The Promise Fulfilled
29 November 2009
I thought that my ten-year-old son was having an uncharacteristically religious moment this week when he lamented ‘I think it’s terrible that people don’t know that Advent starts this Sunday.’ Puzzled, and a little alarmed that he may be becoming rather zealous for his age, I pursued the question. His retort reassured me: ‘My Advent Calendar doesn’t start until the 1st of December, but it’s Advent on Sunday (29th November), which means that there are two chocolates missing.’
I asked, attempting a reprimand, whether he really knew what Advent meant. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘it comes from Advenire, which means that Jesus is coming, and that we should celebrate that… with chocolate.’
Not to be outclassed by her younger brother, my daughter Wikkipedia-ed it, and proudly announced ‘It’s actually from the present active infinitive of advenio.’ ‘What does that mean?’ asked her brother. ‘Dunno – but it’s connected with adventure.’
It would be easy at this point to give a very wrong impression about the sort of discourse that happens in my household. Usually it is cruder bickering about TV or computer or about what is ‘not fair’. But for once I was grateful to witness the competition: the notion of this season being rooted in the present, active pondering of Christ’s coming, and that this is an adventure which requires food for the pilgrimage seemed helpful.
But as well as applying to our lengthy journey into Christ’s holiness - 3 steps forward, two or more back - today’s readings speak not of the veiled humiliating coming of Christ in Bethlehem’s cave. They take last Sunday’s celebration that Christ is King to an awe-inspiring end point. Remember the Gospel last Sunday related Christ’s interview by Pilate, a petty civil servant in a problematic Roman province, yet Christ still reigning in that interrogation, and even from the tree of shame. It celebrated and urged us to see him as king of all our moments in time: in all the dusty, soiled, imperfect, inadequate, ill-prepared moments of our life, King when we are not yet ready or even aware of his reign. Today, Advent Sunday, our eyes are raised from the gutter to the heavens. These readings speak not of the veiled, secret humiliation in a Bethlehem cave, but of an earth-shatteringly public coming, where everything hidden will be unveiled, when the powers that the awe-inspiring Trinity established in the beginning to keep the stars apart, making space and time and freedom for creation, these powers will fall, and now we can feel them tottering as they are confronted by the whole Truth, they grow tired and old. The blood and fire of the incarnation and the reign of the Spirit will cast off all that is soiled and tainted and smeared. When the unimaginable, and the dreaded, happens, when all that gives us security is shattered, we are not to lose hope. There Christ will still be king, and all that obscures him will collapse. The Light of the World will not be extinguished, even is creation comes to its appointed ending. Do not be anxious though society collapse back into a paganism more ungodly than that which persecuted Israel and early Christians. The Word will not be silent, Divine Being will not be displaced. Though the Churches appear compromised, confused and compliant to things which scandalize some of the faithful, be not afraid. All will be rolled back: and Love will be the meaning.
Unlike that cheap and cheerful optimism that looks for new ‘tasks’ and hooks onto new ‘issues’, busying itself and whistling in the dark pretending that all is well, and indeed that it’s daytime, a notion recurs in the readings - integrity. It comes in Jeremiah 33 – where, unusually in the context of this Prophet, there are words of hope. Many critical scholars have rejected this section as an interjection into the dour prophecy. But in the background there is an atmosphere of despair and skepticism as the context for this text – the vision of God is blurred in Israel, and trust in his presence tarries. The people of God knew weariness, doubt, and fear that His promise would never be accomplished. Against the back-cloth of a besieged city, the prophet proclaims that God will restore that which protects and nurtures his people: the city wall will be rebuilt; and sin, which has brought this ruin, and which like a canker eats at every heart and mind, will be removed. Then shall Jerusalem be exalted, and far from being a taunt, draw a gasp of wonder from every nation. All that is wasted and limp shall be restored, and Peace will prevail. God’s promise, rather than human achievement, or politicking or survival, God’s rich promise will be fulfilled and then will all things be made plain.
The text speaks to us as we seek integrity amid desolation – personal, professional, in our relationships, and in our church. Advent means waiting for God to act: the meaning is in the waiting, but we can be nourished on the journey by this hope. To lose everything else is perhaps necessary, as long as we stand, our integrity in tact, trusting in the God who comes to save.
Our second reading was written probably when Timothy has rejoined Paul in Corinth. The success of the message of Christ, taking root in ‘the whole human race’ is, by this time, all that Paul lived for. He wants to revisit the Church in Thessalonica, and prays that God will bring to fulfillment for which he (Paul) had laboured. The prayer is focused on the coming return of Christ and judgement, so there is an ethical edge to his words – the unveiling of Christ has implications on our social, sexual and ecclesial relations – all must be open to his light. Easier said than done, obviously. But again there is a brilliant focus on the coming end.
Advent reminds us strongly that we are not immortal now, and the norms and continuities which we now depend upon are not the kingdom. We are not yet at the end of history: there will, though, be a time in which this cosmos, with all its tenderness and beauty, and with all its inadequacy, smeared with sin and compromise, tainted with betrayal and failure, this messy – wonderful world, will be thrilled by the Holy Spirit: so that dust and mud
Will flame out,
Like shining from shook foil.
All nations, faiths and every soul has this royal destiny: to know justice and peace, and be charged with the very being of God – that even we will become all flame, and our thoughts holy static.
Advent is good news precisely because it eschews cheap, cheerful compliance, and turns us to the radical uncovering in today’s apocalyptic Gospel – with its dark prophecies about our comfortable compromises being drastically and totally interrupted by the present, active imperative of Christ’s coming. The predictable systems we think we have made or mastered will cease. We will be shocked. Our injured pride will be exposed by the enfleshed humility of God in Christ reaching out to us then in utter, terrifying glory.
Advent challenges us to begin an adventure, as the late Holy Father was fond of saying, to ‘push out further into the deep’ in faith. We don’t know what the next year, certainly the next decade will bring for us – our world, nation, and certainly national Church: I wonder how Pusey House, ‘the Vatican of the Holy City of Anglicanism’, Oxford, will look. Not, I pray, as I hope it will look, or as any of us hope things will be: but that the will of Christ will prevail. Advent shakes us ‘till our teeth rattle: enough of the putting up with our posturing and pretence, Come O Christ, and take courage, my soul.
He will bring searing light, but light that will make it impossible to despair of any soul, or to form our lives in avoidance of the darkness and shadows which this morning Gospel has brought to light, and which will reappear and hover around our pilgrimage to the coming nativity, and the coming of Christ in majesty.
The journey begins not with chocolate in our Advent calendars today, but with Christ our Companion. He will lead us to the stable and to the last Judgement. He will show us that there is room for all the creation if we but learn to stoop by our penance now. He will show the universe that the faith which has caught us is not just a complex system of oppressive rules which the unbeliever describes; it is peace, joy, love; and a life which is continually renewed until he comes finally in glory. Whatever lies ahead – through financial crisis or ecclesial complexity and tested consciences, Christ will hold you firmly and softly. He is our greatest treasure. He alone can give meaning and serenity and integrity to our daily life.
And he will.
The Revd Dr Andrew Teal Chaplain of Pembroke College