporary liturgical provision which most of us experience in our parish churches? Does this not inevitably mean that we will be celebrating the feast of Christ the King?

It is the case that the Church of England's Common Worship does indeed unfortunately declare "the annual cycle of the Church’s year now ends with the Feast of Christ the King". Whether this has any significant resonance beyond clergy, however, can be doubted. The collect and readings can be regarded as merely reflecting something of the epistle and gospel in the Prayer Book provision for the Sunday next before Advent. And the Stir-up collect finds its way into the liturgy as the post-Communion. 

In TEC's BCP 1979 there is no 'feast of Christ the King'. No such feast is listed in 1979's 'Principal Feasts' or under 'Other Feasts of Our Lord'. The Sunday is merely 'Proper 29' of the Sundays after Pentecost. In Canada's Book of Alternative Services, it is 'The Last Sunday after Pentecost: the Reign of Christ'. There is no reference to the Sunday in the calendar's 'Principal Feasts' or 'Other Feasts of our Lord'.  Likewise the Church of Ireland's BCP 2004 has 'The Kingship of Christ' as a mere subtitle to 'The Sunday before Advent'. Again, no such feast is listed in 2004's calendar and no reference is made to the Sunday having a special status. The Stir-up collect is not only the Order Two post-Communion; it is the Order One collect for the Sunday, and the collect on the weekdays following in both Orders One and Two.

In other words, much contemporary Anglican and Episcopal liturgical provision for the Sunday before Advent can be approached in the spirit of Stir-up; not a loud and gaudy feast with great pretensions, but, rather, quietly ordering us in heart and mind towards the arrival of Advent.

May it be so, as we enter into the Sunday before Advent and the week following, in the cold and darkness of late November. In the words of Israel's Psalmist, "My soul truly waiteth still upon God : for of him cometh my salvation".

(The photograph is of The Middle Church, in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country, 21st November 2024, in the days before Stir-up Sunday.)