Last Sunday's Thought: the meaning of Advent

Traditionally, Advent was a season in which we reflected upon the 4 last things, that is on Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.  Only God lives in eternity, which is without beginning or end, past or future. The blessed share in His eternal life, so their everlasting happiness, or beatitude, is also called eternal life. The beatific vision of God is eternal life. ‘This is eternal life’, Jesus taught His apostles, ‘to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent’ (John 17:3).

Except in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the penitential aspect of the Season of Advent has been almost totally replaced by an emphasis on hope and anticipation. ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined’ (Isaiah 9:2). Instead of reflection on the four last things, we have tended to emphasize the rite of the last few days of Advent, from 17 to 23 December, the service of the great ‘O’s, which are reflected in the great Advent hymn ‘O come, O come Emmanuel’. The importance of the ‘O Antiphons’ is that each one highlights a title for the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations), and O Emmanuel. Also, each one refers to the prophecy of Isaiah of the coming of the Messiah.

      In this double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of individuals and the congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That acknowledgment provides a basis for ‘Kingdom ethics’, for holy living arising from a profound sense that we live ‘between the times’ and are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people. So, as the church celebrates God’s in-breaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a future consummation of that history for which ‘all creation is groaning awaiting its redemption’ (Romans 8:23), it also confesses its own responsibility as a people commissioned to ‘love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart[s]’ and to ‘love [our] neighbour as [ourselves]’.

Finally, Advent is the season par excellence when we remember the contribution of the prophets, the last of the prophets before Christ – John the Baptist – and the significance of prophecy. For how shall we hear the call to repentance unless someone cries out above the tumult and destruction and delusion?  May the Advent figure of John, the relentless envoy and prophet in God’s name, be no stranger in our wilderness this year. For he is none other than ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’ (Mark 1:3; Isaiah 40:3).

Last Sunday's Thought: The Judgement of the Nations and the Feast of Christ the King

I dislike the expression, ‘let us pray for the church and the world’ as though they were two different compartments. No, the church is in the world. If it’s not active in the world and assured of its mission, then it has no role. In this morning’s gospel (Matt. 25), the giving or denying food, drink, clothing, shelter and comfort to the poor, hungry, sick, imprisoned and estranged is described as the equivalent of giving or denying service to God, and the basis on which we will be chosen for everlasting life or eternal punishment.

‘As you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:40). A charity has been set up in the USA, called Matthew25 Ministries, which seeks to put into effect the gospel command of Matthew 25:34-40 by providing nutritional food to the hungry, clean water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, shelter to the homeless, medical care to the ill, and humanitarian supplies to prisoners. Much Christian social action, past and present, has been inspired by this gospel.

Jesus tells us: ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36). St Paul tells us in the first chapter of Ephesians that when he raised Christ from the dead, he seated him at his right hand, ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’; furthermore he ‘put all things’ under his feet and made him the head ‘over all things for the church, which is his body’. Yet, although Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, it is to be built in this world. That is the lesson of the judgement of the nations gospel reading in Matthew ch. 25.

The gospel is associated with the Feast of Christ the King, which was introduced into the Anglican Church formally only in the year 2001. The feast was instituted by Pope Pius XI on 11 December 1925 in celebration of the all-embracing authority of Christ which shall lead mankind to seek the ‘peace of Christ’ in the ‘Kingdom of Christ’.

The year 1925 was the 1600th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the first great international (or ecumenical) conference of bishops. It was called by the emperor Constantine in 325, a few years after his conversion to Christianity. The council gave its name to the Nicene Creed, which is sung or said at the Eucharist, and it was at this council that the words ‘whose kingdom shall have no end’ were added at the end of the section of the creed devoted to God the Son. In his encyclical letter, Pope Pius specifically linked the inauguration of the feast of Christ the King to the addition of that clause to the creed. The one, he said, was a fitting celebration to mark the sixteenth centenary of the other.

Now cast your mind back to 1925, when Pope Pius XI chose to highlight this clause - out of all those in the Nicene creed - by instituting a special festival. In 1925 Benito Mussolini, already the prime minister of Italy, declared himself dictator and set about rebuilding the country on fascist principles in conscious imitation of the pagan glory that was Rome. Surely, we may suggest, the timing of these two events – the proclamation of Il Duce’s dictatorship and the inauguration by the Pope of the feast of Christ the King – was more than coincidental. It was because of the excessive claim to dictatorial power made by Mussolini that Pope Pius XI chose to emphasize in a special festival the kingship of Christ. The choice between leadership of a dictator and the leadership of Christ leaves Christians with no choice at all: it is Christ alone who, in Paul’s words, is ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’.

Last Sunday's Thought: Blessed are the Peacemakers

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’ The Beatitudes give us Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice, peace and equity. It is much easier to make war than it is to make peace. It’s also difficult to be a Christian and to be an advocate of war. Because if we value human life, as God calls us to, then any casualty of war is one too many. As of 15 October 2011, the British forces in Afghanistan have suffered 383 fatalities. Each of the 383 young men and women leave behind grieving families who are permanently affected by what has happened in a foreign country a long way from home.

The political assumption is that each of these individuals is somehow expendable because there is a greater good to be won, though many of the bereaved may question this. The Christian faced with a decision for war has to understand whether the cause to be fought is just, whether the means by which it is to be pursued are proportionate, and whether the outcome will lead, on balance, to a betterment of the conditions of mankind and those affected by the dispute leading to the war. These issues are rarely simple; because the issues cannot be easily resolved the presumption should be for peace until all the avenues for a peaceful resolution of the dispute have been fully exhausted.

Chaplains to the armed forces are there to try to bring some guidance to a disordered world, and especially to those among the armed forces who have to come to terms with grief, the loss of comrades and the moral dilemmas involved in the use of force. The role of chaplains is of the greatest importance because they have to deal at first hand with the ethical and moral questions raised by servicemen and women which others, away from the fog of war, have greater time to reflect on and pray about. Fighting a war justly is difficult enough; peace making is a great deal more difficult. As John Stott remarked, it is ‘a divine work. For peace means reconciliation, and God is the author of peace and of reconciliation … It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the particular blessing which attaches to peacemakers is that “they shall be called sons of God”. For they are seeking to do what their Father has done, loving people with his love.’

Last Sunday's Thought: Stay Awake for The Second Coming of Jesus!

The parable of the ten maidens, from the beginning of chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel refers to the different treatment of the gentiles ( = the wise maidens) and the Israelites ( = the foolish maidens) that will take place with the coming of God’s Kingdom. But when will God’s Kingdom come? ‘The New Testament’s authors’, writes Jeffrey A. Gibbs, ‘thought and lived and wrote eschatologically, with their hope fully, firmly, and fervently directed toward the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Such beliefs are in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. ‘And he will come with glory to judge both the living and the dead... ’ ‘From thence he will come to judge the living and the dead... I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.’ We repeat it in almost every communion service in the great acclamation: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. But the fact that we repeat these affirmations of faith so frequently does not necessarily mean that we take it as read that the Second Coming (Parousia) will happen, let alone that it will happen in our lifetime.

We have therefore to go back to basics and ask ourselves the question: when did people in the NT expect the Parousia to occur? There was an expectation of imminence in the return of Christ, which was matched by statements such as coming at an ‘unexpected hour’, or ‘like a thief in the night’. The force of the command to be ready and to watch would be diminished if there was reason to think that Christ was not to return soon. But the difference between ‘soon’ and ‘when’ is critical. None of the Biblical texts state explicitly when we are to expect Christ’s return. On the contrary, we are told that ‘of that day or that hour no one knows’ (Mark 13:32).

There had been a long tradition of Jewish apocalyptic writers who had written of the end things, and whose hopes had not been fulfilled. Yet there is very little evidence to suggest that disappointment of that expectation discredited the apocalyptic hope or even diminished the sense of imminence in later generations. This apparent delay belongs to the purpose of God. It will not be ‘late’ according to the timescale which God has determined. As the Qumran commentary on Habakkuk 2:3 puts it: ‘Interpreted, this concerns the men of truth who keep the Law, whose hands shall not slacken in the service of the truth when the final age is prolonged. For all the ages of God reach their appointed end as he determines for them in the mysteries of his wisdom.’ The Jewish apocalyptic writers maintained the tension between imminence and delay, and that tension remains a feature of Christian theology.

For example, did Paul expect the Parousia within his lifetime, or after his death? It would seem that in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, Paul expected the Parousia to come quickly, so quickly that it would take place before his death. However, in Paul’s later epistles, it seems that he no longer expected to be alive at the second coming of Christ, but rather to die before it took place. Absolute certainty concerning whether he would live to, or die before the Parousia was something Paul would never have claimed at any stage in his life. Paul was certain that Christ would return, but a similar certainty concerning his own (or his contemporaries’) survival to that time was something he would never have claimed.

Paul is thought to have died around 67 AD. The most probable event associated with the Second Coming of Christ – the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of institutional Judaism based on the Temple – occurred in the year 70 AD. Some of the prophecies from Jesus clearly allude to this event, even though it occurred more than thirty years after his death. Chapter 54 of the compendium volume on Systematic Theology argues (p. 1105) that ‘it is spiritually unhealthy for us to say that we know that these signs have not occurred, and it seems to stretch the bounds of credible interpretation to say that we know that these signs have occurred. But it seems to fit exactly in the middle of the NT approach towards Christ’s return to say that we do not know with certainty if these events have occurred.’

Yet in other parts of the New Testament, there are clear indications of a delay in the Parousia. The author of 2 Peter 3:9 offers a positive understanding of the delay: ‘The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.’ The manner of the victory which Christ has already won gives fresh meaning to the delay, which now becomes the time of the church’s universal mission, characterized by suffering witness in discipleship to the crucified Christ. For Richard Bauckham, God delays the Parousia not simply in spite of his people’s sufferings, but actually so that his people may suffer the positive, creative suffering which falls to the followers of the cross of Christ.

Revelation maintains the tension of imminence and delay. The imminent expectation focuses on the Parousia of the already victorious Christ: and the book ends with the promise, ‘I am coming soon’, and the church’s urgent response, ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (22:20). Surely that is the spur for us to work actively for God’s Kingdom here and now, a Kingdom characterized by justice and equity for all and a fair distribution of the world’s resources.

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