The last days

​

 Over recent weeks we’ve lost three very gifted actresses. Their names all began with the letter P. Pauline Collins, best known I guess for the film Shirley Valentine, Prunella Scales, best known for playing Sybil Fawlty and Patricia Routledge, who played the wonderful Hyacinth Bucket.

Shirley Valentine was not like Sybil Fawlty or Hyacinth Bucket. She didn’t do self importance. I’ve led such a little life. And even that will be over pretty soon. I have…allowed myself to lead this little life when inside me there was so much more. And it’s all gone unused. And now it never will be. Why do we get all this life if we don’t ever use it? Why do we get all these…feelings…and dreams and hopes…if we don’t ever use them. That’s where Shirley Valentine disappeared to. She got lost in all this unused life. Sybil Fawlty was the real manager of Fawlty Towers. She was formidable and to be taken notice of. I have had it up to here with you. How, dear? You never get it right, do you? You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff adder. Just trying to enjoy myself.

Then Hyacinth Bucket enjoyed her status in society, or what she perceived it to be. 

“I have an unblemished reputation at home for the quality of my bathroom linen. It is one of the attractions of my candlelight suppers that our guests are able to peek at the quality of my bathroom linen.”

” If there is one thing i can’t stand it’s snobbery and one-upmanship…. People like to pretend they’re superior…. Makes it so much harder for those of us who really are”

Have you met people like her? There are people about full of their own self importance. There are also places that want you to know you are not really meant to be there. We went to my cousin's wedding in a very posh hotel in the Cotswolds last weekend. Lis had for her dinner plant based roasted vegetable and feta pithivier. She wondered what was coming. It was roasted vegetables and feta with a pastry hat over them. 

 

Imagine being in church with self important people. We’ve none of them here but I’ve had them. The church that rowed about who sat on the top table at functions, the church with a property committee who ruled the church with an iron rod and the minister was told not to be interfere as property was nothing to do with him. The church where two men, both called George, would enjoy sitting at the back of Church Councils and quote out of old copies of constitutional practice and discipline of the Methodist Church to try and catch out their Superintendent! 

 

God doesn’t do self importance and it will only lead to disaster. 

Several generations ago, the preacher here on a Sunday morning would have taken the whole service from up there in the pulpit. He would have thundered words about judgment and God’s wrath. You wouldn’t have greeted him at the door and say “nice service.” His aim was to tell you you have sinned and to make you feel uncomfortable. And yet churchgoing numbers were a lot higher than they are today. 

 

God’s ancient people saw themselves closest to him in the Temple in Jerusalem. Here’s a picture of it. It was massive. You could see it for miles. You sang as you approached it – I was glad when they said unto me let us go to the house of the Lord. 

 

And yet the prophets speaking to God’s ancient people warned them that as we’ve sung towers and temples will fall to dust. And people’s behaviour especially those within the religious community would be discussed. Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.’” 

 

Imagine if I preached that this morning. Imagine if I told you Allhallowgate will be no more because you’ve been very arrogant, self important and selfish. Just imagine… what if we weren’t here.

 

If you read on in Malachi chapter 4 there is some hope. There is a but. There is a call to return to God and seek his Kingdom. Yes, we deserve God’s punishment. Yes, Judgment Day could be a horrible day for us, indeed, should be. BUT! But what? 

But the one who’s coming on that day is Jesus. Yes, the same Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the dead, he’s the one who’s coming back on Judgment Day. 

We hear thoughts to that point in the second verse of Malachi 4: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”

God’s ancient people had a choice. Most chose wrong.

We have a choice as God’s people today. Either we worship ourselves and our church or we serve God and look for him. Will we leave this service in despair as God comes with wrath or will we find him new and leave frolicking? I wonder how you will greet me today at the door!

The Temple was a symbol of Israel: of God’s favour. ‘Look at us, we are the children of God!’ For first-century Jews gazing at the extraordinary building was to fix their eyes on something which symbolised for them the presence of God.

A classic commentary from Matthew Henry says: ‘When we speak of the temple, it should be of the presence of God in it, and the communion which his people there have with him. It is a poor thing, when we speak of the church, to let our discourse dwell upon its pomps and revenues, and the dignities and powers of its officers and rulers.’

The Jewish reverence for the Temple, which had been built to ‘give God a home’ where his presence could rest, had turned into worship of the building and its grandeur. Self importance over service.

Today and next Sunday we hear of the last days in our readings. The world is doing Christmas. The lights were switched on yesterday and Father Christmas looking a lot like Sid Hawke was there. I’m being contacted about Carol services and Christmas parties. I want it to be not now! First we need to think about a bigger picture. Not just a Temple destroyed but this. Wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, the destruction of the very places that enrich our lives, all these things, Jesus says, will come to pass in the last days. And just when we think it can’t possibly get any worse than that, Jesus gets personal: You will be arrested; you will be persecuted; you will be thrown into prison and hauled before the court.

Then notice what he says next: Just when everything is shrouded in darkness; when lies have taken the place of truth; when war seems inevitable and eternal; when the earth trembles beneath you—then you will have the opportunity to share who we follow.

God is faithful even when everything around us is falling apart. And the Church is called not to worship itself but serve others and be in the world not apart from it. Even when it’s hard. The passages of Scripture today remind us to be Christ’s church not ours. Self importance leads to disaster. The top table church lost peopleafter a dreadful time when people turned on each other and sat in worship not speaking to each other. The property committee alienated so many people the atmosphere was nasty. And one of the George’s left his church because he got ill being so obsessed with getting his own way. 

I read recently read an article from a Christian organization, that speaks to the temptation to make an idol out of the strength and power we so often see in the institutions around us – and to even say they founded in God’s name. Rachel Asproth says this:

 

Christianity has often found itself on the wrong side of privilege. Historically, we have sided with empire too often to call it coincidence. But why?

It’s the oldest story in the Good Book. We want to rule—desperately. We have drunk greedily from the fountain of power since the beginning of time.

We went after power when we fell in the Garden of Eden. Satan offered Jesus the chance to rule over the kingdoms of earth in exchange for his worship. James and John asked Jesus for seats at his right and left hands.

Humans crave privilege. We side with empire because we want to rule. And the human instinct for empire gave birth to the oppression of women, to the subordination of people of color, to the demonizing of the “other.”

The powerful find great security in their privilege.

It was this weakness that Satan himself sought to exploit when he offered Jesus an earthly empire in exchange for his everlasting kingdom. 

Jesus rejected the human instinct for empire. He chose not to rule.

Clearly, Jesus knew all about the human instinct for empire. He also knew a simple but profound truth: all empires fall.

So will ours.

The kingdom triumphs because it is no empire. It is built on equal measures of justice and mercy. It is ruled by a God who bleeds because his love is too big

 

Self importance or self sacrifice?

Hiding from the world or being in it?

Power or service?

Worshipping a building or using it for God’s glory and sharing it with others? The choice is ours. 

The church, our church exists not to be preserved but to be spent, fuel for the Spirit’s work in the world.

 

Doesn’t it?