If Jesus were to return today would he say that we could have tried harder, done better?
As we enter into this new church year we are in, both our Old Testament lesson from the prophet Isaiah and in our gospel lesson from Matthew, being given urgent appeals - appeals to shake us up, stir us into action. Perhaps this Sunday should be named 'Stir up Sunday', a name previously given to last Sunday, the Sunday before advent, that gave us advance warning of the new year to come!
In Isaiah, who is the prophet so familiar to us for prophesising the coming of Jesus, the prophet whose messages we hear and sing so passionately in Handel's Messiah and who in today's passage urges God's people Israel up the mountain of the Lord. The Lord who will teach them his ways so that they can walk in his path. And this is precisely what Jesus did, he taught his disciples his ways and urged them to walk in his path and so the examples come down to us through the centuries via scripture.
We know from the gospels that Jesus used parables as a way of putting his message over to the disciples and in Matthew today we have heard 3 mini parables. These parables were Jesus reply to his disciples question that we can read earlier in the chapter, the question regarding when the end time would come. Jesus told them that only God knows the day and the hour but that they had to be constantly watchful in preparation for his coming.
How would Matthew's first audience have heard this message?
The Gospel of Matthew is thought to have been written around the year 80 of the Common Era not long after the destruction of Jerusalem, a time of great turmoil, a time that Jesus had forewarned off and had happened but an event that had caught many unawares, as had the flood back in Noah's time. The people in Noah's story, as we heard this morning, had been going about their everyday business, eating and drinking, making plans, getting married. So Matthew is urging confidence in his community, thought to be Jewish Christians, to, while they are going about their everyday lives, be very watchful for the promised return of Jesus, a promise that was certain as it had come from Jesus. They would be judged on their watchfulness.
The early Christian communities were strongly influenced by wandering prophets who spread the Christian message as they travelled around. Matthew is alert to these characters, on the guard against false prophets. His community were seen as a sect who followed Christ's example and laws and achieving holiness was very important to this community. Matthew stresses imitation of the example that Jesus set seeing Jesus as a new, but greater teacher than, Moses.
So does this passage help us with my question - if Jesus were to return today would he say that we could have tried harder, done better?
Is the message given to us by Matthew that, as we go about our day to day lives, and at this time, preparing for Christmas, we should be ever watchful, even though there are so many tasks to be completed with only 22 shopping days before Christmas?
As we enter into this new Advent, we once again begin the vigil of watching and waiting for the birth of Jesus and the return of Jesus, sure in the knowledge that with the return of Him we will be transformed into the new kingdom.
As Jen spoke of 2 weeks ago, we enter into this vigil every year but each year is different, we are different, our church is different, our world is different. We have all moved on in our journey, we have all been changed by our experiences, surely, not one of us can say that we have not been changed.
For me this year has certainly been a year of change, many changes but one memory I have of this time last year as I entered the season of Advent, as well as waiting and watching for the birth of Jesus and the return of Jesus I was, as were my colleagues in Elmwood College preparing for another event - that of a visit in the new year from Her Majesties' inspectorate. What we knew, however, was the timing of their arrival down to the date and the hour, and also the framework for their judgement. So, there was little excuse for us not to be prepared and we were and we were not found wanting, well not very wanting, and in the process all who were involved were changed, whether they knew it or not!!
We may not know the day or the hour of Jesus, the Son of Man's, return but we do know the framework by which we will be judged - watchfulness and the expectation that we will act as Jesus exemplified while we are waiting and watching. The Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount give us that framework.
Kenneth Stevenson, the Bishop of Portsmouth, in his new book 'Watching and Waiting' - the book that our All Saints' Advent Book Group are working through has a wonderful few lines on the importance of Advent. He writes "It is not just a case of keeping something going 'at church' while another rather different world rushes around shopping, cooking, and spending too much money perhaps. Advent, so far from being an isolated set of Sundays that takes us through December to the Christmas crib, is much more".
On Friday, St Andrew's day John Bell of the Iona Community presented Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day'. Naturally, he spoke of Andrew, Peter's brother and of their ministry being of pointing to something other than themselves and this has been their lasting legacy. Can this be ours? Can this be part of the question, If, Jesus were to return today would he say that we could have tried harder, done better?
Finally, on this the first day of our church new year, perhaps we can, as part of our waiting and watching, consider Andrew and Peter's ministry and ask ourselves if we as individuals, as a community worshipping in this place, as the Scottish Episcopal Church within the world wide church could have the same said about us.
And may I, as your new curate, in this my first Advent among you, wish you all a Happy New Church Year!
Amen.
Sermon by: Christine Barclay