A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent (13/12/20): Rejoice!

 

Rejoice!

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

I will rejoice greatly in the LORD

says the prophet. In some traditions of the church the third Sunday in Advent (today) is referred to as “Gaudete Sunday ,”that is “Rejoice Sunday.” Which, I guess is why this passage from Isaiah is set for today. That is why in some advent rings one of the four candles is pink rather than red. This Sunday is a kind of mid-season break. It is set apart from the other Sundays in Advent that often call repentance and renewal of life as an appropriate preparation for the coming of Jesus. Advent is meant to be penitential season, a time for self examination and reflection. Its mood in many ways should be sombre.

There is much to regret about the state of the world and the state of our own lives. This year, perhaps more than any year, the build up to Christmas is a sombre one. We are living through a more or less unprecedented crisis. Covid has swept around the world and effected nearly every nation to a greater or lesser extent. Around the world it has infected an estimated 72 million people and been implicated in 1.6 million deaths. In our own country, as write, those numbers are 1.81 million and 63,500. That toll has marked this year with an experience of sorrow and loss in almost every place in a way that almost know previous crisis has. Just for a moment the whole world has been united in a shared experience, it it has not been a good one. And that is only the most acute and distressing aspect of this crisis. Not only has the disease been the direct cause of much suffering and death, attempts to control it have led to a transformation of our lives. Many of us have been virtual captives in our own homes for much of the year. We have been isolated from our loved ones and our networks of support. Even when we haven't been infected by the disease itself our health has suffered. Forced to remain at home, many of our limbs and joints have stiffened. Not being able to go out easily and breath fresh air has affected the health of our lungs. But it has affected not only the personal and the social aspects of our lives, it has also taken a political and economic toll. Politicians have struggled to cope, and their struggles have done noting to improve public trust in them. And the restrictions that have been set in place has damaged the livelihood of many people as businesses have struggled and failed. Yet as this has been happening, for others the experience has been an increased workload, as extra demands have been placed on “essential” workers, who often the least well paid. They often have borne the burden of maintaining as much “normality” as possible for the rest of us. 

And this has not been the only thing to burden us this year. None of the world’s other problems has gone away. The climate has continued its apparently inexorable slide from crisis into catastrophe. Ever more gloomy predictions about the speed and effects of climate change are still being made. And those effects, it is increasingly clear, will weigh most heavily on those who are already the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the world. And as all this has been happening, because of events in the United States, we have once again been reminded of racial injustices and the legacy of slavery and colonialism, both there and much nearer to home. And this list could go on, we have had barely time to notice the ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Iraq and Syria that have also added to this year’s toll of misery.

Isaiah rejoices. We might be tempted to reply “that’s easy for you!” No pink candle for us this year!

But this is precisely why we need an “Isaiah Advent” this year. Isaiah invites us to reflect deeply on the meaning of joy and rejoicing. And perhaps what is striking, but easy to overlook, is that Isaiah was able to rejoice in the midst of struggle and disappointment. It was not “easy” for him by any means. The exile of the children of Israel had ended. They had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon. But they had returned to ruins. They have struggled and failed to rebuild the temple. A failure which seems to reflect a larger failure to re-establish national life, and to become once more God’s chosen witnesses in the world. The landscape over which Isaiah looked was one of misery and frustration. Yet Isaiah rejoices!

He points us to the reality that real joy is not about personal pleasure or superficial happiness. It is not determined by the immediate circumstances that we find ourselves in. Isaiah found it possible to rejoice in the midst of hardship and disappointment. His joy, all true joy, is not determined by the immediate circumstances of our lives, be they bad or good. Isaiah’s joy comes from a deeply held assurance that the struggles and disappointments of the present moment will one day be overcome. Isaiah has an absolute faith that God will act to save his people. He is so certain that he speaks of the future as if it were already present.

My whole being shall exult in my God for he has clothed me in garments of salvation.

Of course this passage is perhaps familiar to us already. When Jesus begins his preaching ministry, he goes to synagogue in Nazareth. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah is unrolled to the this passage, and Jesus reads:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. . . 

The incident and the words which Jesus reads are sometimes referred to as the Nazareth Manifesto. Isaiah announces, and Jesus reads, and we continue to believe, that this is a succinct portrayal of the mission of God. This is what God intends to do. And is perhaps right to call it a manifesto since it has a distinctly political tone. God promises a great reversal. Those who are oppressed and broken hearted will receive good news. Whatever it is that is holding people down or holding people back, and very often this the words which are spoken to them, or the find they speak about themselves, whatever that is, it will be replaced by good news. God will speak a word that lifts the spirits of the downtrodden and the down hearted. With that word comes also the announcement of release for those held captive and those imprisoned. Above all God is a God of freedom. God promises liberty from captivities both literal and metaphoric. God promises a world where flourishing is possible for all human beings. Frustration and disappointment will be swept away God will speak a word of comfort to those who mourn. That will be word spoken to both those who mourn a personal loss, but also those who regret the state of the world. God will comfort those who are anguished by the injustice and apparent futility of our existence. All that sorrow will be turned around to joy. God will speak and act:

to give them a garland instead of ashes

the oil of gladness instead of mourning

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit

All this talk already has a background among God’s people as Isaiah was speaking. This is a language of Jubilee. Every 50 years in the life of Israel the were supposed to press the reset button. Debts were cancelled and the land redistributed evenly among all the people. God’s intention is that no one among his people become rich at the cost of poverty of others, no one should be powerful by oppressing others. Jubilee was a mechanism established to prevent the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Jubilee was this promised great reversal put into action Whatever the current circumstances people find themselves in, God’s promise is that all the negatives will be restored.

In Isaiah’s case, in the immediate setting in which these words were spoken, he is able to promise that the ruined cities of Judah will be rebuild. That despite their failures and setbacks national life will be re-established.

Our perspective is a little different. Not long after Isaiah had spoken these words also became associated with the idea of someone who God would send, the one on whom the Spirit of God rests who speaks at the beginning of the passage. This passage very quickly becomes associated with the Messiah. That is why when Jesus reads these words in Nazareth, his sermon is a single sentence:

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:21)

And as Christians we trust in the accuracy and truthfulness of that assessment of Jesus of himself. We believe and trust that Jesus in and by and through whom these things will be brought about. Through Jesus, God’s promised reversal, God’s great and permanent Jubilee, made by Isaiah is what we continue to look towards.

At the heart of these words and this idea of Jubilee and the great reversal in fortunes lies the character of God. These things will happen because of who God is, and what God is like. In the middle of this passage God speaks directly and speaks about himself:

For I the LORD love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing.

Martin Luther King, during one the earlier outbreaks of resistance against racial and economic injustice said:

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. There is much in history and in the present moment which is to be regretted. There is much in our own lives that is source of sorrow and disappointment. But like Martin Luther King we should recognise that that our perspective is small. Even this year as dreadful as it has been is just one small scene in a very long drama. Our faith, our confidence, is that the underlying plot is a positive one. Behind the world that we see, which at times seems cold and heartless, lies the God of love and justice. Because of that all the negatives that we see and experience will be turned to positives. Sorrow will become joy. Captivity will become freedom. Even death will become life. Because God is the God who speaks through Isaiah, and who sends Jesus.

We read Isaiah’s words at almost the darkest moment in the year. In a little more than a week we will reach the shortest day. Perhaps this year this is metaphorical as well as actual. The days and the weather are gloomy. And to some extent they may reflect our mood. But I heard someone say the other day: “In the dark it is easiest to see the light” I began Advent by saying “This too shall pass.” That is certain. Isaiah rejoices in the midst of his struggles and frustrations and disappointment because has an absolute confidence in God. What God has promised God will do. The current darkness will be made light. Perhaps with the arrival a vaccine we can begin to see an end to this crisis. Perhaps this time the voices raised to demand racial and economic justice will be heard and acted upon. But even if they are not, God is good and because of that the arc of history bends toward justice. That jubilee, that great reversal will take place. As we reach the shortest day of the year there is a turn around. Slowly at first and then more quickly the days lengthen. Light and life return to the world. That is the kind of certainty and confidence Isaiah has in God:

for as the earth brings forth its shoots and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

That is why, even now, we can rejoice.

Amen.

Rejoice! by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon fo the Second Sunday in Advent (06/12/20): Your God Is Here!

Your God is Here!

Isaiah 40:1-11

Isaiah is given access to the heavenly council. He is allowed to overhear a conversation between the heavenly beings. He doesn’t hear God speak directly, but what he does hear comes with the authority of God. After they have spoken one of the Heavenly beings turns to him and commands:

“Cry out!”

Isaiah is told by one of those who exist in the presence of God to preach. Isaiah’s response is one that is probably recognised and even uttered by every preacher faced with making an announcement to God’s people, as they must:

“What shall I cry out?”

Very few people have had the privileged access to the heavenly places that Isaiah receives. Even those of us who are required on a regular basis to speak about and for God can’t know God and God’s intention to the degree that Isaiah does. At some point all of us, the whole people of God, will have to speak of what we know of God, share our experience of the divine. For every believer there will come a point where we must say: “What shall I cry out?” It is a matter always of having some experience of what God is like, what God has done, is doing or will do, and speaking of that. Whether we are preaching, interpreting the scriptures from a pulpit Sunday by Sunday, or sharing something of our testimony intimately with trusted loved ones, the challenge is the same, what must we say about and for God?

Fortunately Isaiah records the answer he receives to that question, and it is answer which might apply as the underlying foundation for all our conversation about God:

“All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. . . but the word of our God will stand forever.”

Perhaps one thing that is most consistent of our experience is that of constant change. What it has been like for us to live through the modern era has been an experience of constant and accelerating change. Nothing stays the same. We for the most part experience this negatively. Nothing can be relied upon, often people least of all. There is, as the heavenly being points out to Isaiah, something transitory, passing about human existence. One minute we are here, flourishing and glorious like a beautiful flower, and the next we are gone. But, there is more to this than just angst and our fear of loss.

There is a Persian adage: “this too shall pass” The legend that goes with the saying suggests that there once was a Sultan who asked his wise men to come up with a saying which would be true and appropriate at all times and every situation. His wise men came up with: “And this too shall pass away.” The Sultan had the words inscribed on a ring so that he could always look at it, and in moments of triumph and pride be returned to humility and reality. But the words also apply in times of loss and sorrow, for these too will pass. The wise men arrived at essentially the same insight as the one given to Isaiah by the heavenly being. The changeableness of our existence is not entirely negative. Even the bad things will pass away too.

Advent is a time in which we look forward, and look forward to change, something new that is about to happen. In an Advent which comes at then end of year in which we have had so much difficult, and we have been trapped in a seemingly endlessly locked-down state of existence, it is important for us to hear, that this too will pass. God is about to do something new!

But this is because behind the transience, the impermanence of the human condition lies the constancy of God. Isaiah is given more than the Sultan’s wise men discovered:

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

The situation in which we as human beings have to express our faith is constantly changing. But one thing never changes, the constancy of God. So whilst Isaiah is given an insight into the changeableness of what it is to be human, he is also given an insight into what it is to preach or to share our faith. That is to set against the changeableness of the human condition the constancy of God. How the news of God sounds depends on where we find ourselves in those cycles of change. I said last week that some years in Advent we have to hear the sharpness of John the Baptists demand to repent and turn back to God. In other years we need to hear the comforting words of Isaiah, and this is one of those years.

The conversation which Isaiah has overheard in the heavenly court gives precisely that message: 

“Comfort, O comfort my people says your God."

One of the heavenly beings is telling others that God has announced that it is time for them to comfort his people. Another moment of change has arrived. The situation of God’s people is about to pass into a new phase. For decades the people of Israel have been stuck in exile in Babylon. They were taken there after Jerusalem was conquered and Israel’s independence came to an end. During those decades they had grasped that this was a consequence of their failure to remain faithful to God. They were victims of their inconstancy, their inability to remain true and consistently committed to the covenant they had with God. But the announcement in the heavenly council makes it clear, that time of exile has come to its end. For all their unfaithfulness God still says of them “my people”. In the past they may have broken with God, but God has never broken with them. And now their time of suffering is ending. The consequences of their actions have fully played out. Indeed the pendulum has already swung too far the other way. But this too shall pass.

A second voice in the heavenly council speaks. It tells the others we needs to be done now: 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

The traditional focus of the second Sunday in Advent is John the Baptist. And this reading from Isaiah is particularly associated with him. It is because, in a creative partial misquote of these words, the first Christians recognised that John obeys this commandment made in the heavenly council. Mark beginning his gospel declares that John is:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness. . .” (Mark 1:3)

Everybody knows that John’s voice spoke, out in the wilderness, beside the river Jordan. He seems to fit Isaiah’s prophecy perfectly. And with the addition of an ingeniously implied comma between “wilderness” and “prepare” he does. Mark is not wrong to do this. Since John does clearly prepare the way for the coming of Jesus. Which is why of course he comes to our minds in the run up to Christmas. But at the moment these words word spoken something else was in mind as well.

The usual route from Babylon back to Jerusalem was around not through the wilderness. It involved a journey that started out travelling north-west which gradually turned left, bending first west and eventually south. God has something else in mind for his people. He will come and retrieve them by the most direct route possible. Not just straight there, but every obstacle in the path will be levelled out too. The change which God promises his people is dramatic. Their circumstances will be utterly transformed, and in the most astonishing fashion. What God does for his people makes everyone else sit up and pay attention. God makes himself known in the transformations he brings about in the lives of those who trust him.

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

And this is the moment at which Isaiah the prophet begins the second phase of his ministry. He gives comfort to the exiles who are about to find out that their suffering is ending. Having overheard the conversation in the heavenly court Isaiah goes to his people and announces:

“Here is your God!”

Perhaps what is striking is that despite the uniqueness of the moment the message which is spoken remains the same. Whatever circumstances God’s people find themselves in, good or bad, in faithful suffering or forgetful complacency, the same word is spoken. What the heavenly being declare is true:

“The word of our God will stand forever.”

Not only is this the announcement which Isaiah makes, it is also essentially the same announcement which John the Baptist makes:

“Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2)

Which in the context of John’s speaking sounds like a sharp rebuke. In the context of complacency and unfaithfulness the idea the God is near does sound quite threatening. But it is also essentially  the same message which Jesus himself announces:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” (Mark 1:15)

Perhaps we hear his words more as a comfort. But there is a constant and it is God’s word about himself. God is very near to us. Which is especially the point as we are beginning to think about the way God comes to us in Christmas. The message of Christmas is “God is with us”, too! And the assurance that God’s presence is there to deliver us from the difficulties that surround us, even now, and to take care of us and protect us.

Perhaps if the wise men in the story about the Sultan had been a little more wise, or if they had had the access to heaven which Isaiah had, they would have come up with a different saying which would be true and appropriate at all times and every situation. Something that is sharp challenge in times of satisfaction and complacency, and a comfort in times of sorrow and suffering. That saying is what we hear and what we still proclaim. When we ask hat we can and must say about God the answer is always essentially the same:

“Your God is here!”

Amen.

You God Is Here! by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

                                                      

A Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent (29/11/20): An Isaiah Advent

An Isaiah Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9

The other day I was watching a webinar by my favourite contemporary theologians: Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon.They were discussing how preachers should approach Advent. In particular, in view of everything that has been happening in this last year, how preachers should approach this Advent. They said that in Advent we are presented with a choice: Either we can have the sharpness of John the Baptist, or we can have the comfort of the prophet Isaiah. The choice, they suggested, is between John’s bitingly clear call to repentance, and Isaiah’s promise of God’s rescue. In view of where we are now, and what has been happening, they concluded, what we need this year is an Isaiah Advent.

Isaiah lived through critical, even catastrophic times in the history of Israel. He saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon. He experience the end of the independence of the people of Israel, and went through the times in which there was a real risk in which they would lose their identity as God’s people. By the time he spoke the words which we have just heard, he was at least back in Jerusalem. The people were struggling to re-establish national life, begin again their witness as God’s people. But even here things didn’t seem to be going right. Isaiah cries out: 

O that you would tear open the heavens.

Is this despair, or is it hope? Isaiah reaches a point where all he can do is cry out: “Oh God!”

In the past year, every time we have put on the television news we have perhaps found reason to gasp, “Oh God!” As if being threatened with environmental collapse were not enough, or that divided and ill tempered politics weren’t sufficient, we are living through a global pandemic. Which not only has destroyed lives but is also destroying livelihoods which sustain lives. And in the midst of all that, once more racial injustice has also been brought back into sharper focus. “Oh God! Is this not enough?”

Perhaps it is desperation. Isaiah calls out to God when there is no one else left to turn to. Isaiah is hardly unusual in this respect. I suspect that more or less everyone, even those who claim not to believe, pray in this way. Even when it looks and sounds like a profanity, I wonder also if it is not a completely sincere prayer. There are some situations which are so desperate, some crises that are so threatening, that God is indeed the only place to turn.

But in Isaiah’s case I think it is more than despair. It is hope. He trusts that God will act. God will break down the barrier that exists between human beings and God. God will intervene to rescue his people, who place their trust in him.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for modern people to accept and to believe is the idea that God acts. We find it hard sometimes to believe that God would or even could intervene. Our understanding of the world leads us to believe that we live in a closed system of cause and effect. There are the laws of nature and they cannot be broken. Yet looking back over our lives many of us, in hindsight, could identify moments of grace. There have been times when all we could do was trust in the goodness of God, and our trust was not disappointed.

Isaiah looked back over his own life and the history of his people and arrived at a similar conclusion: 

From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you who works wonders for those who wait for him.

Looking into the past, and previous experiences of God’s grace and God’s goodness to him and his people, Isaiah is able to conclude that God does indeed act, even within the laws of nature and the closed systems of cause and effect.

Isaiah is the New Testament’s book of the Hebrew Bible. Christians have a particular way of reading Isaiah and the other prophets. We see what Isaiah and the other spoke about God fulfilled in the life of Jesus. The hope which Isaiah expresses become an especially clear reality in Jesus. And especially in the image of the heavens being torn open.

Today is the first Sunday of a new lectionary year which we means that we begin reading a different Gospel today, this year the Gospel is Mark. It is no accident that the ministry of Jesus described in Mark’s Gospel begins and ends with the tearing open of the boundary between humans and God. At his baptism Jesus does see the heavens torn open. And the Holy Spirit descends upon him, marking his ministry as God intervening and active in our world. As Jesus dies on the cross, the curtain in the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom, marking the end of that boundary that separates humans from God. Isaiah looks back and gains confidence for the future when he sees God has done in the past. Christians likewise have hope, even in an Advent like this one, because they can look back to the ministry of Jesus and see what God has already done. 

But it is not that Isaiah is all comfort, without any of the sharpness of John the Baptist! Isaiah recognises that he and his people have responsibility in the circumstances they find themselves in. Perhaps the same could be said of us now. Sometimes it can be very difficult to disentangle the degrees of responsibility we as a the human race and as individuals must bear for the circumstances we find ourselves in. How much of what we have seen in the last year just the accidents of history, have they just happen to have happened? And how much is down to us? And how much of that blame rests on the human race as a whole? How much on certain individuals within our race? And how much do we have to blame ourselves as individuals? 

The ruin of the earth’s environment does look like it’s “our” fault? The human race as a whole is to blame. But how much impact individuals are actually having is difficult to say. It’s too easy to shift the blame onto everyone, when no one has been given much choice about how they are able to live. On the other hand most of the damage to the environment is being done by a relatively small number of corporations. These organisations are run by individuals who make the decisions, and as the environmental movement points out, these individuals have names and they have addresses.

Covid perhaps does look like one of those things that happen to have happened. Except that the destruction of the environment has a role in the transmission of diseases found among animals into human populations. Covid follows on from swine flu and bird flu. And Covid’s spread has been slowed or accelerated by the choices which societies, governments have made.

Our fractious politics and racial justice look like they are beyond our control. Yet whether we like it or not we are part of those systems that we have benefited from or been victim of. We are so tangled up in the mess that the world is in that we cannot be sure that even our best effort to do what is right and what Is good are not some how corrupted. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed of the burden of guilt that it is being held responsible for things we couldn’t have taken responsibility for.

Isaiah feels the same conflicted sense of reproach and guilt. He knows that he and his people have failed. Individually and collectively they are to blame. But at the same time he also recognises that there is much in their situation that was out of their control. Typical of a Psalm – since that is what Isaiah has given us here – typical of a Psalm, Isaiah’s words are not afraid to reproach God. Isaiah voice his sorrow and anger and frustration and directs them towards God:

But you were angry and we sinned, because you hid yourself we transgressed. 

No more than we can, Isaiah cannot disentangle the different layers of responsibility for the crisis he was living through. But he does acknowledge that he and his neighbours do have to carry some of the blame themselves. The sharpness of John cannot be altogether avoided in Advent, with his call to confession and repentance. Isaiah offers God his confession: 

We have all become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

Advent is a time of looking forward. We take it as a time to look forward to the celebration of Christmas. But in reality it is more profound season of looking forward. It is about looking beyond our current circumstances towards a future which God is promising. We long for the current crises to be brought to end. We want an answer to the crisis in the environment to be found. We long for a vaccine and a reliable cure to Covid be developed, so that our normal live can be restored. And as Christians we must seek reconciliation and demand justice. All of this weighs heavy on us now so that we might cry out:

O that you would tear open the heavens.

Isaiah knows that is a prayer that will be answered. He is confident in God. But he also knows that anyone who prays to God like that must be prepared to wait. Because he knows that God can be relied upon to act when least expected. His confidence grows out not just from what he has already seen God do, but from who those actions show God to be:

Yet O Lord you are our Father.

As followers of Jesus we have greater grounds for confidence than Isaiah that that is true. God is our Father, he has made us all and hates nothing that he has made. God works only good for those who trust him and wait for him. That is the kind of Advent we need this year.

Amen.

An Isaiah Advent by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Last Sunday before Advent (22/11/20): When the Son of Man Comes

 

When the Son of Man Comes

Matthew 25:31-46

This is the end of Jesus’ teaching ministry. Three years of wandering and three years of speaking to everyone who would listen reaches its climax here. This is the completion of everything he has tried to reveal. Jesus pictures “the Son of Man” coming in glory. He takes up the ancient image of the one who will arrive, riding on the clouds to establish the reign of God on earth. But “the Son of Man”, simply “human being” is the one title he has consistently used of himself.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on the throne of his glory.

Jesus promises his own return. This time when he comes, it will not be not as a helpless child who grows with a fragile vulnerable human body. But it will be as one who while they look like a human being, also shares the visible quality of the divine, glory! This time there will be no mistaking who he his. There will be no room for doubt. This time there will be no possibility of denial or rejection. There will be no question that Jesus is Lord. This point will be reinforced because the Son of Man will arrive accompanied by an angel army. 

This is quite unlike anything else that Jesus has shown us. Almost all of his talk about the kingdom has been veiled. The kingdom of heaven has always been very near at hand with Jesus. But it has always remained just out of sight, hinted at, alluded to. Jesus has spoken of God’s rule obliquely. He has hinted at it in other things. He has told stories about servants and masters, about wedding feasts and their guests, about fathers and their obedient and disobedient sons. Indeed he has told stories about all three of these in the moments leading up to this promise of the coming of the Son of Man. His stories up to now have begun in the “this-worldly”, and have used what we already know and already experience as a window for us to peer through. Then suddenly he has always surprised us, in some strange twist of his story telling he shows us for a moment a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven, what God’s reign will be like. But here, nothing is hidden. He speaks with absolute candour and complete directness.

Yet this very exposure hides the reality from us! The strangeness of the picture leaves us struggling to comprehend: the Sone of Man, glory, angels, and one seated on a throne with all the nations gathered before him. This is beyond what we have known or felt. This strangeness leaves our minds and our emotions wanting to reject what we are being shown. Yet this is what Jesus is holding our for us and for the whole world. This is the final decisive promise to be found in everything he has taught us. He will come in glory, and he will finally and fully establish God’s peaceful and just reign among us.

As much as his picture of the end of the future is strange, his portrayal of the world is realistic and familiar. Jesus’ portrayal of the end of history points us to the reality which has existed all along. All along there have been two kingdoms. From the beginning of time it was ever thus. There has been a kingdom where God has reigned. And there has been a negative counter kingdom. The two have always existed confused and interwoven in the ambiguities of history. Though God’s rule is immeasurably stronger than its opposite the two have always existed together. This is so even if at times the two kingdoms have seemed almost equally matched, and that opposite kingdom has been the one which has been much easier to see. God’s final victory and everlasting reign has never been in doubt. Even as we have witnessed evil thrive, and have seen terrible suffering inflicted. We have also seen grace and mercy, love and kindness emerge and survive even in the midst of those things. The arrival of the Son of Man signals the separation of those two kingdoms. His arrival will fulfil the deepest longing of the whole human race. The end of history will be when all the ambiguities are removed. Good and evil will be disentangled from one another. There will be no more confusion between what might be good and what is evil. What is good will be kept forever. What is evil will be destroyed. The last words of Jesus’ teaching hold out this promise for us. He will return. Evil will be removed. God’s reign of peace will be fully established. However it is actually put into words this is in fact the aspiration of every human society, every culture, every ideology, every religion. The whole human race race longs for the end of suffering and the triumph of goodness.

It is a common feature of Jesus’ teaching to make that division into two parts. Most recently as he has taught in the temple he has pointed again and again to two groups: He has spoken of the wise and the foolish. He has spoken of the worth and the worthless. And he has spoken of the obedient and the disobedient. So it is no surprise that in is final image he pictures the Son of Man sitting on the throne of glory and:

He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats

The end of history is a judgement. Perhaps this is the most discomforting part of the picture for us. We have become resistant to the idea of judgement. And our discomfort is not lessened by the images which Jesus leaves us with as the outcome of this great separation:

You that are accursed, depart from me into the fire prepared for the devil and all his angels.

And his final image:

And these – those to his left, the goat, the unrighteous – will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.

Part of us, and it’s not the best part of us, does fantasise destruction, and punishment of the worst sort on evil doers. And to some extent we as as a society act out those fantasies against those whom we judge criminal. But it is precisely this that which makes the better part of us uncomfortable with the everlasting judgement made in this scene. We have been witnesses to too much of the possibility of injustice to ever feel that a truly just judgement could be possible, especially not one as final as the on being offered here. There are those we are convinced deserve that everlasting judgement against them, but where that boundary, between the sheep and the goats, between the righteous and the accursed, where that boundary lies is a concern to us. It is a concern as old as Abraham and his anxiety over God’s proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. As we move away from the clearly and decisively evil we worry about final judgement resting against anyone, and become uncomfortable with the notion of judgement at all. We worry even about finding ourselves on the right side of the great separation when that time comes.

Jesus is conscious of this, which is why his final sequence of parables addressed to his followers - some of which we have listened to over the last couple of weeks – deal with this topic. He has warned his followers to be productive and to be aware. But in the end for us that separation is made on the basis of our relationship with him. Jesus is the key to this final scene. He is decisive in the separation which takes place. He is the one who comes. He is the king of sits on the throne. He is the judge who passes judgement on the righteous and unrighteous. He is the shepherd who separates the sheep from the goats. Which is why we can have confidence in the justice of that last judgement. Jesus is Lord!

What might be easy to miss, is that we are not directly participants in the scene which Jesus is picturing. We are bystanders here. What Jesus pictures for this final moment of history is a gathering together of “all the nations.” There is something lost in translation here. What it says is: πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (panta ta ethne). Which is literally “all the nations”, but also has a more technical meaning. It could equally be translated: All the Gentiles. Those who gather before Jesus are all those who are not already part of God’s people. Everyone’s being and everyone’s ultimate future depends on Jesus, whether they know it or not. Jesus is Lord! This is the decisive claim of Christianity. And it is a universal claim. Jesus is Lord of everyone and everything in every place and every time. This is another aspect of the Christian message which sometimes now discomforts us. 

But the test which Jesus sets is a simple one: Do you feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned. The standard by which Jesus as shepherd and judge separates the people of the world is clear. Do you care for the vulnerable around you? Actually there is noting distinctively Christian about this standard. A wide range of religions, philosophies and moral codes would agree that these actions would form the basis of what we might call righteous behaviour. In the end this is about morality, it is about ethics. Jesus at this point says nothing about faith or belief whatsoever. For the nations and for each person amongst them it really does come down to whether you live a good life or not. Ethics is primary.

But as I said we are bystanders in this scene. This is not the standard which is being applied to us. When it comes to his own Jesus does talk about faith and about trust and about loyalty. It is about our relationship, individually and as a people to him. Except, how is that loyalty expressed? The nations are mystified when judgement is passed against them. Both sides, both the righteous and the accursed cannot understand what has happened to them, and how they missed the test that had been set:

When was it Lord that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison.

Neither the righteous nor the accursed recognised the presence of Jesus in the world. Both acted out of their own characters, for good or evil. In the end they are being judged for the content of their souls. We too will be judged for the content of our souls, a content which is shaped by our loyalty Jesus and the effect that loyalty has on who we are. So the question in all of Jesus teaching for us, in all his promises and warnings about the coming of God’s kingdom, is; where do we find Jesus and how do we express that loyalty? And this is determined by one last thing which Jesus says about himself:

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned. Where human needs exists there Jesus is to be found. Those who know nothing of Jesus can be and will be judged by Jesus because he is always present in the poor and vulnerable. How they are treated is how he is being treated. The answer to the question, how do we express or faith, how do we show our loyalty to Jesus? is the same. By taking care of those in need. In a different place Jesus expresses his final teaching to those who are his followers in different words:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Amen.

When the Son of Man Comes by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0