3 Before Advent

Sermon preached by the Revd Canon Richard Ames-Lewis

The COP 26 conference in Glasgow has concentrated all our minds on the future of our precious planet and focussed our prayers on the words and actions of national leaders and their teams, praying for a successful outcome.

In my prayers I have found one particular prayer arresting. It comes from Common Worship Daily Prayer and is the collect for Tuesday evening. It goes like this:

Abide with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and day is drawing to a close.
Abide with us and with your whole Church,
in the evening of the day,
in the evening of life,
in the evening of the world;
Abide with us and all your faithful ones, O Lord,
in time and in eternity.
Amen.

This prayer was written, long before we’d heard of climate change, by Bishop George Appleton, and first published in the Oxford Book of Prayer in 1982.

I must admit I used to think it was rather downbeat to think of “the evening of the world”. Surely not. Surely God is continually sustaining his world, new every morning. Creation itself is renewed in the miracle of the changing seasons - exemplifying resurrection itself. To think of the world having an “evening” is to suggest that its end is not far away, that the long trajectory of our planet, through its eons and millennia is now working itself out and will at some point move into night. Surely not?

But to be confronted with climate change is to face the limitations of our planet, which up until recently we thought was limitless, like the providence of God himself. Climate change confronts us with the effect of our exploitation of the planet’s natural resources and our degradation of wildlife on land, in the sea and in the air. Perhaps it is not unthinkable in such a context of limitedness to conceive of our world as having an “evening”, as a prelude to a night and then, we hope, some kind of new dawn, some kind of global resurrection.

Indeed, Christian theology has always taught that there will be an end, a consummation, an eschaton, a kingdom-come, when the Lord will return in judgement and love. Jesus tells us that we may not know the day or the hour but we are to live in a state of readiness. So the “evening of the world”, whatever we mean by it, may perhaps be associated with the Advent hope of the second coming of the Lord.

Our readings today help us take this idea a bit further and give us some guidance about how we are to respond.

We have a threatened catastrophe in the Old Testament lesson. Compared with the threatened climate catastrophe, it is small but total: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown” cries Jonah to the hapless people of that great city. In the face of the end of all things, they proclaim a fast; they put on sackcloth. And God changes his mind about the calamity that he has said he would bring upon them; and he does not do it. What a relief that the mind of God is changeable. But facing our context, what might it mean for us to proclaim a fast or to put on sackcloth? Certainly, we are being told about changing our lifestyle. We may not stay where we are.

The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews doesn’t talk about catastrophe. But it talks about the need to make sacrifice for sin, and how this sacrifice has been made by Christ, as “he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” …. “Having been offered once to bear the sins of many, he will appear a second time, to save those who are eagerly waiting for him”.  This Christ is the eternal logos, the Word created in the beginning of time. At a particular point in history, and in a particular place, the Word was made flesh, The Christ, enfleshed in Jesus, has made the one true sacrifice, offered once for all to take away our sins. Now we wait for his appearance a second time. Our response is to wait, eagerly.

Our gospel reading, from the beginning of Mark’s gospel, takes us to Galilee. Here Jesus, the incarnate Word, is proclaiming the good news of God “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news”. There’s an urgency, a crisis almost, behind this proclamation. To put the proclamation into effect we see Jesus going down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee to call his first disciples. He sees Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. And Jesus says to them “Follow me and I will make you fish for people”. And immediately they leave their nets and follow him. A little farther on, he sees James and John the sons of Zebedee, and he calls them, “Follow me.”

 The calling of the disciples is a response to the crisis, proclaimed by Jesus, of the nearness of the Kingdom of God and the need to repent and believe the good news. He calls to each one “Follow me”. He doesn’t say “stay where you are”, or even use that famous phrase “grow where you are planted” (a phrase which I am rather fond of). Rather, he cries out “Follow me”. Leave where you are, allow yourself to move and be changed. Allow the incoming Kingdom of God to take control of your lives.

 And those fishermen immediately rise up and follow him. No hesitation. No looking back. For they have met with Jesus, the incarnate Word, whose magnetic personality has attracted them inescapably. They want the Kingdom of God. They want to know how to repent. They want to know how to believe the good news.

 And the Kingdom for which they, and we, long has been inaugurated but not yet fulfilled. We are in an in-between time – a Kingdom season – between the first coming and the second. We are called to follow to take part in the building of the Kingdom, to prepare, to keep awake, against the day when the work of Christ will finally be accomplished.

 So, as we begin to live in the “evening of the world”, surrounded by evidence of the climate crisis, we must respond. Our lifestyle must change, each of us on our own possible way, as we put the future of our planet first. But as followers of Christ, we are to change our lives with repentance and eager waiting. And with faith and hope in the limitless love of God.