The Son of Man is coming -
Sermon for Christchurch, Hengrove, 30th November, 1997
Texts: Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Luke 21: 25-36
Aim: to encourage us to live out
hope in the face of the reality of suffering, by reflecting on the coming of
the Son of Man.
(N.B. Start with thanks and prayer)
I've been ill recently - I've had one of these chest
infections that gives you a persistent cough and leaves you feeling tired. Maybe some of you have had it - virtually
everyone has. When you are ill it can
seem like everything you were used to is somehow falling apart. Anyway, two weeks ago I was lying in bed,
coughing and feeling tired and listening to Radio 4. This medical expert came on the radio and pronounced cheerfully
down my ear, "A cough that won't go away, and a feeling of tiredness could
well be signs of a fatal lung disease."
Oh great, I thought, "I was feeling bad enough anyway!" The following week I was still poorly, so I
went to the doctor's and was prescribed some antibiotics that would apparently
get rid of anything. Feeling cheered, I
went home, took a pill, and turned on Radio 4 again. This time the medical expert spoke to me again: "I can't
understand why it is that people just go to the doctor's, take any prescription
that's thrown at them, and swallow these drugs without any thought as to what
the side effects may be." Now I
was really scared. I got out the little
leaflet that came with my medication, looked up side effects, and this is what
it said: (read leaflet). It's a miracle I'm here really!
Why am I moaning on to you like this? Well, it struck me that sometimes we can
look at the world and feel like it, too, is falling apart, or that it is
suffering from a whole load of side effects.
Sometimes we can feel that all we ever hear are prophets of doom over
the radio, telling us things are getting worse, and we can often, if we are
honest, be tempted to despair at the way things are going - terrorism,
disasters, famine, corruption - the list is endless, and sounds a bit like the
leaflet I have just read out to you. I
used to work at St Bernadette School round the corner, and one day my tutor
group had a visit from a group of Mums in KWADS (Knowle West Against Drugs),
maybe some of you know them. Some of
these women had lost their children to drugs.
Even on our own streets we see the effects of a world which seems to be
out of control, sometimes, if we are honest with ourselves, it can feel that we
are living in a world without God.
John Bunyan's
"Pilgrim's Progress" is a fictional tale about a man named
"Christian", and his journey to get to the heavenly city. Along the way he encounters all kinds of
temptations, dangers, and characters.
On one occasion Christian, and his companion Hopeful, stray into Doubting Castle and come face to
face with Giant Despair. On the first night he beats them senseless, on the
second night he suggests that they kill themselves, and when these tactics fail
to overwhelm them, he leads them to his palace courtyard where he shows them
the bones of all those who have been killed before, of those who have become
overwhelmed by him. But Christian and
Hopeful refuse to be bowed. When the
Giant reports this to his wife, she replies, with uncanny perception,
"Either they are nursing a secret hope of being rescued, or they have
managed to hide a tool with which they mean, at the right moment, to pick the
castle locks and escape..."
"They have some secret hope of being
rescued...." Here we are at the
beginning of Advent, the beginning of a new Christian Year. What secret hope does advent hold for
us? How can we live with the reality of
our world without being overwhelmed by Giant Despair ourselves? In the reading we have had Jesus fully acknowledges
the presence of evil and suffering in the world. He talks about the whole universe seeming to be in chaos, of the
environment being turned on its head - "There will be signs in the sun,
the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the
roaring of the sea and the waves."
People are fainting from fear and foreboding. Earlier in the chapter he talks about wars, insurrections,
earthquakes, famines and plagues. This
is no "pie in the sky when you die" vision Jesus has got. He never claims that we, or the rest of the
world will be immune from these things.
He doesn't ask his disciples to shut their eyes, or shut themselves away
and literally let the world go to hell.
Many other religions and belief systems have encouraged this, but not
Jesus.
No, when we see these things, what are we to do? Verse 28 provides Jesus' answer: "Now
when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near." Lift up your heads. Have hope.
That's what he calls us, as Christians to do. In some mysterious way, we are even asked to see the destruction
that surrounds us as announcing his arrival.
It's a bit like having a baby - before it arrives there is an awful lot
of pain that the mother has to bear, but it has to be gone through for the new
life to arrive. Paul uses this image in
Romans when he says, " We know that the whole creation has been groaning
in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves...For in
hope we were saved."
This Advent we are waiting in hope for a baby to
arrive. We hope that the baby who knew
all of our human frailty will return as the Son of Man with great power and
glory. That the one whose birth was
announced by a single star will come back to us, with stars following him, to
redeem the universe. That the child who
was pursued by an evil king will execute righteousness and justice in the way
we long for. That he will turn our
broken cities and streets into the places of safety which Jeremiah prophesied. It's impossible to imagine what Jesus'
return will be like - our minds are too full of science fiction and
X-Files-style alien landings to be able to cope with the reality of this
vision. But this Advent we are called to make his return the promise and the
hope we live by.
We are waiting for a baby, we have been promised the
Son of Man. When you are waiting for a
baby to arrive, in my experience, you don't sit around doing nothing. You certainly don't try to go to sleep. If I had said to my wife on the birth of our
two boys, "Wake me up when it's over," I would not have been a
popular husband! Rather, we do
everything we can to prepare for the baby's arrival. We get the baby's world ready and we do what we can to reduce the
suffering of our wife. Thus the mothers
in KWADS turned their tragedy into hope by trying to stop the kids in this area
from getting into drugs. In the
"Pilgrim's Progress" it's a hidden "key of promise" that
Christian had had all along that enables Hopeful and himself to escape from
Giant Despair. Hope calls us to act,
not to wait passively.
I'd like to finish with two stories about a man who in
the bleakest period of our century was able to live out this hope, in the face
of the starkest evil. Father
Maximillian Kolbe was a Catholic priest from Poland. He was a tireless missionary in his homeland, and in Japan. But when the Second World War came he was
imprisoned in Auschwitz, where he was beaten and humiliated by his guards. Many were overwhelmed by Giant Despair in
that place (and whenever I think about it I know I would have been one of
them), and would throw themselves at the electrified fences that surrounded the
camp. It seemed like a "world
without God". One evening, a
prisoner, Joseph Stemler, was ordered by an SS man to report to hospital in
order to remove the day's tally of corpses to the crematorium. One of the bodies was that of a young man
who had obviously been cruelly tortured before death. Stemler almost fainted, and the SS guard screamed curses at
him. "Then," he says, "I
heard a voice say quite calmly: "Shall we take him together, my
brother?" When we had finished
carrying the bodies, reporting their numbers to the SS, and piling them on top
of the huge mountain of corpses waiting to be incinerated, I was at the end of
my tether. My companion edged me gently
to the door, and when I heard his whispered, "May he rest in peace,"
I knew it was Father Kolbe."
The second story concerns his death. One day, a prisoner escaped from the camp.
The Gestapo's rule was that for every escapee, ten prisoners would be starved to
death, in an underground cell with no light or air. Maximillian was not one of the ten chosen, but asked to be taken
instead of a man who was in despair at never seeing his family again. He and the other prisoners were thrown naked
onto the dirt floor, and the guards waited for them to die. But instead of the expected screams and
groans, over the next two weeks the guards grew used to hearing prayers and
hymns coming from Cell 18, as Maximillian led the others. He had not only given his life for one prisoner,
he was enabling nine others to die as human beings. He was the last to die, and was eventually given a lethal
injection. Those who had died lay like
heaps of rags, but he was still to be found, at each inspection, propped
against the wall, looking calmly into the faces of his persecutors. "Lower your eyes," commanded the
SS. "Do not look at us like
that."
As we approach Christmas, let's speak hope to each other and to the
people who live near us. When we are
tempted to despair at the changes we see around us, at the never-ending
catalogue of destruction even in our own hometown, let's encourage each other
not to grow weary in our waiting. Let's
remember that the baby born in the straw, the one who faced suffering and death
in the face, will one day return in glory to execute righteousness and justice
and wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Let's stand up and raise our heads.