A Sermon by Canon Maggie Guite

A sermon by Canon Maggie Guite place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’ (Luke 21.28). Advent 1B 29th November 2015 Did Christians stop looking forward to the end of the 1 Thess.3.9-13 Luke 21.25-36 world because, in the early centuries, they experienced disaster after disaster – and still the ‘Son of Man [did not The nature of Advent Hope come] in a cloud’? (cfr. Luke 21.28), Indeed, by the time St Luke is believed to have written his Gospel, he would I wonder when Christians stopped looking forward to the already have known that the defeat of Jerusalem and the end of the world. Many of us might have used the destruction of the Temple, which I have no doubt Jesus saying; ‘Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world,’ to predicted , had in fact taken place , in AD 70, It had, cheer someone up; we may also have been amused or indeed, been a horrific set of events, beginning with a embarrassed by preachers of doom – sandwich-board Jewish revolt against the Romans in AD 68 and ensuing men, in the past, users of the internet in the present – who wr. The citizens of the Holy City had ended up besieged, profess to give a Christian warning that ‘The end is and they had lost their food-stocks early on, not through nigh!’. Disaster and destruction is something we’d like to the actions of the Romans, but tragically through those of see an end to – indeed, we may be fervently praying that nationalist zealots who had deliberately destroyed them, all the nations of the world will agree this week in Paris in the hope that this would encourage their fellow- on effective ways of combatting Climate Change and the citizens to go out of the city and fight the Roman Army. havoc it threatens to wreak (and may already be But norths had followed of starvation – the people even wreaking) , just as we pray constantly for peace, and do ate rats. And when the city fell, the Roman vengeance our best to contribute to ameliorate the effects of was savage. The contemporary historian Josephus tells catastrophes, whether humanly or naturally caused. We us that the conquerors only called a halt to crucifixions find the old insurance phrase’ Acts of God’ hard to because they ran out of wood. Rape, death, enslavement square with our faith, and seek scientific explanations for (it was largely Jewish captives who built the Colosseum earthquake and tsunami, epidemics and famines, in the in Rome) – and, a t the heart of it all, the destruction of hope that by doing so we can increase the accuracy of the vast Temple which Herod the Great had constructed predictions and ways of protecting populations from till only what we now know as the Wailing Wall was left. them. Disaster indeed. Some Jerusalem Christians may have escaped the falloff the city and the subjugationof Judaea Contrast this with the hopeful and positive note in today’s – but the kingdom had not come. Gospel reading, ‘Now when these things begin to take And then, nine years later, there had been apocalyptic Lord. But we, at least, express sadness at someone’s horror of another kind, which sent a shiver of horror death, and our culture celebrates longevity and the around the empire. Vesuvius had erupted, the sky over medical advances that makes more of it possible. Of southern Italy had indeed been darkened, and the moon course, I guess we all know of elderly and very sick folk turned a bloody red; great balls of molten rock had been who long fro release, and we’re arare of allt eh arguments hurled into the boiling sea, like stars falling from the sky. around euthanasia and assisted suicide. But, on the whole, Whole cities had been destroyed. Luke may have written we don’t celebrate death. Our Christian hope tends to be a after this event, too. But still the Son of Man had not bit of an a muted add-on. returned. Not that this is true everywhere; for a short period I taught not just in an Anglican theological college, but And yet still the apocalyptic predictions were recorded, also in a Methodist one – and (remarkably) I was with tones of hope. More than 20 years before Luke entrusted with preaching classes. (Whoever thought an wrote the Gospel, Paul had been writing to the Christians Anglican should teach Methodists how to preach?) One in Thessalonica, encouraging them to look forward to the week I’d set a Ghanaian student the task of writing a coming of ‘our Lord Jesus with all his saints’ (1Thess funeral addrss. It was full of Alleluias. I and all the Brits 3.13). in the class said to her, ‘Rosa – you must acknowledge and give space for the sadness people will be feeling at a Perhaps Christians stopped looking forward to the end of funeral.’ She was quite indignant. ‘That’s not how it is in the world when they became more at ease in it – when the Ghana! We rejoice that someone has gone to be with the Roman Empire became officially Christian, when this Lord!’ world began to seem a less threatening place, and people could look around and reflect on all that is dear in it. None of us knows when the end of all things will come. I think we’re right to see as dangerous crackpots any cult A similar question could be asked about when Christians or sect which claims to hasten the end – to bring in the stopped looking forward to their death. St Paul told the kingdom – or takes no heed of the damage we’re doing to Philippians that he would rather ‘depart and be with the earth because they care only about the end of things. Christ, for that is far better’ (Phil. 1.21).Was he the only Compassion and love tell us to take care, to cherish, to one – with a heroic faith which ws quite extraordinary, in reach out to help, and to grieve at disasters that befall so its triumph over the normal human instinct to fear death? many people. The end of their world is coming so No, there were others, too. If you read the accounts of destructively. I firmly believe that Christian readiness to some of the early Christina martyrs, it might strike you as stand before the throne of God does not consist in a bit pathological, their enthusiasm for dying for the vengeful contemplation of other people’s suffering – although we may develop empathy with those, who be triumphant and winning. WE shall ‘Be with Christ’ , because of their persecution and cruel usage feel that who came to be with us. Do we need to know much way. All too often what we see is not the destruction of more? the cruel and careless powers that hold sway in the world, but of powerless and poor populations – people Christians should stand out from the crowd –not with whom Christ surely identifies. I may rejoice, as I stridently and arrogantly – but with a quiet confidence said last week, that tyrants one day will know, in the face which can give an account of itself, even if it cannot give of God, that they have not ‘got away with it’. All is an account of exactly everything that is to come. This, I reckoned and known .But how God carries through that believe, is the attitude that Advent should instil in us. reckoning is not for me to speculate on, or have particular hopes for.

And yet, despite all this, the message of hope and looking forward still rings through all the mists of uncertainty about what ‘the coming of the Lord’ may exactly mean. It teaches us to ‘look up!’ and remain alert – for what we may not quite know – even when the news of the world’s travails seems unutterably depressing. Looking up and having hope isn’t such a bad way to live – and it’s remarkably exemplified by many of the poorest and the most deprived in the world. Much more so than by many of us overfed and cushioned members of our consumer society.

And, in the same way, having a very positive hope in the face of death – our individual death – and being able to give it voice, can be a powerful witness to the power of Christ at work in our lives. We don’t need to deny that dying has its terrors.We don’t claim that we know exactly what we expect. We recoil from the attitude which motivates suicide bombers – a certainty which is a parody of faith. But true faith, for all its uncertainty, can