So today is Advent Sunday.
It's the first Sunday in the Church's
Year, and, of course, the first in the four-week cycle that brings us
up to Christmas.
Christmas is definitely coming –
if you
go by what the supermarkets do, it's been going on since
September!
It seems strange then, doesn't it, that the
readings for this Sunday are about as un-Christmassy as you can
get!
This from the Gospel we've just heard:
“There
will be strange things happening to the sun, the moon, and the stars.
On earth whole countries will be in despair,
afraid of the roar
of the sea and the raging tides.
People will faint from fear as
they wait for what is coming over the whole earth, for the powers in
space will be driven from their courses.
Then the Son of Man
will appear, coming in a cloud with great power and glory.
When
these things begin to happen, stand up and raise your heads, because
your salvation is near.”
It's all about the end of the
world!
The time when Jesus will come again in glory to judge the
living and the dead, as we say in the Creed.
Now, there are
frequently scares that the end of the world is about to happen –
some
cult or other claims to have deciphered an ancient text that tells us
that it might occur on any given date –
Some years ago, people
thought a Mayan calendar was predicting the end of the world, which
would have been a serious waste of all the Christmas presents we had
been buying and making that year!
Of course, it didn’t
happen!
And it was only one of a very long line of
end-of-the-world stories which people have believed.
Sometimes
they have even gone as far as to sell up all their possessions and to
gather on a mountain-top,
and at least two groups committed
mass suicide to make it easier for them to be found, or something.
I
don't know exactly what....
And because some Christians believe
that when it happens,
they will be snatched away with no notice
whatsoever, leaving their supper to burn in the oven, or their car to
crash in the middle of the motorway, some people set up, half as a
joke but also have serious, a register of pets, so that if it
happened, non-believers, who would be, they thought, left behind,
will look after your pets for you! I don’t think the site is still
active, but it was for a couple of years, back in the day.
But
the point is, Jesus said we don't know when it's going to
happen.
Nobody knows.
He didn't know.
He assumed, I
think, that it would be fairly soon after his death –
did
anybody expect the Church to go on for another two thousand years
after that?
Certainly his first followers expected His return
any minute now.
What is clear from the Bible –
and
from our own knowledge, too –
is that this world isn't
designed to last forever;
it's not meant to be permanent.
Just
ask the dinosaurs!
We don't know how it will end.
When I
was a girl it was assumed it would end in the flames of a nuclear
holocaust;
that particular fear has lessened in 1989,
but
has returned a bit with Russia making ominous noises.
These days
we also think in terms of runaway global warming,
or perhaps a
global pandemic far worse than what we endured a couple of years
ago,
or a major asteroid strike.
But what is clear is that
one day humanity will cease to exist on this planet.
We don't
know how or when,
but we do know that God is in charge and will
cope when it happens.
Christmas is coming.
Jesus
said, of his coming again,
“Look at the fig tree and all the
trees.
When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and
know that summer is near.
Even so, when you see these things
happening,
you know that the kingdom of God is near.
Truly
I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all
these things have happened.
Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will never pass away.”
No, we are
still reading Jesus' words today.
And just as we know summer is
coming when the days get longer and the leaves start to shoot, so we
know that Christmas is near when the shops start selling Christmas
stuff!
But Jesus goes on to give a warning:
“Be careful,
or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and
the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a
trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the
whole earth.
Be always on the watch, and pray that you
may be able to escape all that is about to happen,
and that you
may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
Certainly
we appear to celebrate Christmas with carousing and drunkenness, more
often than not.
And who isn't weighed down with thoughts of all
the preparation for the big day that is going to be
necessary?
Whatever am I going to give this person, or that
person?
So-and-so wants to know what I should like –
what
should I like?
Have I got all the turkey-pudding-mince
pies-Christmas Cake-Brussels Sprouts and so on organised?
Who
have I not sent a card to, and won't they be offended?
You know
the scenario.
But what is Christmas really about?
In
much of the country it's been reduced to an extravaganza of food and
booze and presents.
And the Christians, like us, chunter and
mutter about
“Putting Christ back in Christmas!”, as if He
was not there anyway.
But even we tend to reduce Christmas to a
baby in a manger.
We render it all pretty-pretty,
with
cattle and donkeys surrounding the Holy Family,
shepherds and
kings, and so on.
Which is fine when you're two years old, but
for us adults?
We forget the less-convenient bits of it –
the
fact that Mary could so easily have been left to make her living as
best she could on the streets,
the birth that came far from
home –
at least, in Luke's version of the story.
Matthew's
version says that they lived in Bethlehem anyway.
We forget
about the flight to Egypt that Matthew tells us about so
dramatically,
and the children whom Herod is alleged to have
had killed in Bethlehem to try to avoid any rivalry by another King
of the Jews.
We forget that it was the outsiders, the outcasts
–
the shepherds, outcast in their own society, or the wise men
from the East, not Jewish, not from around here –
it was they
who were the first to worship the new-born King.
But the
point is, it's not just about that, is it?
We'll teach the
babies to sing “Away in a Manger”,
and it's right and
proper that we should.
We
kneel at the cradle in Bethlehem, yes –
but we worship the
Risen Lord.
We worship at the cradle in Bethlehem,
but
we also worship Jesus all year round,
remembering not only his
birth,
but his teachings,
his ministry,
the
Passion,
the Resurrection,
the Ascension
and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
And we worship,
not only as an abstract “Thing” –
what was that song:
“I
will celebrate Nativity, for it has a place in history....” –
it’s
not just about worshipping a distant divinity,
but about God
with us. Emmanuel.
And that brings us full circle, for
whether we are celebrating once again the birth of Jesus in
Bethlehem,
or whether we are looking towards the end times,
as
we traditionally do today,
what matters is God with us.
Emmanuel.
Jesus said “When these things begin to
happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is
near.”
We know that we will be saved,
we have been
saved,
we are being saved –
it's not a concept I can
actually put into words,
as it's not just about eternal life
but about so much more than that.
But “our salvation is
near”.
Dreadful things may or may not be going to happen –
and
they probably are going to happen, because Life is Like That –
but
God is still with us.
Talking about the end of the world
like that is called “apocalyptic speech”,
and very often,
when people talked apocalyptically,
they were addressing a
local situation just as much as the end times.
The prophets
certainly were;
they had no idea we would still be reading their
words today.
When Jeremiah said, as in our first reading,
“The
people of Judah and of Jerusalem will be rescued and will live in
safety,” he was thinking of a fairly immediate happening –
and,
indeed, we know that the tribes of Judah did return after exile
and
live in Jerusalem again.
But his words apply to the end times,
too.
And the same with Jesus, I think.
Much of the
disasters he spoke of will have happened within a few years of his
death –
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, for one
thing.
Don't forget that he was in an occupied country at the
time.
And all down the centuries there have been plagues
and
wars
and floods
and famines
and
earthquakes
and tsunamis
and comets and
things;
every age, I think, has applied Jesus' words to
itself.
So we are living in the end times no more and no
less than any other age has been.
And in our troubled world, we
hold on to the one certainty we have:
God with
us.
Emmanuel.
Amen.
