2 Before Advent

Sermon preached by the Revd Anna Matthews

The week before last I was in Paris for a few days’ leave. Given the restrictions Covid has forced on us, a quick train journey under the Channel felt as adventurous as a trip to the moon, but the familiar landmarks were still there. One of my favourite things to do in a city is to wander around, getting not-quite-lost and seeing where I end up. I criss-crossed the Seine various times, and on several occasions found myself near Notre Dame. 

The two towers still stand proud against the skyline. They are dwarfed by the crane that makes a right angle over them, and the rest of the building is covered in a complicated array of scaffolding. On the hoardings that keep out the public is an exhibition telling the story of the cathedral’s restoration and the meticulous and specialist work of reconstruction that is underway.

Many of us will remember seeing the videos and pictures from the night in April 2019 when fire engulfed the church. I felt then a sense of helpless sadness as the flames devoured the roof and filled the transepts, marking a fiery cross against the night sky. Even in secular France, as crowds gathered in stunned shock, thousands took up the chant ‘Ave Maria’.

Buildings are often more than edifices of brick and stone and wood. Notre Dame was built as a symbol of Paris’s economic, political and cultural power in France. It’s witnessed the crowning of monarchs – and then emperors; its immortalising by Victor Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame secured not just its lasting place in our cultural imagination, but its much-needed nineteenth century restoration. And in 1944 it was Notre Dame’s gigantic tenor bell that sounded the end of Nazi occupation in France. It’s not just a building.

And if you can remember a bit of what it felt like to see Notre Dame burn, then you can begin to imagine the sense of utter devastation for the people of Israel when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed.

The temple was one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world. Renovated and expanded by Herod, it occupied about a sixth of the ancient city, its stones of gleaming white topped with dazzling gold. This is what Jesus and his disciples are looking out at from the Mount of Olives. These fine buildings are the geographical, theological and spiritual heart of Israel. The temple is the place where God’s glory dwells. It is a sign in stone of God’s promise to be Israel’s God, and their covenant response to be his people.

And Jesus says ‘Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’

And in 70 AD this is what came to pass, as the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, a nadir in a war that, according to one contemporary historian, claimed more than a million lives.

There will be wars and rumours of wars. Not one stone will be left upon another. Do not be alarmed.

But how can you not be alarmed when everything is falling apart? When the very building that stands as the promise of God’s faithful abiding among his people is destroyed, where is God?

And for the Christians for whom Mark writes, who are facing persecution of their own for following Jesus, what else is in store? Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes; there will be famines, says Jesus. And this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

We could update it. There will be fires and floods. There will be environmental collapse and catastrophe. There will be pandemics, and more wars. There will be massive population shifts and deepening inequality. Is this still the birth pangs? And the birth pangs of what?

Jesus is using apocalyptic language here, of the sort we might be more familiar with from the book of Revelation. The way apocalyptic functions in popular culture, and in parts of the church, it’s a mechanism for scaring us into action, or securing our obedience. But biblical apocalyptic is there to provoke us to hope. When Jesus says that the end is coming, this is good news. Because he is the end, the Alpha and the Omega. Amid all the catastrophes that unfold stands the promise of his kingdom, and his abiding presence. Biblical apocalyptic looks all the world’s horrors in the eye and proclaims that the dominant powers of sin or empire or systems that degrade the planet and its people are not the ultimate power. God is.

The word apocalyptic comes from the Greek meaning to uncover. Apocalyptic lifts the lid on the untruths and the fantasies with which we live, and shows us what’s underneath. Lift the lid on the climate crisis and we see individual and corporate sin, failure to safeguard creation’s integrity or care for our neighbour, a situation that demands our repentance, conversion of life, and action. Lift the lid on the pandemic and we see exposed the structural inequalities of race and class, the fragility of our systems and our own mortality. Lift the lid on the world’s wars and we see intractable conflict, historic injustices, our human capacity for wickedness and violence. Is it any wonder many of us prefer to keep the lid firmly on?

And when it all feels overwhelming – and it can – Jesus’ words to his disciples are for us, too. Do not be alarmed. Do not be afraid. God is still Emmanuel, God with us.

Now that doesn’t mean a quietist acceptance of the world as it currently is. We are not absolved from sharing in God’s care and purposes for his creation, and just because most of us have a buffer from the worst effects of the world’s pain doesn’t mean we can ignore the cries of those suffering now. Jesus doesn’t reassure his disciples that they will escape suffering, or that their faith will insulate them from pain. He teaches them, and us, to pray ‘your kingdom come’, and amid the birth pangs of the new creation this is to remain the prayer that shapes our longing and our action.

The temple will fall, and the disciples will be afraid, but God is still God. Persecution will come, and the disciples will be arrested, and Jesus is still faithful. And the one who bids the disciples not to be alarmed is the one whom the powers of the world thought they had conquered by nailing him to a cross. But on the third day he rose again. The crucifixion looked like the end for Jesus, and for his disciples, and for his gospel of forgiveness and peace and mercy. The falling of the temple felt like the end for many of the people of Israel. Throughout history wars and cataclysmic events that shake us and scare us can make us think the end is upon us. But Jesus shows us the end of the world. It’s his reign in his peaceable kingdom, the new creation where death and sin and evil have no dominion. To pray ‘your kingdom come’ fixes our eyes and our hope on him.

And that hope shapes our actions as we seek to serve Christ and his kingdom. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, ‘let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’

 Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together. Can you volunteer for the Cambridge Churches Homeless Project or the Besom, or pray for them? Can you commit to making a change in your lifestyle that will honour God’s command to care for his creation? Can your asking for help that you need give someone else the chance to show love or goodness? Can our meeting together and commitment to each another genuinely be a sign of the new creation as we encounter Christ in scripture, in sacrament, and in one another?

These might feel like small actions in the face of global threats. Shelter and a meal and some company for a homeless person. A flat redecorated for a family escaping abuse. A small reduction in carbon emissions. A space opened up that graces vulnerability with kindness. A community made a sign of Christ’s kingdom by showing what his love looks like in practice. But this is how we sustain hope not just for ourselves but for others, and face all that is being uncovered without despair. We do it by seeking and finding and serving and loving the Christ who never abandons his own, who goes on being God-with-us though temples and empires and systems may crumble and fall, and who sustains us through all the turmoil of this present age with the promise of the kingdom that cannot be shaken, where he lives and reigns, our beginning and our end.