Today is close to our Church’s birthday (100 years + 92
hours since the Bishop of Peterborough inaugurated it at 3pm on 28 November 1912);
it is also the opening day of a new lectionary year, year C of our readings,
associated with Luke’s gospel; and also the beginning of the season of Advent –
for all these reasons it is important to begin with a linking prayer for this
week and the three weeks which follow. The prayer is a particularly short one, one
word in Aramaic: maranatha. It
appears twice in the NT, firstly at 1 Corinthians 16:22 and secondly at
Revelation 22:20. If the word is divided as maran
atha, it seems to be a credal declaration, ‘our Lord has come’ or ‘The Lord
has come’. If however, it is spelt marana
tha, it is a prayer for the return of Christ, for his Second Coming: ‘Come,
Lord Jesus’, or as at Revelation 22:20, ‘Amen, Come Lord Jesus’.
We are told that at the Second Coming of Jesus there will be
a sudden, personal, visible, bodily return of Christ; we should eagerly long
for it; but we do not know when Christ will return. But the writer also asks
‘do Christians in fact eagerly long for Christ’s return? The more Christians
are caught up in enjoying the good things of this life, the more they neglect
genuine Christian fellowship and their personal relationship with Christ, the
less they will long for his return. On the other hand, many Christians who are
experiencing suffering or persecution, or who are more elderly and infirm, and
those whose daily walk with Christ is vital and deep, will have a more intense
longing for his return. To some extent, then, the degree to which we actually
long for Christ’s return is a measure of the spiritual condition of our own
lives at the moment’ (Grudem, Systematic Theology, chapter 54, p. 1093).
Thus to ‘be ready’ for Christ’s return (Matt. 24:44) means
that we must both be faithfully obeying him in the present, actively engaged in
whatever work he has called us to undertake. But we also need to remember, from
this morning’s gospel, Luke’s message – which is found elsewhere in his gospel
– that ‘the kingdom of God is near’ (Luke 21:31). Behold, the Kingdom of God is at hand, or near us (Luke 10:9,11). ‘Once,
on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus
replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be
observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the
kingdom of God is in your midst” – or within you (Luke 17:20-21). Luke’s
special emphasis on the nearness of the kingdom of God does not mean that there
will be no Second Coming as already described but it attests to the
evangelist’s belief that our duty as Christians is to work for the kingdom of
God here and now and not just to wait on later events. Even so, we still have
to ‘be alert at all times, praying that [we] may have the
strength to escape all the… things that will take place, and to stand before
the Son of Man.’ (Luke 21:36).
If we read the gospels carefully, we
find that Jesus
is calling us to participate actively in changing the world. He is
calling us to become part of the struggle for peace and justice and
righteousness in the world. He is calling
us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, the lift up the downtrodden, to bind up the broken-hearted, to raise the dead in spirit to new life in Christ.
Jesus is calling us not so much to look for signs of his coming but rather to be signs of his coming. Or, in the image from this morning’s gospel, He
is calling us to be sprouts on the fig tree of new life (Luke 21: 29-31).
Parents with young children who have taken them on long car
journeys will remember – perhaps indelibly in some instances – the question
that inevitably is asked from the back seat shortly after the car has been
loaded up, when we have finally started our journey but we are nowhere near our
final destination. ‘Daddy / Mummy, are we nearly there yet?’ Now, if we are
truly being the light of Christ in a dark, lonely and unequal world, we can
joyfully and honestly answer the little voice or voices coming from the
backseat: ‘No, not yet, but we are on the road and God is coming to meet us soon.’ Amen, Come Lord Jesus!
