Advent Hope (Advent 2)

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope." Romans 15.13 (Readings Is 40.1-11; 2 Peter 3.8-15a; Mark 1.1-8)

As a young boy growing up in the 1950s, Christmas night was always one of the most tantalising and frustrating. It was so near to Christmas day and yet not Christmas Day. The anticipation was amplified by the fact that Christmas Day is my birthday as well.

And although the presents were only going to be a torch and a dinky toy and a Rupert Annual – all labelled ‘for birthday and Christmas’ – the wait was nearly unbearable,

Throughout those dark December Advent days, I felt like the children in CS Lewis’s Narnia, where it was always winter but never Christmas. I would fall asleep on Christmas night, exhausted by hope.

For many children, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day still testify to the truth of the Proverb (13.12)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Of course since the 1950s we’ve moved on. Increased standards of living and credit cards have taken ‘the waiting out of wanting’ – that infamous Access Card slogan of the 1970s.

And even more recently we have seen how ‘Looting takes the waiting out of wanting’. (Bricolage, 2009)

And all this means that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a good Advent; to defer Christmas till Christmas Day.

Hope is one of the three theological virtues, as they are called: faith, hope and charity.

And hope is of the essence of our Christian faith.

The Sundays of Advent, are all waiting-in-hope Sundays. We have closed the curtain on the annual drama of the liturgical year, and start again, preparing, waiting, hoping, for the long-expected Jesus.

And it is no accident that Advent coincides with the run-up to the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice - in the bleak mid winter.

We live in hope that the winter will pass; the light will come back; spring will return.

This is at the heart of God’s message to Isaiah: ‘Comfort, O comfort my people.’

Isaiah was to give fresh hope to the Israelites in exile in Babylon, weeping by the waters, losing hope that they would ever return to rebuild Jerusalem.

He’s to comfort them, stir them up. The word originally means ‘to give great strength to’.

So you remember in the Bayeux Tapestry, that 230 foot picture which tells of everything leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – there’s a section with the caption “Harold comforteth his troops” - the picture shows him jabbing a spear into a soldier’s backside.

He is comforting them, giving them great strength, encouraging them.

Similarly in the collect today ‘with your great might succour us’. Again literally, ‘run up to us’.

This is the ministry of comforting, of reviving hope.

John Watson was a great Scottish preacher of the second half of the 19th century. He was the product of a Highland Jacobite, Roman Catholic mother, and a strict Free Church father. Shortly before he died in 1907 he told friends: ‘If I had to begin my ministry again, I would preach more comforting sermons.’

Why do we lose hope and need so much comforting?

Three reasons strike us from today’s readings.

Firstly, our thinking is often too short-term. So Peter has to remind the church in his letter ‘that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.’ Jesus had said he would return again – so where was he? Where is he?

It was the American screenwriter Ben Hecht who said: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second-hand of a clock.”

Waiting, the weeks of Advent, seem dull and negative. Why can’t we cut to the chase?

I always find that little comparison about the age of the earth a healthy way of keeping my historical perspective.

If the 6 billion years of planet earth’s existence were put on a 24 hour clock, then humankind appeared on the planet less than a second ago.

Hope requires a long-term vision.

Secondly, people lack hope because of their personality. Some of us are optimists and some pessimists.

You probably know the story of the brother who was a pessimist and his sister who was an optimist.

Just to see what would happen, on Christmas Eve their father loaded the boy’s room with every imaginable toy and game while he filled the sisters room with horse manure.

On Christmas morning he found the boy sitting amid his mountain of new gifts, wailing:
“I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff. I'll constantly need batteries. My friends will be jealous and my toys will all eventually get broken."

Next door, the father found his daughter dancing for joy in the pile of manure and shouting, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Most of the prophets were pessimists, and often depressives. When the Lord gives Isaiah this upbeat message, what does Isaiah want to cry?

“All flesh is grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it.”

It’s another reason why we need each other to counterbalance either excessive pessimism, or naïve optimism.

And a third reason why people lack hope is because they don’t know, or won’t see all the facts.

John the Baptist was a prophet and therefore given to pessimism and depression. He recognises Jesus as the Messiah, and yet in the depths of his despair before his own death he sends his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

We need to understand our world and our personal situation so that we can be realists about life.
The hope that we try to nurture during this waiting period of Advent, is the hope that should comfort us in all the ups and downs of our daily lives.

We know that ‘hope’ does not usually mean getting what you want. The illness doesn’t go away, we do lose our job, the loved one does die. Yet despite what happens, life and hope go on.

Did you hear photographer Giles Dules on Richard Coles’ Saturday Live yesterday? He lost both legs and an arm earlier this year in Afghanistan and said how he felt he was in a better place now than he was a year ago. That’s the product of hope!

And that is why in this Advent season Christ’s first coming as a baby is always set against the backcloth of his second coming in glory. Wars have not yet ceased and we have not beaten our swords into ploughshares. But we live and work in hope, not just of outcomes in this life, but of all that is yet to be in God, now and forever.

There’s a poem by Sheena Pugh which expresses this advent hope of waiting and watching expectantly through all the changing scenes of life. It’s called Sometimes.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheena Pugh (b.1950)

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope." Romans 15.13

John the Baptist and Politics

Advent 2

Isaiah 11.1-10; Romans 15.4-9; Matthew 3.1-12

“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Is 11.9

Tony Blair and that defender of atheism, Christopher Hitchens, debated last weekend in Toronto the proposition that 'Religion is a force for good in the world'. In a vote after the debate, the audience voted two-to-one in Mr Hitchens' favour.

This is a long way on from 2003 when an American journalist from Vanity Fair asked Mr Blair a question about belief, and his former communications manager, Alistair Campbell, stopped the interview in its tracks with the memorable shout from the side: “We don't do God.”

Even the editor of the Economist has recently co-authored the book: “God is back”. Although many of us suspect he never went away.

In Advent, the readings encourage us to think of the role of John the Baptist, imprisoned and beheaded not for his religious beliefs, but because he muddled in politics.

The Old Testament prophets knew no distinction between politics and prophecy. Generally, they were to speak to the powerful on behalf of God and the powerless. Isaiah’s vision that we read earlier was a call to the people of Israel to work towards a godly commonwealth.

St Paul’s plea in today’s epistle to the Romans was for greater international harmony and understanding. Christ, the root of Jesse of which Isaiah prophesied, was to be the hope of all nations and not just the Jews.

I greatly enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall on Thomas Cromwell and life in the court of Henry VIII. And that led me on to start reading the CJ Sansom detective novels set in the same period.

It reminded me that the politics of different groups at different times in our history have varied enormously while all claiming to be Christian.

At present in the West, the two great shaping ideologies have become capitalism and socialism. And popularly these are both regarded with healthy cynicism.

So as one pundit has put it: capitalism is man’s exploitation of man, whereas socialism is the exact opposite.

It reminds me of that schoolboy witticism about the difference between democracy and feudalism: in democracy, your votes count, whereas in feudalism it’s the other way round.

The reason the OT prophets knew no distinction between politics and prophecy, was because they operated within a theocracy. God was Head of State. His priests and prophets spoke on behalf of God and received revelations from him in the Divine Privy Council.

Although when we look back on some of the actions they took in the name of God, it could just be possible that they misheard occasionally!

So in the days of the prophets and the judges, there was no need for a king. But Israel demanded one, to keep up with the neighbours, and reluctantly God gave them Saul which was the beginning of the end of theocracy.

Fourteen hundred years after the anointing of Israel’s first king - we’re talking about the 4^th and 5^th centuries - the church arguably became the new Israel and Christendom became the new theocracy.

But now it was no longer prophets who spoke the voice of God, it was the rulers of church and state - which were often the same men.

Another thousand years on and one of the struggles of the last three centuries in the West has been to try and separate religion from politics. In America, they have constitutionally done it in theory, although not in practice. Whereas in Europe, we have generally done it in practice, while not in theory.

So where does that leave the prophetic voice of the Church in politics?

Well some would say, nowhere. If John the Baptist had kept his head down, he wouldn’t have lost it!

But that has not been the response of the historic churches over the last couple of centuries. It has been the response of some sects - the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, strict Calvinists, some Pentecostal groups; but it has not been the response of either mainline Protestants or Catholics.

Now we know from history that sometimes political intervention by the Church and a so-called prophetic voice has been disastrous. It has added to the bigotry and misunderstanding that divide nations and encourage mental and sometimes physical violence. And sadly that is still true in parts of the world.

The majority of that audience in the debate between Blair and Hitchens last week thought this is more often the case than not.

But sometimes the intervention of the Church in the politics of the day has been heroic and Christlike in its attempts to bring peace and justice. Think of Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, Romero, Mandela, Martin Luther King… the list goes on.

Well theocracy is now all but dead - although it is still advocated by some fundamentalists in all three of the historic faiths – Jews, Muslims and Christians.

There are those Christians in America and a few in Britain - restitutionists they are called - who want to re-establish a state that enforces Old Testament law. I’ve read their leaflets, frightening though they are.

For instance, they advocate that gays should be given warning to ‘change their lifestyle’ and if they fail to comply, they should be summarily executed! It would certainly ease congestion in central London, but most of us would not recognise this as the prophetic voice in politics.

If the church is to speak into our society, including the political structures, in any sense as ‘for God’, then we are left with what the prophets majored on - the broad sweep of Biblical ethics, reinforced by our Lord’s own teaching, summed up in the Advent prophet Isaiah “Cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (1.16) or famously in the prophet Micah “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (6.8)

Our Lord echoes these prophetic signposts with his command to love God with the totality of our being, and to love neighbour as self.

John the Baptist was perhaps politically naïve, but his call to repentance and holiness was a necessary preparation for the ministry of Jesus – and the ministry of Jesus would bring about in time the greatest political upheavals the world has ever seen.

The prophetic voice of the church in politics must always be to call our leaders to pay heed to those underlying truths of human authenticity which Jesus exemplifies: goodness, justice, mercy. And to remember, lest we get above ourselves, that we need God’s help and Christ’s example in ordering our society.

We need to tread carefully, but to pray for our politicians, especially those who own the name of Christ, and to work through our democratic structures for a society where:

“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Is 11.9

Mary - Advent 4

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

Luke 1.28

What is the connection between macaroni and the Virgin Mary?

Give up? It’s Christmas Carols.

I’m sure over the next few days we will be listening to lots of carols like ‘In Dulci Jubilo – Let us our homage show’ and ‘A Hymn to the Virgin’- Of one that is so fair and bright,
Velut maris stella, which both date back to the 14^th century.

And like many other mediaeval carols, they are macaronic. That is, partly in English and partly in Latin.

The adjective ‘macaronic’, is used to describe any text which is a jumbled mixture of the vernacular – English or German or whatever - and Latin or Latinized words; or indeed words from any other languages.

In the secular world this mixture of languages was often used in burlesque or satire.

The word comes from the New Latin ‘macaronicus’, literally, resembling macaroni: presumably, suggesting lack of sophistication or simple rustic wisdom.

And this is one of the hallmarks of these mediaeval carols, which makes them so attractive, and at the same time rather annoying.

They are often full of homespun devotion to Our Lady and theological naivety.

The Latin is perhaps supposed to give them a bit more weight.

But rather like putting on a posh accent while still using appalling grammar, the overall effect is one of lovable, and even laughable, simplicity.

And it is perhaps hardly surprising then that these macaronic carols were often used to depict Our Lady and the birth of Jesus. For the event is both simply profound and yet profoundly simple.

So there is something deeply mysterious and theological about Mary the Theotokos, the God-bearer, who is the focus of the readings and prayers on this fourth Sunday in Advent.

Yet, at the same time, there is something slightly risqué and ‘common’ about a pregnant teenager who claims to be a virgin. There is something of the barrack-room joke about it. We’ve all heard them and laughed at them. It is the human way to laugh at great mystery.

What does this tell us about the Christian attitude to Mary and her place in our salvation and daily living?

It was music that first began to give me an inkling of devotion to Our Lady, back in my teens.

Not surprisingly, my good puritan Baptist church had no images of any kind in the building - not even a cross until the swinging 60s.

So Mary only featured in Christmas Carols. And even then some of the words had to be changed to protect theological sensibilities.

Remember that line in Adam lay y bounden: ‘Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been, ne had never Our Lady a-been heavene queen’.

Well you can’t have that! So it was changed to ‘Ne had never Christ’s glory on earth ever been seen.’ A not-so-subtle Christological shift there from Our Lady to Our Lord.

But despite all this, as a teenager exploring passion and fallings in love, it was hymns and carols that often inspired my devotion. I recognised that just as Jesus was the most lovable man; the man from God; the second Adam; the man who was God;

so Mary was the most loveable woman, the woman chosen by God, the second Eve; the perfect Mother of Our Lord; a friend, a comforter, who like any good mother, understands and cares.

Here again is an earthiness that the common man understands. Here in this straightforward peasant girl is a mystery almost too great for us to bear.

In today’s Gospel we read of the Visitation, when Mary visits her older cousin Elizabeth, already six months gone with John the Baptist, to talk about pregnancy and birth, and pain and Joseph and hopes and fears.

She had gone because of the Annunciation (depicted in Arthur Hacker's wonderful painting on the front cover of the service sheet – it looks better in the Tate https://mikefrost.net/the-most-tender-of-all-advent-paintings/ )

– when the angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she was to be the bearer of the Word made flesh – Jesus.

Whatever happened between Mary and God, between this Angel and Mary; it was such an exceptional happening that no other human being has ever experienced such, before or since.

And the words of these mediaeval, macaronic poems pile up epithets and allegories to draw us out in love of God, and love of this simple woman who became such a channel of grace. Deep, unfathomable mystery and simple, animal, mother-love, for Jesus - and for us.

So what is our response to this remarkable woman who is at the heart of the unfolding Christmas story?

It should surely be the same as hers – astonishment at God’s intervention, complete lack of comprehension – how could this happen? And yet complete trust that God is working his purposes out in our lives and in our world – ‘be it unto me according to thy word’.

Rainer Maria Rilke in his poem on The Annunciation from Das Marienleben, catches the cosmic significance of this pregnant young woman. He suggests that even the Angel Gabriel cannot believe the message he is to deliver to this young Israeli woman. He is astonished.

When the angel stepped in,

he did not take her by surprise,

It was as though a ray of sunlight or moonlight

had entered her room,

No, she did not even blink!

But when he bent close his youthful face

she looked into eyes that looked into hers,

their gaze so powerful that the world outside

was suddenly empty

and the multitudes' visions, their deeds

and their burdens

all were crowded into them: just she and he;

this girl, this angel, this spot.

And they were both astonished.

Then the angel sang his melody.

“Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” Luke 1.28

(Rainer Maria Rilke, from Das Marienleben

translated & adapted by Alice Van Buren and Russell Walden)

Advent Sunday

“May God so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” I Thess 3.13

My guess is that most of you haven’t been to see the big new apocalyptic disaster film 2012 which was released earlier this month. The posters have the strapline “We were Warned!”

But warned of what? Well warned that the world was more or less going to end in a Doomsday string of cataclysmic disasters in 2012. I won’t bore you with the details, but it could properly spoil the Olympics.

It reminds me of brother George who leads this Christian Sect who are sure that the second coming and the end of the world will be on December 31st at midnight. He and his followers gather on a local hilltop, ready to greet the returning Lord. Midnight comes and they look to the skies – nothing happens. Quarter past midnight – still nothing. 1am – still nothing, even if the Lord were running on European time!

Br George’s followers gradually begin to go back down the hill until only his right hand man is left. At 2am, even he leaves – and as he passes George, he pats him on the shoulder and says “never mind George. It’s not the end of the world.”

It’s Advent Sunday again, the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year: no flowers, no Gloria, we’re wearing sober blue and the choir are singing a lot of unaccompanied plainchant.

And once again we have all these readings about the end of the world, the day of judgement, the parousia – meaning the second coming of Christ, and the apocalypse – the revelation of Christ.

So what is it all about? Men with sandwich boards in Leicester Square proclaiming ‘The End is Nigh’? Will the universe be brought to an abrupt and cataclysmic close?

The Gospel reading from Luke is typical of much apocalyptic writing of the first century. But in Jesus’ words there is more hope than usual, with a purposeful rather than pessimistic view of history.

And there is exhortation included, albeit with an uneasy tension that we still live with: “the end is not yet – don’t believe the prophets of doom” and “these are the end-time signs – like a good boy scout – be prepared!”

I ventured into the foothills of the Atlas mountains last month when I was in Marrakech. As we drove towards them (stopping off at so many of the taxi driver’s cousins who wanted to do us special deals on pots and carpets and Berber coffee tables) we realised that although we could discern the individual peaks we were not always sure which peak was in the foreground and which peak was further off in the background.

The twin peaks of this prophecy of Jesus appear to be the relatively imminent destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and the more distant close of the age, the Parousia which we still await, his return to earth.

Now which descriptions belong to which event is not at all easy to sort out. Let’s briefly look at that first peak – the destruction of Jerusalem.

And to do that we have to go back to 168BC when Antiochus Epiphanes was King of Syria.

He desecrated the glorious Temple in Jerusalem, setting up an altar to Zeus on the burnt offering altar and sacrificing pigs. It was still raw in the memories of the Jews.

So Jesus uses the apocalyptic imagery that calls up the common memory of this horrendous event before he looks forward to an even worse event – the complete destruction of the Temple; and perhaps even further forward to the then unthought of terrors of the holocaust in the 20th century.

And in such days of suffering and confusion, our Lord warns us of false christs and prophets. False christs never seem too difficult to spot – I have had a number of people tell me over the years that they are Jesus Christ – and I have never felt the need to get a second opinion from another priest about them.

But false prophets are altogether harder to identify. Perhaps there is something in the way that they parade their miracles and signs and wonders. It is significant that Jesus never ‘did tricks’ or performed miracles on demand.

The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, wisely left out of the New Testament canon, has Jesus making clay pigeons and throwing them in the air where they spring into life. Jesus never uses signs and wonders to compel faith or confound sceptics. They spring from compassion for the sick and needy and are often accompanied by a plea to “tell no one”.

It contrasts starkly with some of the tele-evangelists and miracle workers who are still busy around the Christian world.

But let’s move on to the verses we read today.

They are full of familiar Old Testament imagery but also use Jesus’ favourite teaching technique - the parable.

The fig tree is very common in Palestine where most other trees are evergreen. So it is one of the clearest indicators of the passing seasons. Perhaps too Luke is hearkening back to Christ's cursing of the fig tree in an earlier chapter (Luke 11:12-20) which was a pronouncement of judgement on the Temple and religious establishment.

In contrast, the fig tree of this parable is a sign of summer and hope.

In testing and depressing days it’s hard to hold on to hope. (I read on a staff notice board in school: "To make savings during government cut-backs, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off...")

So Jesus reminds them and us that his words are more certain than the seasons and will endure longer than the physical universe: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. (v.33)

There are still groups of Christians around the world obsessed with trying to predict the date and mechanical niceties of the Second Coming.

Jesus puts an end to all such 'almanac discipleship' by asserting that he, the Son, does not know the timetable, and that if he doesn't know, then no one can know.

The pre-occupation of Christians should be with how to conduct themselves in these end times - between Christ's first coming and his Second Coming – this is the Advent theme.

Now of course some of us have become so blasé about all this that we don’t really believe the words we will say in the Nicene creed in a moment: “And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.”

If we are theologically minded we may have bought into some form of ‘realised eschatology’ – often attributed to Albert Schweitzer and CH Dodd earlier in the 20th century – the idea that everything has already happened in the first coming of Christ. There’s nothing else to wait for.

But more commonly, we just can’t imagine an ‘end of the world’, and hope it doesn’t come before our holidays!

Scientifically, the world will certainly end, and the earth will collapse into the sun – although not while there is a labour government. And of course, through the good services of technology, we are perfectly capable of destroying all life on the planet ourselves. It’s the stuff all these apocalyptic films and novels are made of.

But this is to miss the point of our Lord’s teaching.

On the ‘how’ or the ‘when’ this parousia will happen, we must remain agnostic. We just don’t know.

Rather it means there should be a sense of 'edge' in our Christian living; a knowledge that we may not have all the time in the world, that we should ‘carpe diem’ – seize the day. We should plan for our spiritual future, by investing spiritually in the present.

Advent is about preparation for the joy of Christmas, and the church and indeed most religions have learnt that the best preparation for a feast is a bit of self-denial and spiritual self-examination.

So spend a little more time on your spiritual disciplines in the next month, in between the office parties and soirees, and see how much more you enjoy Christmas when it comes.

“May God so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” I Thess 3.13

Intervention - Advent Sunday

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” Isaiah 61.1

Well it’s been another week of depressing and frightening events. And of course the terrible deaths of the 200 in Mumbai have eclipsed the news of violence in the Congo and Zimbabwe and Orissa and Thailand and Iraq and Nigeria and Somalia and so the list goes on.

And like the prophet Isaiah, and men and women of faith throughout the centuries, we cry: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

Why doesn’t God do something!

Christians have moved in two opposite directions in trying to answer the question: why doesn’t God do something.

At one extreme there is a theology which sees God as the Grand Designer who created the universe like some huge clockwork mechanism, wound it up, and then retired to see how the next few billion years unfolded.

William Paley popularised this in the 18th century in his book on Natural Theology. If you had never seen a watch, he argued, and found one, you would assume that it had both an intelligent designer and a purpose.

The universe is much more complex than a watch and it too, he argued, must therefore have a designer and purpose.

Richard Dawkins partially refuted this argument in his early book The Blind Watchmaker.

But a by-product of this whole line of reasoning that goes back to the Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, and the Deists among the 17th century Anglicans, is the notion that God is incapable of intervening in his creation. That would somehow be breaking his own rules.

Then there is the other extreme view about God’s role in human affairs. God is forever tinkering with the mechanism – a little fine tuning here, a replacement cog there, the occasional rethink about how the whole thing is going – perhaps I don’t want a clock, maybe I want a mechanical jack-in-the-box!

The trouble with both these extreme views is that they do not take into account either the complexity of God, or the complexity of the universe.

Another model more consonant with Scripture and our experience of life, the universe and everything, is the relational model.

God is bound up with the universe he created in a similar way to how we are bound up in our network of family and friends.

Genesis paints the picture of God in relationship with his human beings, made in his image, walking in the garden with them in the cool of the day.

And then, things go wrong. And relationships between the humans, and their relationship to the Creator, become far more complex.

But then so does God’s relationship with the whole universe become more complex.

We also know now that although the cosmos is in many respects like some vast mechanism, it nevertheless has some bewildering characteristics.

Quantum mechanics means it is full of strangeness, uncertainty and unpredictability.

Well where does all this leave us? It leaves us with the joys and pains of living in relationship.

In our prayers, we of course express to God our frustration that he doesn’t act, that he doesn’t rend the heavens and come down. We tell him what we want to happen in the world. We bring our sorrows and anger and hopes and fears.

And do we expect him to turn up in Zimbabwe and give that Mr Mugabe a talking to? (A lightening bolt would do Lord!) No! Of course not.

Or do we expect those cancer cells to suddenly disappear from our loved one’s body? Sadly, no.

But we know that the world is a much stranger place than we can imagine, and that wars cease, dictators are deposed, and that cancer sometimes does go away.

And so we talk to God, not to try and persuade him to do something, but to express our dependency on him to make some sense of it all; and of course, because we wish he would do something!

The Scripture themes in advent are generally dark and bleak, an opportunity to take a long hard look at life red in tooth and claw, but always against the background that ‘Christmas is coming’. God will tear open the heavens and come down.

He will be born among us, the strangest creature in all the universe. ‘God contracted to a span, inexplicably made man’.

And somehow, this is enough to break through the sadness that all these injustices bring to our life. We know that God knows, and that he meets us both as God and as one of us; he meets us here in the mystery of the mass, and in one another.

There’s a poem by Sheena Pugh which expresses this advent hope of waiting and watching through all the changing scenes of life. It’s called Sometimes.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Sheena Pugh (b.1950)

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” Isaiah 61.1

Christmas Fact & Faith, Advent 4

Christmas Fact & Faith

Advent 4: Isaiah 7.10-16; Romans 1.1-7; Matt 1.18-25

“I am with you always, to the end of the age”. (Matt 28.20)

How do we know this boy was born on Christmas Day? Well, here, I have my birth certificate! I was born on 25th December 1949 to Stanley George Mercer and Betty Mercer (nee Steele), at 160 Old Shoreham Road.

So how do we know that the man who bought enlightenment to the world was born on Christmas Day? Well, it’s there in the church registers: Isaac Newton was born on 25th December 1642.

As Alexander Pope wrote: "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, 'Let Newton be!' and there was light."

Well I could go on listing Christmas babies, but one infant that would certainly not appear is Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury said recently, the only thing we can be sure of from the Bible is that Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. No other historical facts are clear.

Luke’s Gospel gives a number of clues which help to guess at Jesus’ birthday. I won’t bore you with the details, but the best and commonest guess is around mid September in 3BC. Or it could have been May, which would allow you to sing:

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
Remember, Christ, our Saviour, was born sometime in May.

The early church was never really concerned with the historical details of Christ’s birth. As we saw in today’s Epistle, Paul was convinced of the historical Jesus, who was born of Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and rose again for us.

Christians were Easter people for three hundred and fifty years before they first had a Midnight Mass to celebrate the nativity of our Lord, on a date which was chosen to coincide with a number of midwinter festivals.

The Gospel writers were historical, but they were always more concerned with the theology of Jesus, than with setting out some short biographical sketch.

So Isaiah’s prophecy about ‘a young woman’ in today’s OT reading, is slightly re-interpreted by Matthew as he translates Isaiah’s Hebrew into ‘the Virgin’. The predominant tradition in the Early Church, made explicit by Luke’s Gospel, was that Mary was a virgin.

There was a certain theological symmetry in this. If Jesus was truly God and truly man, then it made sense that he would be born of a woman, but conceived by the Holy Spirit. (It wouldn’t work the other way round of course!)

And then Jesus’ human lineage is important, as he must be born of King David’s line if he is to fulfil prophecy.

Curiously, it is Joseph who is shown earlier in Matthew’s first chapter to be a direct descendant of King David.

So the connection is through a foster father - there is no direct blood line through Mary (unless you understand Luke 3 as giving a genealogy of Mary rather than Joseph - as a few do).

Here’s another interesting little Gospel detail, that on the three occasions an angel appeared to Joseph, it was always in a dream. Mary met them face-to-face.

It is to Joseph’s eternal credit, that he believed what the angel said in his dream. Most men would require the real thing: a ten foot angel, wings and all, writing in flame on a wall, before they believed that their virgin fiancée was pregnant with a divine child.

Matthew doesn’t labour the point, (if you’ll pardon the pun) because he is again making a theological statement about the nature of this Son of God: Joseph is to name him Jesus, Saviour; and others will recognise him as Emmanuel, God with us.

But Matthew, like all the Gospel writers, wants to take us deeper than history or even theology.

I’m sure you remember that little vignette from Winnie the Pooh?

“Pooh”, said Piglet taking his paw.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just checking that you were there…”
(The House at Pooh Corner)

Humans, like piglets, are social animals. We need the sense that someone is ‘there’. We are, for all of our lives, in some way dependent on others.

God himself is a social being: Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the mystical, eternal intimacy of the Trinity. And through the incarnation, he draws us into that divine circle of love.

For Mary has conceived and born a son, and his name is Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.

He is with us because he shared our joys and sorrows and so he can empathise with us in all that we go through. He is not distant and unmoved, but he is with us in all the richness and vagaries of our lives.

Then he has taught us that all humans are made in his image, and are to be loved and cared for. So all our kinships and friendships are part of God’s being 'with' us.

We cannot hug God, but we can hold the hand of a friend, to check that they are there. And in our turn we can sit with friends and strangers, and by our physical presence assure them that God is with them.

But companions leave us and Christmas is always a reminder, especially as we get older, of the empty seats around the table.

And this is why I chose my text from the end of Matthew’s gospel.

The disciples are filled with foreboding as they realise that Christ is leaving them, from the manger to the skies. So the end of the Gospel re-echoes the beginning: he reassures them in his words of parting: “I am with you always, to the end of the age”. (Matt 28.20)

Here is an even deeper spiritual mystery. For it has been the experience of Christians through the ages, that by God’s Holy Spirit, they sense the loving presence of God; Emmanuel; he’s there, with us.

It’s of course very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that. Loving our partners and friends is very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that.

So the Christmas Gospels are not concerned to answer all the factual questions we have about dates and stars and kings and stables.

And they are not even primarily concerned to set forth sound incarnational theology.

But in the words of John’s Gospel “ these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20.31)

In the end, it is in believing that we discover the truth of the incarnation, and come to grasp the fullness of life in the fullness of Christ.

Another Christmas baby, 300 years ago on 18th December 1707, was Charles Wesley. Let me finish by reading you one of his short hymns, ‘Celebrate Immanuel’s name’ which brings together the theology of today’s Gospel, with the warm experience of God’s love and presence in our lives.

Celebrate Immanuel's Name, the Prince of life and peace.
God with us, our lips proclaim, our faithful hearts confess.
God is in our flesh revealed; Heav'n and earth in Jesus join.
Mortal with Immortal filled, and human with Divine.

Fullness of the Deity in Jesus' body dwells,
Dwells in all His saints and me when God His Son reveals.
Father, manifest Thy Son; breathe the true incarnate Word.
In our inmost souls make known the presence of the Lord.

Let the Spirit of our Head through every member flow;
By our Lord inhabited, we then Immanuel know.
Then He doth His Name express; God in us we truly prove,
Find with all the life of grace and all the power of love.

Where is your Security? (2nd before Advent)

Security, 2nd before Advent

Malachi 4.1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.5-19
Hymn “All my hope” (reproduced at end of sermon).

“But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Malachi 4.2

George was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, and one Sunday morning he said to his priest: "Tell me, Father, are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I really have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me."

Next Sunday after the service George made a beeline for the priest. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."

"That's tremendous!" exclaimed the golfer. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Today’s readings as we approach advent, are a mixture of good news and bad news.

But a common thread running through them is: ‘where do you place your confidence?’

Now we all know the correct answer is ‘God’ – the opening line of the opening hymn stated that: “All my hope on God is founded…”

But of course the right answer is not always the honest one.

Like the young boy who was asked by his particularly evangelical Sunday School teacher: “What’s red and has a bushy tail and eats acorns?” “Please miss, I know the answer must be ‘Jesus’, but it sounds like a squirrel to me!”

If we are honest, we know that our confidence, our sense of security, our hope, is bound up in a complex network of feelings and emotions – and yes, faith.

The Scriptures recognise that, but still warn us about false confidence and misplaced hope.

Today’s Gospel starts with the disciples marvelling at the magnificent edifice which was the rebuilt, Second Temple; renovated by Herod before the birth of Christ and still being decorated and finished (it was completed in 63AD.) Its foundations stretched back a 1000 years. Here was a religious centre that was surely founded by God himself!

But Jesus warns that this is a false confidence. By 70AD, the Temple would be destroyed and never rebuilt.

In the words of the opening hymn again: “what with care and toil he buildeth, tower and temple fall to dust.”

However attached we become to a particular building, or to a particular style of worship, or even to the group of worshippers who meet there week by week; it is a transitory thing.

We should be grateful for this holy place, our liturgy, our music and our fellowship, but never place the weight of our spiritual confidence in them. That is idolatry and we a doomed to disappointment.

Jesus also warns us in this passage about putting too much confidence in human relationships: “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends…”

Now this is not to suggest that we should hold ourselves aloof from any sort of trusting relationships – indeed our Lord teaches us the opposite. But there can be a dependency on others that is nearer to an addiction than a loving, mutually supportive relationship.

Betrayal is always destructive, but if the relationship is basically healthy, either amends can be made, or the break does not leave one or the other party completely debilitated.

And sadly, death betrays us all in our relationships. It was of course in the aftermath of the death of Herbert Howell’s son, Michael, Mick, in 1935, that he wrote the tune (named Michael) to those words of the opening hymn.

They meant a great deal to him at the time, although by the end of his life in 1983, 48 years after Michael had died, aged 9, of polio, he confided in his daughter, Ursula: 'I don't believe there's anything'. I think his music tells us another story, but that’s another sermon.

The prophet Malachi railed against the oldest and commonest misplaced confidence: a confidence in ‘self’ that amounts to arrogance and pride. “The arrogant will be turned to stubble”, he bellows.

Again, this is not to discourage proper self-confidence; appropriate self-esteem. It was our Lord who said that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves – it is right to have a healthy view of ourselves.

But when we begin to think that we are invincible; that we are self-made men and women; that we have a right to enjoy the best things in life because of who we are, or what we do, or how much money we have – then our Lord says to us: “You fool!”

And where does today’s epistle fit in? The Apostle Paul has it in for those who won’t work. But in context, we see that they won’t work, because they are living in a spiritual cloud cuckoo land.

They are so convinced that Jesus is about to return in the next few months, to bring the universe to a climactic end, that they don’t bother to work.

They busy themselves with church and spiritual affairs while sponging off the less spiritual who still go in to the office every morning.

Strangely, their false confidence is in Christianity itself. Or at least, they are so confident of their own interpretation of Christianity, that they have no time for others who suggest they might have misunderstood.

So neither can our confidence be completely in a particular brand of Christian faith alone, for as yet we see through a glass darkly.

While all these other things then, in their proper place, help to make us feel secure and to give us hope, our ultimate confidence can only be in God himself, and even then we have to acknowledge our inability to comprehend him fully.

So that profound opening hymn has it right again:

God unknown,
he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

It is with this humble, searching faith that we come to God, and in so doing, especially as we come to this Table, we find that his love embraces us and re-assures us of the presence of Christ in our lives:

Christ doth call
one and all:
ye who follow shall not fall.

This was the purpose of Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel which ends with our Lord’s words: “ By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

And it is the hope infusing Malachi’s prophecy, to reassure those who revere and trust in God. The Light of Christ will uncover what is now unknown and will bring a sense of healing and wholeness which is beyond mere human understanding.

Our proper confidence is in God alone, as revealed in Jesus Christ, foretold by the prophets:

“… for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Malachi 4.2

All my hope on God is founded;
he doth still my trust renew,
me through change and chance he guideth,
only good and only true.
God unknown,
he alone
calls my heart to be his own.

Pride of man and earthly glory,
sword and crown betray his trust;
what with care and toil he buildeth,
tower and temple fall to dust.
But God's power,
hour by hour,
is my temple and my tower.

God's great goodness aye endureth,
deep his wisdom, passing thought:
splendor, light and life attend him,
beauty springeth out of naught.
Evermore
from his store
newborn worlds rise and adore.

Daily doth the almighty Giver
bounteous gifts on us bestow;
his desire our soul delighteth,
pleasure leads us where we go.
Love doth stand
at his hand;
joy doth wait on his command.

Still from man to God eternal
sacrifice of praise be done,
high above all praises praising
for the gift of Christ, his Son.
Christ doth call
one and all:
ye who follow shall not fall.

Words: Robert Bridges (1844-1930); based on the German of Joachim Neander (1650-1680)
Music: Michael by Herbert Howells

Heaven, Advent 3

Advent - heaven

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Phil 3.20

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest says, "Then leave this pub right now!"
He approaches a second man. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father."
"Then leave this den of Satan," says the priest.
He walks up to O'Toole. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"No thank you very much Father.”
The priest looks him right in the eye, and says, "You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
"Oh, when I die? Yes, Father! I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Most of us like the concept of heaven. We’re just not keen to leave right now.

In popular culture heaven is full of clouds, harps and halos; angels peeling grapes, chubby little cherubim. Each age has represented Heaven as the best of their own geography, cuisine and music, although they have often done so with a little tongue in cheek.

Here’s Alan Bennett, presumably calling on childhood holiday memories, in Habeas Corpus:

My life I squandered waiting,
Then let my chance go by.
One day we’ll meet in Heaven.
That Matlock in the sky.”

The Koran describes heaven beautifully, albeit in very earthy terms which would comfort many a priest on a Sunday morning after one of those Saturday evenings: “It is the garden in which there are rivers of water, flowing springs, branching vines with all kinds of fruits. There the saints shall recline… no headache shall they feel there from wine, nor shall their wits be dimmed. They shall be served by large-eyed damsels of modest glance.”

I had the misfortune to be in Oxford Street yesterday. There you had all the traditional advent themes in tableaux: heaven, hell, judgement and death.

And today we look to the promise of heaven: those unspeakable joys which God has prepared for those that unfeignedly love him.

Is the concept of heaven just whistling in the dark, keeping ourselves cheerful in the fearsome face of death? This is what bare-fact atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Ludovic Kennedy would have us believe.

No, death itself points any reasonable person to the continuity of personhood in the life to come. The natural inclination of all humankind has been to suppose that there is yet more.
Who has not lost a friend, a family member - perhaps someone vibrant with life, loving and much loved; or perhaps at the end, weak and frail. And is not the sense that they are still ‘here’ overwhelming and almost tangible at times?

This is how that great rationalist CS Lewis felt about the death of his friend Charles Williams:

“No event has so corroborated my belief in the next world as Williams did simply in dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death which changed.”

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this or that - which says, that because there is no scientific evidence for the life to come, then there is none.

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ which says, that because there are psychological reasons why we should fool ourselves into believing in the life to come, then there is none.

Obviously we no longer believe that heaven is in any sense ‘up there’. We have moved beyond the Ancient Near Eastern inverted colander that separates the waters above from the waters below. And we no longer adhere to the Greek view of layered heavens - God being beyond the seventh heaven.

Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, puts into words a valuable and common insight of Christian thinkers:

“A proper Christian understanding of heaven is not as a place remote from the present world, but rather as a dimension, normally kept secret, of present reality… ‘Heaven’ is God’s dimension of present reality.”

CS Lewis again hints at this in his science fiction novels. The hero, Ransom, questions an angel who appears to be shimmering as he stands before him. The angel explains that in heaven, he is usually still, but he has to perform amazing contortions to appear stationary in front of a human.

For we are on a spinning planet in a spinning solar system, within a whirling Milky Way, within an exploding group of galaxies, within a rapidly expanding universe. As we are sitting in church this morning, we are in fact spinning around at dizzying speeds of thousands of miles per second.

Religions are still divided in what they believe to be the nature of life after death.

Re-incarnation has a long and honourable history both among Hindus and Buddhists. And recently in the West it has become fashionable to remember a past life in which you were a consort to the Pharaoh or a Lady in Waiting to Elizabeth I. Less frequently, I find, do people remember their life as a goose or as a wretched medieval serf.

There is no place for reincarnation within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, for it is neither in the Scriptures, nor does it sit easily with the view that every person is of infinite value to God; loved by Christ; the temple of the Holy Spirit.

More popular in recent years is the idea that we will be absorbed into nothingness. This again has come from the East. Here is the Hindu Upanishad: “ My friend, welcome the joy of impersonal nothingness - nothing, this is the end, the supreme goal.”

For the Buddhist, Nirvana is a similar concept. And of course it has had its adherents within the Christian church.

This is the great Methodist preacher and writer Leslie Weatherhead:
“Would it really matter if I were lost like a drop of water in the ocean, if I could be one shining particle in some glorious wave that broke in utter splendour and in perfect beauty on the shores of an eternal sea?”

Well yes, Lesley, it really would matter.

Historic Christianity has used art and music to paint a picture which emphasises the relational aspects of the world to come: a place of completion, but not dull stasis.

Heaven is the place where the object of our worship can be viewed with unveiled face. Where we will gaze on the Lamb that was slain, who yet lives. Where we will no longer peer anxiously through a glass darkly, but see and know, even as we are seen and known.

Where our thirst for knowledge will be satisfied by the eternal wisdom of God.

We will be the people we have always really wanted to be. We will be free at last from the restlessness that drives us and the whole human race towards great beauty and ingenuity, and towards madness and self-destruction.

And we will be with the saints, and the angels, and with those whom we have loved in this life, now made perfect in Christ. Heaven is a social concourse, for there can be no being, no personality in isolation from others.

But even when we have painted our pictures, Scripture reminds us that, ‘no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived’ what God has in store for those who love him.

And here in the bread and the wine, at this altar where the veil is thin, the dimensions of heaven break through into our own dimensions.

The mystical Body of Christ, lifted towards heaven, is viewed by another innumerable company, on another shore, and we are knit together with the saints.

And we are reminded again that

“…our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Phil 3.20

Advent Apocalypse

Advent Apocalypse

“…you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor 1.7

So Brother George leads this Christian Sect who are sure that the second coming and the end of the world will be on December 31st at midnight. He and his followers gather on a local hilltop, ready to greet the returning Lord. Midnight comes and they look to the skies – nothing happens. Quarter past midnight – still nothing. 1am – still nothing. Br George’s followers gradually begin to go back down the hill until only his right hand man is left. At 2am, even he leaves – and as he passes George, he pats him on the shoulder and says “never mind George. It’s not the end of the world.”

It’s Advent Sunday again, the beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, and once again we have all these readings about the end of the world, the day of judgement, the parousia – meaning the second coming of Christ, the apocalypse – the revelation of Christ.

And what is it all about? Men with sandwich boards in Leicester Square proclaiming ‘The End is Nigh’? Will the universe be brought to an abrupt and cataclysmic close?

Reading through Mark’s gospel, the chapter from which today’s Gospel is taken, comes like a bolt out of the blue. Everything has been fairly straightforward in this shortest, probably earliest and almost tract-like gospel – the gospel we shall follow through in the Sunday readings for this next year.

Then we hit an apparently impenetrable prophecy full of foreboding, apprehension and warning.

It is sometimes called the Little Apocalypse (the word means ‘revelation’) and is reminiscent of the sort of language and imagery found in parts of Daniel (quoted in vv. 14, 19, 26) or in the book of Revelation. There are many shared characteristics of apocalyptic writing, although these words of Jesus, probably collected together by Mark from a number of his sayings over the years, also show some distinctive differences.

There is more hope than usual, with a purposeful rather than pessimistic view of history. And there is exhortation included, albeit with an uneasy tension that we still live with: “the end is not yet - do nothing” and “these are the end-time signs - act and don’t be caught off guard.”

As you stand and look at very distant mountains, you can discern the peaks but are not always sure which peak is in the foreground and which peak is further off in the background. The twin peaks of this prophecy appear to be the relatively imminent destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD (I think Mark was writing some years before this event) and the more distant close of the age, the Parousia which we still await.

Now which descriptions belong to which event is not at all easy to sort out. Before we look at the verses in today’s Gospel, let’s just spend a moment on that first peak – the destruction of Jerusalem.

In 168BC Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, setting up an altar to Zeus on the burnt offering altar and sacrificing pigs. This is often seen as the fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the Abomination of Desolation (Daniel 12:11) Luke’s version (21:20) mentions more explicitly the King’s armies that surrounded the city.

Jesus uses the same language here (v.14) and calls up the common memory of this horrendous event before he looks forward to an even worse destruction of the Temple, and perhaps even further forward to the then unknown terrors of the 20th century holocaust.

And in such days of suffering and confusion, our Lord warns us of false christs and prophets. False Christ’s never seem too difficult to spot – I have had a number of people tell me over the years that they are Jesus Christ – and I have never felt the need to take advice on their claims.

But false prophets are altogether harder to identify. Perhaps there is something in the way that they parade their miracles and signs and wonders. It is significant that Jesus never ‘did tricks’ or performed miracles on demand.

The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, wisely left out of the New Testament canon, has Jesus, as a boy, making clay pigeons and throwing them in the air where they spring into life. Jesus never uses signs and wonders to compel faith or confound sceptics. They spring from compassion for the sick and needy and are often accompanied by a plea to “tell no one”.

It contrasts starkly with some of the tele-evangelists and miracle workers who are still busy around the Christian world.

But let’s move on to the verses we read today.

They are full of familiar Old Testament imagery, where Jesus uses phrases from Isaiah (13:10; 34:4), moving on now from the nearer events of the destruction of the Temple, to describe the Parousia.

Jesus takes up Daniel's vision of the Son of Man (Daniel 7:13,14) coming in glory from the Ancient of Days with authority over all peoples. And the gloom is touched with the hope of glory (vv.26, 27) for the disciples of Christ in every age.

The fig tree is very common in Palestine where most other trees are evergreen. So it is one of the clearest indicators of the passing seasons. Perhaps too Mark is hearkening back to Christ's cursing of the fig tree (11:12-20) with his pronouncement of judgement on the Temple and religious establishment.

In contrast, the fig tree of this parable is a sign of summer and hope. In testing and depressing days it’s hard to hold on to hope. (I read on a staff notice board in school: "To make savings during government cut-backs, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off...")

So Jesus reminds them and us that his words are more certain than the seasons and will endure longer than the physical universe.

There are still groups of Christians around the world obsessed with trying to predict the date and mechanical niceties of the Second Coming.

Jesus puts an end to all such 'almanac discipleship' by asserting that he, the Son, does not know the timetable, and that if he doesn't know, then no one can know. The pre-occupation of Christians should be with how to conduct themselves in these end times - between Christ's first coming and his Second Coming – this is the Advent theme.

But then some of us have become so blasé about all this that we don’t really believe the words we will say in the Nicene creed in a moment: “And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.”

If we are theologically minded we may have bought into some form of ‘realised eschatology’ – often attributed to Albert Schweitzer and CH Dodd – the idea that everything has already happened in the first coming of Christ. There’s nothing else to wait for.

But more commonly, we just can’t imagine an ‘end of the world’, and hope it doesn’t come before our holidays!

Scientifically, the world will certainly end, and the earth will collapse into the sun – although not while there is a labour government. And of course, through the good services of technology, we are perfectly capable of destroying all life on the planet ourselves. It’s the stuff apocalyptic films and novels are made of.

But this is to miss the point of our Lord’s teaching.

On the ‘how’ or the ‘when’ this parousia will happen, we must remain agnostic.

Rather it means there should be a sense of 'edge' in our Christian living; a knowledge that we may not have all the time in the world, that we should ‘carpe diem’ – seize the day. That we should use the spiritual gifts that we have, and following on from last Sunday’s theme, the resources that we have, now while we still have time. We should plan for our spiritual future, by investing spiritually in the present.

Remember that Jesus also used the imagery of watching and waiting for the bridegroom - a much more positive metaphor. It’s like the excitement we feel in the days leading up to the visit of a long-absent and dear friend. Our waking moments are tinged with the inner flutter of anticipation of a joyful reunion.

We can’t permanently live in a state of anticipation – but this Advent season is a reminder that the re-union with our dear friend will happen, sooner or later!

“…you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Living in Between

Living in Between

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope." Romans 15.13

As a young boy growing up in the 1950s, Christmas night was always one of the most tantalising and frustrating. It was so near to Christmas day and yet not Christmas Day. The anticipation was amplified by the fact that Christmas Day is my birthday as well.

And although the presents were only going to be a torch and a dinky toy and a Rupert Annual – all labelled ‘for birthday and Christmas’ – the wait was nearly unbearable,

Throughout those dark December Advent days, I felt like the children in CS Lewis’s Narnia, where it was always winter but never Christmas. I would fall asleep on Christmas night, exhausted by hope.

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. We live always in hope. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and more importantly, about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then, between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the birth of the church.

And some years after Pentecost, Paul is teaching that the Church is still 'in between'. The Saviour who had come, would come again.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday – an Advent, waiting-in-hope Sunday. We have closed the curtain on the annual drama of the liturgical year, and start again, preparing, awaiting, the long-expected Jesus.

Traditionally in Advent, we consider the last things: heaven, hell, judgement and the return of Christ. It is heavy stuff. But it is part of a bigger theological picture.

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years.

But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, from the point of view of the final return of Christ, bringing in the kingdom described in Isaiah’s prophecy this morning; this work of God has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes this clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this second Sunday in Advent, in the 2004th Year of Our Lord, we are poised between that first coming of Christ nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

The early Christians expected Christ’s return before their own deaths – an issue which Paul addresses in his letter to the Thessalonians. Most modern Christians only vaguely comprehend or expect the second coming of Christ – we say it in the creed each week, but have no idea how it might actually happen.

Well, not to worry. We will see how events unfold, either while we are here on earth as part of the church militant, or in heaven as part of the church triumphant.

But before that time, retroactively if you like, the coming kingdom of God, is the ideal which must empower our Christian living, ‘in between’. We struggle to fulfil the vision of Isaiah when, ‘They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’

This is what we mean every time we pray, as we will this morning: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. For they would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword. They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church.

These ‘in-between times’ have always been as potent as the special events that sandwich them. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time.

When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old, the years shoot by, and we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

But at whatever stage we are in our life’s journey, a consistent theme throughout Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly."

And a consistent theme in the teaching of the Apostles, is that we must live in love-driven hope. So in the verse following our text today, Paul prays that God, the giver of hope, will grant us a spirit of unity as we follow Christ.

Peter says when he deals with this subject in his epistle, that living this way will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

So John the Baptist in today’s Gospel calls us to repent of sin, to turn from its self-centred destructive force, and to see that the kingdom of heaven is near – although it is not yet here, in between, we must live as citizens of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of love. The judgement theme of Advent, is a judgement of love. This is the touchstone of our Christian living.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in the in between time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant dialogue of prayer with God and engagement with his Word and with each other. As Paul says in today’s epistle, ‘that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.’

So it is the past and the future, the coming of Christ, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint description of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." (Heinemann 1989 (1922))

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on his coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Christian faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope."