THE COMING OF THE LORD

The first week of Advent (Wednesday)

Mark 13:32-37 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.

"Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back — whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!'"

What does it mean to “watch”?

Some think it means to seek to discover the date of the Lord’s coming. They search the scriptures and the news “religiously”, hoping to know what neither the angels nor even the Son know. And every now and then, to their own embarrassment, they take a guess. I have a little book in my library titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could be in 1988. I suspect it’s the first in a series, 89 Reasons..., 90 Reasons..., 91 Reasons...

But, for Jesus, watching isn’t about guessing a date, but living a life of preparedness. And we do this the way faithful workers do it when the boss is away. We simply apply ourselves to doing what he told us to do. Unpreparedness is not about being surprised when the boss shows up, but being asleep. And our hope is not that the Lord will find us with our heads up searching the heavens, but with our heads down over our work.

But – and this is a question that troubles many – does watching for the return of Christ mean that we must believe that someday he will literally descend from outer space and pass through the atmosphere till his feet touch down on Mount What-ever-it-is? Personally, I don’t think so. Of course, if it happens exactly that way I’ll probably be one of the people saying “I told you so”, but I believe that those who restrict the meaning of his coming to so literal an image make it trivial.

Though “the coming of the Lord” may have an ultimate consummation, it is a constant reality, woven into the fabric of human life. It’s the existential crisis that shocks us out of our self-righteous complacency; that moment of epiphany for individuals and communities when, in a brilliant flash of true enlightenment, we see as we are seen, know as we are known. When this happens we are invariably dismayed, but far more importantly, we are changed.

Saul of Tarsus experienced “the coming of the Lord” on the Damascus road, and he became Saint Paul. Francis of Assisi was just another obscure, wounded soldier when it happened to him, and he became Saint Francis. And who are these “Spirits of Christmas”, working the miracle of transformation in Ebenezer Scrooge, but the Spirit of “the coming of the Lord”?

As Julia Ward Howe, in the midst of a tragic civil war, brooded over the suffering of her nation, a terrible certainty stole upon her in the night, and she penned these awful and wonderful lines:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

A nation or community can experience “the coming of the Lord” as surely as an individual can, but, as with individuals, only inasmuch as it will allow that its misery and mourning might be the judgement of righteousness, and inasmuch as it is willing to be changed.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung by Johnny Cash

(As Cash closes the show he sings a few lines from one of his signature songs. Love means watchfulness, and watchfulness has the capacity to shape our lives.)

THE FELLOWSHIP OF REPENTANCE

First week of Advent (Sunday)

Isaiah 64:1-6

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains would tremble before you!

As when fire sets twigs ablaze

and causes water to boil,

come down to make your name known to your enemies

and cause the nations to quake before you!

For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,

you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

Since ancient times no one has heard,

no ear has perceived,

no eye has seen any God besides you,

who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways.

We learn from the past; we live from the future. And Advent is all about learning and living, all about life.

Isaiah longs to see God in the fullness of his majesty, as he was known in days of old. He has heard the stories of deliverance: the burning bush, the plagues of Egypt, the trembling of mount Sinai, the covenant and commandments. Isaiah believes what he has heard, but this is not enough. He longs for God’s “enemies” to see God’s majesty, for the people to see it, to see it for himself.

This is Advent: looking back to the ancient past, the recent past, our personal past; embracing what we see in faith, and trusting what we learn from these experiences. But also looking forward in the hope that what has been will be again, that what was true will still be true. And, of course, it is about life right now, in the turning point between past and future. If God is the God who was, and the God who will be, then God is the God who is.

But if, as Isaiah says, “God acts on behalf of those who wait for him, and comes to the help of those who gladly do right, then who are we to long for his appearing? We tremble at the thought of his coming, realizing that we cannot casually assume that we are numbered among “the righteous”, or that his enemies are “those poor people over there”.

But when we continued to sin against [your ways],

you were angry.

How then can we be saved?

All of us have become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;

we all shrivel up like a leaf,

and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Humbled by the realization of our own sin, we call upon God to come, not with power and justice to terrify his enemies, but with mercy and grace to encompass us all. Our longing for God awakens us to our true selves: our waywardness, sin, poverty and need. One with all flesh in the mystery of iniquity, we cry out, in repentance, that all might be saved.

Rend the Heavens by Robin Mark

IT’S, FUNDAMENTALLY, ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FUNDAMENTALISM.

The science/religion battle does not engage all religion equally, but focuses upon Evangelical Christianity and Islam and, specifically, fundamentalist elements within these faith communities. Perhaps this is partly because these are the most strident religious voices, but it’s more than that. The truth is, it was the Fundamentalists who started the battle, and it’s largely been they who have kept it going. Fundamentalists are all about confrontation. But who are they really?

Fundamentalism arose in the late 19^th century within Protestant Christianity, particularly in America. It was a theological response to “Modernism”, especially “Liberal Christianity” which some believed compromised the “fundamental” Christian doctrines in an attempt to embrace new ways of thinking. Though the battle extended to new methods of Bible study, specifically historical criticism, the theory of Evolution quickly became the key battleground in terms of public perception. This perception was intensified and immortalized in the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, which focused on the teaching of Evolution in the public schools of Tennessee. The trial was popularized by the movie Inherit the Wind (1960), staring Spencer Tracy, Frederick March and Gene Kelley. And this is where the trouble really starts.

The battle over science and religion has, for many years, been largely a debate over what should be taught in the public schools. Science teachers, as a group, do not concern themselves with what’s taught in churches, but when it impinges upon science education in the classroom the gloves come off. Teachers are properly jealous of their classroom territory, and parents are just as properly jealous of their parental territory. Thus, the fuss.

The issue, of course, is authority. How will decisions in our society be made? Who will decide what is taught to the children? What is true? On what authority can anyone reasonably claim that anything is true? Who will construct the framework, story, central myth? Who will determine the shape of the world that the rest of us must live in? Fundamentalists turn to simple answers. Religious fundamentalists turn to sacred texts and a few essential articles of faith; science fundamentalists to the scientific method: systematic observation, empirical measurement, experimentation.

Most teachers and parents accept that an ongoing parent/teacher negotiation will always be central to the project of public education. But some teachers, and some parents, have visions of a final victory. They want the public school classroom to be permanently off limits to faith-based thinking, or they want their alternative views to become a permanent part of the curriculum.

But, in recent years the battle has broadened immensely and become much more complex. Other non-Christian voices, particularly Muslim, have entered the debate, with their own views, and their own fundamentalist elements. In 2001 a tiny, radical element within the Muslim fundamentalist movement attacked the World Trade Centre and the battle morphed into something quite new. It became a clash, not between parents and educators, but between science and religion, knowledge and ignorance, civilization and barbarism.

This is, essentially, a war between fundamentalists; science fundamentalists on the one hand, and religious fundamentalists on the other. But most of us are neither. Most people drift among various ways of thinking: rational and emotional, literal and metaphorical, prosaic and poetic, while fundamentalists on all sides want to reduce it all to the precision of a few simple, scientific or theological, formulas. These are reductionist folk who want to live in a simpler world than the one on offer.

Wouldn’t it be nice if science could swallow up religion and end the debate? Wouldn’t it be nice if religion could co-opt science and assign it a permanently subservient role? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just talk and listen respectfully to one another? Yes, wouldn’t it be nice?

LET’S JUST FORGET.

Way back in 1918, as the Great War was drawing to a close, US Senator, Hiram Warren Johnson, said “Truth is the first casualty of war.”, or something very like that. It was wartime, so of course we don’t actually know what he said, or if he said anything at all. But it’s a pithy statement, concise, poetic, everything a quote should be.

Johnson served in the US Senate for thirty years and died of natural causes on August 6, 1945, the day his countrymen dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At least that’s what we’re told, and there’s no obvious reason to doubt it. But, then again, we were coming to the end of yet another war. The one after the Great War that was supposed to end all war. That’s war.

JUST ANOTHER CASUALTY OF WAR

I used to wear a poppy

on Remembrance Day;

actually the first eleven days of November.

It started in my childhood,

And lasted more than fifty years.

They said, “We must remember those who died.

To bring peace they died.

To bring peace we must remember.”

But, their dying didn’t bring peace,

any more than wearing poppies

brought remembrance.

They went to war because we said

“You can kill and not be killed,

maim and not be maimed.

And, if through some miscalculation,

or unforeseeable complication,

you should be killed or maimed,

you will,

forever,

be

remembered.”

Did we know that we were lying?”

Killing brings more killing,

war more war,

poppies only poppies,

remembrance more remembrance,

memorials more memorials,

more and more and more.

Some, of course, will say,

"Those who cannot remember the past

are condemned to repeat it."

I know the quote; George Santayana.

He also said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

I used to wear a poppy

on Remembrance Day.