How’s it all going to end? Are we people who are desperate to know how a story ends?
We’ve been on Holy Island this last week and they’ve been filming a Christmas episode of Vera. You couldn’t get near the filming but I did spot her in her green coat and hat and her Range Rover from a distance. A couple we know on the island let ITV use their house for some scenes – the husband who owned the house got to play the dead body! We watch things like Vera and try and work out the ending – who did it. We invest our time in a tv series and want a good ending, and if the ending is bad or if we miss the ending we feel cheated. I sleep through a lot of television.
Thank God for I player so you can run things back. Remember when you used to video programmes and set a timer and it would stop recording cutting the ending off? So annoying.
It seems to me as we enter Advent in 2022, we live at a time what we people are stuck, and deeply worried about how things will turn out. Many can’t see an end to their suffering.
War once again casts its shadow over Europe in Ukraine, with many more conflicts around the globe; fuel prices are extortionate, the cost of living is rising at an alarming pace, many are struggling to choose between eating and heating; the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it clear that there is no easy way out for this country; COP 27 has reminded us of the pressing climate crisis; migrants arrive on our shores to face an uncertain future - and even sport – which has the capacity to unite and develop friendships – cannot escape political challenges as we debate the wisdom of allowing Qatar to host the football World Cup.
Life for so many is like a perpetual waiting in a busy A and E department where you are desperate to be seen and given help but no help is coming. On one of my several lovely visits to A and E, I wasn’t seen for so long I got dehydrated. By the time I got to a ward and a bed I was more ill then when I arrived in the hospital! I loved reading of someone whose father was taken into A and E this week. She wrote: “While I sat with my dad in A&E waiting room with my dad about 7 hours in he asked "do you think Rishi Sunak has done this wait" everyone in the waiting room around us laughed.”
We start another Advent journey this morning. Our churches are already decorated for Christmas, and yes, Advent is a time we use to prepare for Christmas and we remember now Jesus came into a world as messy as ours over 2000 years ago. To know again God is with us in whatever we face is a comfort in our hard times. To know again the peace and joy of incarnation is good news in the middle of our rubbish. But… Advent is also about looking forward. A rather large theological tome reminds us that it is not only about the coming of God into the world in Jesus but the approaching return of the risen Lord in all his heavenly splendour. It should not just be seen as an introduction to incarnation but rather the completion of our redemption. The spirit of the season is best expressed in the cry of a sometimes desperate people: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”
How is it going to end? Well, just as God chose to enter the world in human form long ago in the form of Jesus Christ, he will come again in Jesus Christ who Christian faith believes will be back! We don’t say the creed very much in our worship but about Jesus it says this: “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” And in the letter to the Hebrews I think we have the way to do and live Advent expectantly. “For yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry.” But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul.”
In these next few weeks, people will be rushing about preparing for the best Christmas possible. This year is odd for me. Coming back to work this weekend I have very little in my diary ahead. (Unless others know different!) Which means I can concentrate on helping us focus on encountering Christ come and soon to come again, rather than a lot of meetings. We need to be ready and willing to embrace the new possibilities and encounters with a different way God has up his divine sleeve. How will it end? It will end well but we have to be ready and prepared to receive what God might be up to.
Once John Wesley was asked what he would do if he knew this was his last day on earth. He replied, “At 4 o’clockI would have some tea. At 6 I would visit Mrs. Brown in the hospital. Then at 7:30 I would conduct a mid-week prayer service. At 10 I would go to bed and would wake up in glory.” Maybe we aren’t as devout or prepared as our founder!
In the Gospel reading for Advent Sunday, Jesus says that the coming of the Son of Man will be unexpected and sudden, so we should be prepared. The passage is set in the wider context of Jesus speaking about ‘the end of the age', and the signs that the kingdom is coming once again.
The invitation is once again to live differently in light of the coming kingdom. We are called to ‘keep awake', to stay alert to the world around us as we live. The scenes Jesus paints are very domestic – everyday life continues, and yet in the midst of them the kingdom is to arrive. This suggests that it is amongst the everyday of our lives that we might catch glimpses of the kingdom to come. In communion, we sometimes talk about a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all people. We are meant to expect that God might be beginning a new story, to look for the signs and when something new is offered to us, to go for it.
But so often we want to stick to the comfortable because we have lost confidence or we really don’t think what’s coming will happen. I promise not to tell you too many hospital stories, but on both Littondale ward where I was on stay number one, and Bolton ward where I was on stay number two, twenty one days in total — I saw all of the diversity of humanity!
Nigel was opposite me on Bolton ward. Nigel had been there a long time. They asked him to assess his memory to count down from twenty to one then they asked him who the Prime Minister is. I thought this was really unfair as I think Liz Truss was still Prime Minister when he was admitted.
Nigel was told he was nearly ready to go home. But Nigel preferred his bed. They’d get him into his chair in the morning but when they’d gone he’d get back into bed. And every morning when they tried to wash him, he would lose it and shout! I can’t share what he said! They’d come and change the bed and take the sheets off, and Nigel would get back on the bed on just a mattress. His wife would visit and they’d fight because she wanted him up. He had physio and was helped to get to the loo on a zimmer. They told him he could go home if he did that unaided. But Nigel preferred his bed and sleep. In the end they asked me to spy on him. If he went to the loo on his own there was no reason he couldn’t go home. He did it but he told them he wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t embrace the future ahead of him because I guess he was scared.
Maybe we are like that this Advent Sunday. Remember the way God chose to come into the world in Bethlehem long ago was surprising and radical. It took some shepherds and some foreign dignitaries to get what was happening. Most people didn’t see it. And today we are invited to see the end – as the Bible ends – in the vision of John - He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
I rather like the college of preachers sermon for this Advent Sunday:
“To imagine that the kingdom is already here would be delusional. There is much around us about which to be anxious and fearful. The world is not yet as God wants it to be.
But because Jesus came and will come again, we do not give way to fear. Rather, we live in hope. Our faith does not permit us to ignore the pains of the present, nor is it overwhelmed by them. This world may be in thrall to sin and death, but it is still God’s world, loved by God. Our task as children of God is to be prophets of hope and agents of love.”
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