Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Or, wearing a less clerical hat I can inform you that you have precisely 22 shopping days left until Christmas.
Clearly we can view the next three weeks through very different lens; the Church views this as a time when we look backwards to when Jesus Christ came as a baby 2,000 years ago. Yet we also look forwards to the end time when the Son of Man will come again and the Kingdom of God will be established on earth. It is a point when, as Christians, we are compelled to consider what the second coming means to us. We are invited to examine our lives and our relationship with God and so make ourselves ready for that time when we will meet God face to face.
The secular world has an entirely different agenda for the next 3 weeks; it is a time when we are expected to make preparations for the arrival of guests in our homes or when we prepare ourselves to be the perfect guests. We are urged to create the perfect habitat for enjoyment. Because in a capitalist system enjoyment is related to consumption it is inevitably a time when we spending money seems unavoidable.
Most of us will no doubt be viewing the world through a religious and secular lens; sometimes we will be led to focus on the religious significance of these 3 weeks as a period of spiritual preparation and anticipation.
At other times we will be caught up in the very practical preparations for the festive season. It is a time when most of us are compelled, metaphorically, to wear bi-focals. On the one hand we will be short-sighted -seeing only what is immediately in front of us and the TO DO’ list which has no ending. On the other hand we will be long-sighted, looking to the time when Christ will come again.
The danger of course is that we opt for single lenses and forget to correct our short-sighted view of ourselves and the world around us. It is precisely this short-sightedness that Jesus, and the prophets before him, sought to correct.
In today’s gospel passage Jesus seeks to correct our potentially short-sighted vision in 3 ways.
Firstly he describes the end time as a period when all those things in the natural world which we use to orientate ourselves will be disrupted; the sun, the moon, the stars and the sea will all bear the signs of coming destruction: People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,’. The implication is that the disintegration of the cosmos signals their own destruction. A destruction that in the Old Testament was associated with God’s judgement against those who had not heeded his word. But at this point when the Son of Man comes in power and great glory we are told to stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’.
Redemption not destruction. This is our ultimate end point. But this does not mean that there will be no judgement. The coming of the Son of Man is strongly associated with judgement. This is something we proclaim every week when we state in the creed He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’.
This judgement does not only happen when the end is upon us. We are called to engage in this process of judgement in this life as well as the life to come.
We are constantly being invited to bring ourselves before God and to see ourselves in the light of his holiness. To put it another way we are invited to engage in a life-long process of repentance.
True repentance is not simply about reciting those things that we’ve done wrong. It is about attending to who we are and what informs us in our relationships with God, with others and with ourselves. In doing so we learn to see ourselves and our world differently.
Our intention then is to learn to see through the eyes of Christ. We all know that when a tree is in bud this means summer is near. In the same way through attentiveness to God in our lives we can discern his presence and the signs of his kingdom in the world.
Finally Jesus urges us to be on guard so that we not are not caught unawares. We are to avoid those things which prevent us seeing the world, suffused with the signs of the Kingdom of God, for what it is. All those things which dull the mind and dull the senses- here represented by drunkenness and excessive worry, prevent us from seeing the signs and knowing what they mean. We know that Christ is coming and so we should not be caught off guard as others will be.
Drunkenness is a very obvious example of a time when our judgements and perceptions are skewed and distorted; when we fail to be watchful. Perhaps more interestingly worry is mentioned as something which might be similarly distorting. Worry, if anything is about being overly watchful and perceiving danger where there mightn’t be any. The thing about worry is that it is all-consuming. We cannot see clearly, or as God sees, when we are weighed down by worry.
Instead we risk being turned in on ourselves and our situation and so lack an openness to God and that perfect love which casts out all fear.
So once again we are confronted by the need to develop a way of looking at ourselves and one another which is shaped through our relationship with God. This does not mean we will look at the word through rose-tinted spectacles- far from it. A friend of mine talks movingly of the difference faith has made to her life and the different way she now perceives herself and the world around her; Before she became a Christian she unconsciously believed that her redemption lay in things which were external to her. Mostly this meant she saw the ideal romantic relationship as a way of saving her from inadequacy and loneliness. This was, if you like, her house- if a romantic attachment crumbled she disintegrated as well. Seeing signs of instability in her relationships she would worry and become fearful. Since gaining faith God has become her house. This does not mean the things of this world cease to have an impact on her but she describes them as the weather beating against the house, rather than the house itself. This for me is a very practical example of what it means to see the world through a faith lens.
Whilst it is easy to draw a distinction between a religious and a secular perception of the next three weeks there isn’t anything in this world that can’t be perceived through a spiritual lens. In Christ’s eyes everything is suffused with the potentiality of holiness. We only need to contemplate the fact that at every moment, somewhere in the world, the most ordinary, everyday things- bread and wine- are consecrated and made holy to realise that signs of the Kingdom of God lie all around us.
So let it be our prayer today that this Advent Season we will learn to discern God’s invitation to be still in his presence and so see as Christ himself sees. Amen