|
Thought for the Week Sunday 29 November – First
Sunday of Advent
In
Los Angeles, where I lived for a long time, they do not really have seasons. Nor
do they really have weather. They have a climate, rather than weather. The
palm trees do not shed their leaves at any particular time of the year, so
there are very few signs that it is summer or winter. Houses
there have both air conditioning and heating, but in an average year, one
would not use either, and one can routinely wear a short-sleeved shirt to
work year round. People
who go there to live soon start complaining that the climate is too bland,
that there are no clear divisions between parts of the year. They find it
boring – that is, until they go to visit family for Christmas in the Midwest
or in Europe. Then they will admit that boring is better than freezing. Here,
we are more aware of the seasons. Most of us quite like the dramatic changes
– and to be truthful, if you don’t like one season, it’s not too long really
before one perceives the beginning of change into the next one. Last
week we concluded the long “season” we call “ordinary time” – the
29 or so Sundays after Trinity, which some preachers like to call “the
church’s teaching season”. There is something to be said for both of these
definitions – Ordinary Time implies
that there is not too much dramatic happening, that we learn progressively
about the life and teaching of Jesus, and that we draw into our own lives the
teachings and values he shared with the disciples and the crowds in
Palestine, long ago. There
is a danger that we put a patina of “niceness” on all of this, and that is
why I always try to highlight what life was like in those days and what some
of the hard issues underlying the ministry of Jesus might have been. During
“ordinary time” there is always a
lot of explaining of the gospel, and preachers look at the Greek words that
have been translated into English to seek a clearer meaning, or to offer a
different slant to this or that story. But the last Sunday after Trinity is
also the last week of the church year. The First Sunday of Advent is the
first Sunday of the new Church year. Ordinary time is behind us now, and will
not be before us again for quite a while. Does
this, then, mean that we are now in extra-ordinary
time? I
think that would be rather a good way to describe it. Advent
is variously described as a time of anticipation – or a time of reflection and
penitence – or a time to think ahead to the great judgment – the
end of things on earth as we now know them. In
any event, we think of Advent as a “season” much like “the holiday season” or
the “Christmas season” o r the “gift-giving season”. I
will agree that this Advent will probably pass by peaceably, that
it falls during the time of the year when we can expect snow and
the cold wind we call the Cer, from
the north. In that regard it is a season, and it is also, of course, part of
the cadence of the Church year, as
we recall the pivotal moments on the life of Jesus on earth. But
I think that Advent calls for more than a passing characterization, and
it calls for more than its practical – and understandable – application by some
many of us, as a means of balancing and keeping at bay, or at least under
control – the commercial forces which assail our every sense, night and day,
as the gift-giving frenzy of Christmas morning approaches. On
this first day of the new church year, and because it is the first day of the
preparation for Christmas, we might have expected something a bit more
uplifting in the gospel message. There
is no shortage of “looking forward” but is it what we want to hear? Today
we hear from Luke, and his writing takes place shortly after the destruction
of the temple in Jerusalem. Our translation is fairly politically correct –
it does not quite offer the true sense of shock that the original Greek words
portray. When, for instance, Luke, says that “people will faint from fear and
foreboding” the Greek word from which
“faint” is derived actually means “lose their breath” – or die from shock. In
recalling the words of Jesus while these terrible things were going on in
Jerusalem, Luke must have been quite
convinced that the end time was upon him, and that there would be terrifying
retribution for the wicked, and in particular, for the oppressors of the
people of Palestine. The
language used is very dramatic; it calls upon the imagination to visualize
cosmic events, the shattering of order and the return of Christ in a guise
very different from the one we perceive of him in “ordinary time”. A guise of
great majesty, of impartial judging, accompanied by his legions of angels, in
great and thunderous glory as the clouds and the elements obey him and the
natural order collapses in disarray. None
of this is in easy accord with the season of anticipation is it? Soon
we will be asked to visualize Christ in yet a third way – the helplessness
and vulnerability of an infant – and to try to perceive the power of
weakness. I
think there is method in this apparent contradiction however. Luke
has actually witnessed disaster. He has lived through the period of Roman
occupation, he has seen the clash of cultures, he has observed the Sadducees
and the Pharisees and the Scribes – those authorities of the Jews we talked
about during “ordinary time” – as they struggled to hold onto power in a
state divided between secular and religious rule. He knows how Jesus held the
kingdom of God above all these struggles and he knows that neither the Jewish
authorities nor the Roman government was able to add this dimension to the
ongoing struggles for leadership. Luke
was aware of – probably had seen, the roving bands of zealots who harried the
Romans at every step, and whose wild activities caused trembling among the
Jewish leadership because they constantly undermined the possibility of
peaceful coexistence. Finally,
Luke had seen the end of the Roman’s patience, the
slaughter of much of Jerusalem’s population as men, women and children were
indiscriminately put to the sword by the exasperated and furious soldiers of
Rome – and he had seen the temple, the symbol of God’s presence with the
chosen people, desecrated and torn
down. No
wonder his words make it seem as if he had seen the beginning of the
end. But Luke had no way of knowing
that Palestine is only a small spot on the face of the world, and horrible as
they were, the things he saw were only a part of the world’s climax, part of a
long history before and since, of
humankind’s ability – seemingly inexhaustible – to inflict misery and
suffering on others on a large scale. Even
the sun, moon and clouds can, on occasion, be made to seem terrible. Visitors
to the Peace Shrine and Museum in Hiroshima
are not prepared for what they
see there. Most have never actually seen a nuclear explosion but have seen
plenty of films of them – Yet
they see at close range the effects of that mighty blast with the familiar
mushroom-shaped cloud, that makes the sun and moon disappear from view. They
see bodies with the skin completely flayed off. They
see shards of glass piercing thick wooden doors and walls. They
see the remnants of bicycles as if they had been crushed like tinfoil in a giant
hand, They
see pictures of square miles of what had been homes and shops and factories
flattened as if they had been made of tissue paper. They
may even meet an old man who happened to have been in a cistern making
repairs, within about a mile of the blast when it happened. That’s
what saved him, among 140,000 people within that same radius who were
instantly killed. Just
thinking about it all, I can almost stand in Luke’s shoes. But
Luke had something to rely on, and Luke shares it with us so we have
something to rely on, too, for Jesus says that, despite all that may happen,
his word remains. Part
of our great dilemma, when the gospel calls on us to reflect, has to be that
abiding question of “why”. Why
do these things have to happen? Why is
there such evil in the world? Why
illness, why poverty, why accidents? Why strife and contention, even at
national and international levels? We
have no zealots roving the countryside, but we do have demonstrators. We have
no occupation forces to deal with, but we do have an internal struggle for
power. We had a good economy until recently, but now there is uncertainty and
hardship. I
do not know the answers to all those ‘why?’ questions. I may scratch my head,
and you may scratch yours, and we may be scratching for the same or for
different reasons – and perhaps that’s an important point. International
AIDS Day was observed recently, and people everywhere recalled the lives of
those who have died from AIDS. Almost a quarter of the people in the
continent of Africa are infected, and this because of a disease which travels
among people through the unlikely medium of our affection for each other when
expressed physically. One of the most basic yet celebrated of all human
interpersonal relationships. Yet
it is when we falter in our regard for another person that the disease is
passed on, and so the formula holds true. The
answer to the WHY question, is that WE choose – we CHOOSE, and
others are affected by our choices. That is almost universally true – but it
is also universally true that we cannot control all the choices of others. So,
if Advent is a season, and if Luke is fixated upon the wrath to come, what is
our focus to be? Worldly distractions are a reality to us. We
know that he have a duty to keep our lives going in the midst of the modern
world, to provide for our families,
and to prepare for the future. We
know that the economy is a macrocosm of our lives, that we are intricately
connected to the way the country and the world operates. We know that this is
a hedonistic age, and that prosperity drives a continuous assault upon our
resources. All
this we know, but we are also creatures able to maintain more than one stream
of thought, one set of values, one level of consciousness. As
Christians we know that prosperity is not only for the clever or the
aggressive, or those whose advertising expertise can talk us out of our
money. Prosperity is for even those
who are not smart, those who are
underprivileged, those who did not get a decent education, the orphan
and the abandoned – and those whose lives did not start out at the same spot
on the starting line as ours did. As
Christians, we know that the kingdom of God is not populated by a hierarchy
as we know it. It is a place where the potential of every person is realized,
every life has value and every right is honored. It is a place where every
person’s individuality is understood and respected. Luke
invites us this morning to look past the crises of the day to that great
moment in human history when the kingdom of God breaks through. The
message of Luke, and I think the true message of Advent – whether we think of
it as a single season, or as an ongoing aspect of our lives – but
certainly as we anticipate the coming of the Christ Child – truly
an extra-ordinary time – is to prepare.
AMEN Revd
Tony Jewiss: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |