Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent
“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.”
There is an ancient advent tradition about preaching on the Four Last Things: Death and Judgment, Hell and Heaven. The doctrine of the Last Things is called Eschatology. It is a part of the creedal understanding of the Christian Faith. At first glance, it may seem a rather dark and gloomy set of concepts; things that perhaps we would rather not think about at all.
The theme of judgment certainly appears in this Sunday’s gospel and certainly there is a disturbing aspect to it. “Signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars;” Jesus says, “and upon earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” Such words are apocalyptic, cosmic and cataclysmic and such words are a feature of the advent of Christ. “Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” This is, we might say, Luke’s Apocalypse. Yet what is at issue is not simply the idea of the end times or the idea of a cosmic judgment but our attitude and approach to judgment.
The strong message of this Sunday in Advent is that we can look upon these things with hope because of what is revealed in the witness of the Scriptures. Apocalypse means the unveiling of what lies hidden; in short, revelation. The very last book of the New Testament is the Book of the Revelation – the Apocalypse– of St. John the Divine. And far from being a book of predictions about when the end times will come, an interest which has fascinated people down throughout the ages and led to no end of prophecies about days and dates which, of course, as Jesus says, “no one can know,” we are offered an imaginative and brilliant way of thinking things from the perspective of eternity. In a way, that is what is being opened out to view.
