Advent Sunday

"Now when you see these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near."

Forget about jets racing cars and speedboats – nothing travels as fast as time when you are middle aged. Time flies as the saying goes. But not always. The film director Billy Wilder was once asked how he liked a new film. He replied: ‘To give you an idea, the film started at 8:00pm. I looked at my watch at midnight, and it was only 8:15pm. Depending upon what you are doing time can pass very slowly or extremely fast.

Today is Advent Sunday.  The first Sunday of the Church’s year.  A new year in the church’s liturgical cycle – so ‘Happy New year everybody’ and our next hymn will be Auld Lang Syne. As new church year begins we could think for a moment about the significance of time. And so a bit of philosophy.

Human beings have two contrasting experiences and understandings of time. One sees time as circular going round and round in eternal circles. Everything that happens has happened before and will happen again. The other view is that time is linear. There is the past which has gone. The present which is here. And the future which will be. If you think about it I guess that our experience of the passing of time contains both circular and linear elements. This will be my 60^th Advent Sunday. My 27^th Advent Sunday since I was ordained. Every year the church repeats what we call the Liturgical Cycle of seasons and days. We say Advent and Christmas have come round again. (This is reflected in the Advent ring the four candles in a circle). But we also experience time as linear. Our own bodies remind us of this. As time passes we hear ourselves saying ‘Oh I can’t do what I used to be able to do’. ‘I’ve got bones and muscles aching that years ago I didn't know that I’d got’.

The famous detective crime writer Agatha Christie once said that an archaeologist is the best kind of husband that a wife could have because the older she gets the more interesting she becomes’. We remember what we used to be able to do. We know our present limitations. We worry about further wear and tear in the future. Our bodies remind us that time is past, present, and future – linear. (Again the Advent ring tells us the same story because the four candles lead to a destination at Christmas.)

Whether we see the passage of time as circular or linear time certainly does move on. It can be like sand it can pass through your fingers and you wonder where it has gone. Time is a topic in the Gospel reading for today. This reading from the 21^st chapter of St Luke’s Gospel is his version of the last public teaching of Jesus. He is on the Mount of Olives with his disciples looking out over the great Temple stretched out below them – it would have been a marvelous site one of the wonders of the world. Jesus has been talking about the destruction of the Temple which would have been a terrible fate for his disciples to contemplate. But then Jesus goes on to broaden his teaching even further. He begins to talk about the end time and terrible events that will precede the end time. Those terrible events are described by Jesus in the conventional apocalyptic language of the time. Signs in the sun and the moon and the stars. Great distress as the heaven and the earth are shaken.

All down the years misguided religious zealots have misunderstood these words of Jesus and applied them to contemporary events. So this imagery has been made to stand for everything from the Black Death in the Middle Ages to the Nuclear winter of modern times. As we read all this it is very tempting to fasten upon the frightful imagery and to forget those words of Jesus. ‘When these things begin to take place stand up and hold your heads high because your redemption is near.

This passage is not about a cruel and vengeful God wreaking havoc upon what he has created like some crazed and petulant child with a toy he’s made. No this passage difficult though it is, is about hope and redemption and God’s final plan for a world that will finally be ruled by Jesus the Son Of Man who will bring God’s justice and God’s righteousness and God’s peace to the world. That is the redemption to which Jesus is pointing. And it is full of the wonderful hope and the glorious expectation of a world made new.

So what has all of this to do with time? Well two things. First that time is moving towards an end: it has a purpose. That end and that purpose are in God’s hands. Everything is moving towards that end and that completion which will be the fulfillment of all time when God’s justice and Gods’ peace and God’s righteousness finally are complete and God in Christ will reign supreme over all things. That is the end or the purpose to which time is moving. When we speak about the end of time we are really talking about the purpose to towards which time is moving. The second point is that we are therefore answerable to God for the way in which we use our time. That’s the teaching about the fig tree. Jesus is saying be on your guard that you use your time well. Don’t think that you have got for ever - you haven’t  - so make the best of what you have. Jesus is very wide-ranging. He says don’t fill your time with meaningless pleasure but don’t let your selves be depressed with worrying either. Instead always be ready for the end time to come and hasten its coming and your readiness for it by prayer.

Through our prayer we bring the justice and the righteousness and the peace of God into the mess and the muddle and the confusion of our lives and the life of the world. That is what prayer does.  It brings the triumphant, redeeming end time love of God to the world of today.

So then what is Jesus saying to us as time passes into another Church year on this first Sunday of Advent? First.  There is an end time. Time is moving towards a completion a purpose. Time will not just go on and on in some meaningless and futile continuum. It is moving towards an end. Second, that purpose and that completion are in God’s hands.  He is the lord of time, the past, the present and the future. He knows when all this will be so leave the worrying to him and don’t worry yourselves he is in charge. Third, the God who has created us at the beginning and who will be with us at the end is a God who can be trusted. We are in his hands and those hands are righteous, just and peaceful. Look at what God has done in the past in the history of his people in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and in the continuing life of the world through his spirit and know therefore that he is a God who can be trusted. God has set a limit to the reign of unrighteousness, injustice and warfare. Fourth, we are to use the time that we have to work for justice and righteousness and peace in our lives and in the life of the world and above all to make prayer the foundation of our lives and of all that we do. Then in the words of Jesus we can stand upright and hopeful knowing that our redemption is drawing near.