by CCW | 17 November 2013 14:34
In the November grey of desolation and decay, the church year runs out in the greater themes of judgment and mercy, of hope and glory. The church year does not take its measure from the civil or secular calendar but from our relation to the substantial moments in the life of Christ. Advent, so soon upon us, marks the beginning of a new year, a new year of grace. We take our beginning from the motion of God’s love towards us, his Advent. We take our beginning from our looking towards his coming.
His coming is twofold: there is judgment and mercy; there is hope and glory. Now, in this time of endings, there is the gathering up or the summing up of our lives in the light of God’s grace and in the hope of his glory. Then, in the time of Advent’s beginnings, there is the sense of starting out anew in faith and hope, a new beginning in the remembrance of the motion of God’s love towards us in the coming of Christ, our Judge and Saviour. There is the sense of ending and beginning in hope.
There is the sense of apocalypse. We read today, for instance, from what is sometimes called the “Matthaean Apocalypse”. That section of his gospel deals with the end-time and the theme of judgment, with eschatology. We have also been reading at Morning and Evening Prayer from those books which are found between the Old Testament and the New Testament called collectively, The Apocrypha. These writings contain various forms of apocalyptic literature. The term “apocrypha” literally means “things hidden away;” the words “apocalyptic” and “apocalypse,” on the other hand, refer to what is revealed or uncovered.
In general, we confront the uncovering of all things from the standpoint of God, a consideration of how things stand in the sight of God’s all-knowing, absolute and total judgment. In particular, we confront the unveiling of our souls and lives in the light of God’s truth revealed in Jesus Christ.
There is nothing soft and sentimental about any of this. It may seem terribly harsh and perfectly dreadful. We all cringe at the idea of death and judgment. In so doing, we miss the point. The judgment is itself the mercy. We are reminded – strongly reminded – that our lives are lived in the sight of God “from whom no secrets are hid, and all desires are known.” We are reminded that who we are is altogether bound up in his Word and Will for us. “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God, and so we are,” as St. John puts it in the Epistle. The question is, will we resist and deny or will we accept and follow? Will we acknowledge the struggle and allow ourselves to be called to account?
Judgment is not something external and arbitrary. It has altogether to do with the truth of our thoughts and actions, the unveiling, as it were, of our true intentions. That, of course, can be most terrifying if we are simply left with the terror of our own knowledge of our own intentions. Our hearts are exposed by God’s truth. We stand convicted of all manner of evil intent, all manner of angry, dark, malicious, lustful, and hurtful thoughts, not to mention deeds and actions.
But if we are not accountable to God, how can we be accountable to one another? How can we live with ourselves in the awareness of our darkness? We can’t, except by persistence in denial, except by willing the darkness and refusing the light in which forgiveness dwells, persisting in a contradiction that is altogether unlivable because it is simply untrue. Yet God will not leave us in the darkness. He would call us into the light of his truth. Such is the mercy of his judgment.
Two paths are open to us. There is the path of revolt or the path of repentance, our turning away from God or our turning back to God.
Apocalyptic visions are fearful things, to be sure. But there are two kinds of fear; a fear which paralyzes and a fear which propels us into motion. On the one hand, the fear that paralyzes is when we call what is good evil and what is evil good, when we refuse to look at our lives in the light of God’s truth both in itself and in the good order of his creation and in his moral law. We paralyze ourselves. We paralyze ourselves because we will not look towards God. We distance ourselves from God’s truth and that is the judgment.
The fear that propels us into motion, on the other hand, that stirs up the heart, is holy fear. It seeks to walk in the light of God’s truth unveiled to us. It hates what God hates and loves what God loves. It seeks the goodness of God and brings that measure to bear upon our lives: in repentance for sins committed; in amendment of life; in the constant looking towards God and ordering all things to him in love; in the desire for purity, for the holiness of God. Only then can we say with Julian of Norwich that indeed, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well,” adding with T.S. Eliot, “by the purification of the motive/In the ground of our beseeching.” Our praying is our desiring.
Holy fear honours the truth of God. Holy fear opens us to God’s love of his own truth, to God’s holy judgment, to the righteousness of Christ, “the son of righteousness” who arises, as Malachi says, “with healing in his wings.” There is the mercy and there is the hope.
The grey month of November signals a time of remembering and a time of spiritual awakening. We arise to walk in the ways of truth and righteousness. That we may do so is the mercy of God and the hope of God in us.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church,
Trinity XXV, 2013, 8:00am
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