This very last part of Advent is a strange time in the calendar. Say all you want about Christmas creep, but a bit of preliminary Christmas celebration is impossible to avoid. If your workplace had a Christmas party, you will have been to it by now. If you’re going to a carol service this year, it’s already happened. This isn’t altogether a bad thing. Joyful anticipation is the natural place to put the spiritual barometer at this time of year. Christmas is so close! And our Lord’s return is closer now than when we first believed. As the BCP Sunday lectionary told us on Sunday, Rejoice! The Lord is at hand! (Phil 4:4 and 5).

Christmas Eve is the place where the two seasons seem to fuse into one. We’ve remembered the forerunners, we’ve reflected on the return and tomorrow we will swap O come, O come Emmanuel for Joy to the World, the Lord is Come!

Common Worship has given us back a collect that has its origins in the early Church and was used in the medieval Sarum Rite (The liturgy from Salisbury that was used across a wide part of England). In the 1549 Book of Common Prayer it was used at the vigil on Christmas night (CW has a different collect for that). It’s a collect which mingles the themes of the two seasons which meet on Christmas Eve.

Almighty God,

you make us glad with the yearly remembrance

of the birth of your Son Jesus Christ:

grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,

so we may with sure confidence behold him

when he shall come to be our judge;

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Our minds have turned to the coming of Christmas – how could they not at this stage? And that is a source of joy to us, even in anticipation today. Of course, joy can take different forms. All things being equal, there will be the unadulterated gladness of marvelling at God made man. ‘Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving and unwearied praises be!’

But all things seldom are equal and for many this Christmas there will sorrow mixed into our joy. Even then, Christmas offers its consolation. ‘Tears and smiles like us he knew… And he feeleth for our sadness’. ‘In his name all oppression shall cease’. ‘He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found’. ‘Born that man no more may die’. ‘To save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.’ ‘Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour, all for love’s sake became so poor.’ Whatever ails you this Christmas, there is something in the glad tidings that can act, if not as a cure, then at least as a balm.

What the collect highlights is that Jesus has come as our Redeemer. His very name marks him out as the Lord come to save. And that means so much more than we sometimes let it. He has come to win forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God, but also to redeem us from sin and the power of the devil, to bring us to the promised land and to reign in glory, justice and peace.

And this is also where the collect ties the joy of Christmas to the culmination of Advent. As we receive him as our redeemer, joyfully, embracing all that means for us, it is that, and only that, which gives us confidence to behold him as judge. One last time for the season, the liturgy (channelling the best of the Fathers and the Medieval church) gives a kick in the teeth to the idea that we, by our penitential discipline, ready ourselves for the last judgement. It is the Lord, the coming redeemer, who makes us ready.

If your household is anything like mine, Christmas Eve is bedlam. I can’t believe I’ve actually got ahead enough to find time to write this. But if you have a moment this afternoon, pause, take a couple of minutes to think about what God has shown you this Advent, and give thanks for the Redeemer who prepares you for the coming judgement. The themes of Advent will soon be out of the spotlight, but not left behind.