Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 26:36-44
Today as we start our new year in the Church, I'm reminded of a friend who, on hearing that I was to be ordained, asked what that involved. And when I mentioned preaching he was very intrigued. What will you preach about? The Scriptures, I said. What will you preach about when you have finished those? I hadn't thought of that. In some consternation I went off and asked my mentor, a very senior and experienced priest. I don't know either, he said. I've only been preaching 35 years so it hasn't arisen yet.
That's part of the marvel of the Scriptures. Every year for close to two thousand years now the Church has been telling the same story over and over again. Think of the greatest novels ever written – Dickens, Jane Austen, Tolstoy, or whoever is your pick – which of those stories could be told and re-told, read and re-read, to the same people year after year without them becoming a tad stale?
Yet the Scriptures retain their freshness – their unique ability to shock, to surprise, to warn, to encourage, and generally to excite and hold our interest no matter how often we hear them. That's due, of course, to the Holy Spirit, who speaks to us through the Scriptures, leading us ever deeper into their truth. Someone has said that the Church reads the Scriptures, not in a circular way, going round and round and round again, but in a spiral, going round and down, exploring them at ever greater depth. Our prayer, then at the start of a new year, is that the Holy Spirit will continue to guide us as we spiral down into the truth that God has chosen to reveal about himself through the pages of the Scriptures.
At the same time, we must remember that the story itself does not spiral, and it certainly doesn't go around in circles! Like all great stories it has a beginning a middle and an end. And like all great stories it only finally makes sense in the end. Stories only convince us if, when we know the ending, we can see how it has arrived at that ending. We can look back and see how the beginning led to and through the middle to the end. It hangs together. It makes sense as a whole. Our story, God's story, is like that. It only makes sense as a whole. We need to know the end so that we can understand the beginning and the middle.
And so this morning we start where we left off last week. Then we were celebrating the end of the story, the coronation of Jesus as the king over all creation. We were reminded of the great vision of the prophets, especially Jeremiah last week, who looked to a time when all the peoples of the world would come to Jerusalem to worship the one true God. We were reminded that this was the end God had in mind from the very beginning. This was God's purpose in creating all things, to have creation as something other than himself, something to love and be loved by.
And we have been reminded throughout the last year that we are living in the middle of the story: that God is still working his purposes out as year succeeds to year. We know how the story began, we know how it ends, and we know what our part is as we live out our lives in the in-between time, in-between the beginning and the end – in between the coming of Christ and his return.
So our first reading is from that other great prophet of the future, Isaiah, often called the Prophet of the Advent. Over the next few weeks we will hear again his astonishing prophecies concerning the birth of Christ, and in the New Year as we move towards Easter we will reflect again on his prophecies about Christ's suffering.
But first, today we have his view of the end of all things as God's great creative vision reaches its fulfilment. Like Jeremiah, Isaiah sees a time when all the nations of the world will be united in their worship of the God of Israel. He sees it symbolised as people streaming to the Temple, the House of God, to be taught his ways, the way of life. And he sees a new world in which there will be no more wars between nations, and all the wealth and material that is now wasted on the production of armaments will be turned into agricultural tools for the production of food.
No more hunger, no more disease, no more war. A world renewed in accordance with that vision, that will of God. A world of peace and justice for all. That is what our story is about, that is where we are headed, that is the marvellous and surprising end to which we are called. The prophets saw it and proclaimed it to the people of their day. Through the mercy of God, the Holy Spirit has preserved their words, collected them together, and gives them to us fresh every year through the pages of the Scriptures. What then must we do in response?
First and foremost, we must say yes to God. We must accept his gracious invitation to be a part of his story, to become actors, characters, participants in it. Not just to accept it in a passive sense, grudgingly, as some Eastern religions would have us do. We're not talking Fate here, or karma : we're talking relationship, the relationship into which God is calling the whole of his creation through humanity. As we say our yes to God so we advance the story, bring it just a bit closer to the end.
That's one of the great strands of St Paul's teaching. Each day is a day nearer the fulfilment of that wonderful vision of a new world. Every time we do something that is consistent with that vision, so we help to implement it: every time we forgive, every time we turn the other cheek, every time we reach out to others in their best interests and not our own, every generous act or thought, every prayer for the good of others, every gift of money or goods to meet the needs of others – all of that and more means a step closer to the redemption of the whole of creation. That's what the Christian story involves as it unfolds through time.
That's what St Paul is on about in our reading from his Letter to the Romans this morning. He is a marvellous combination of visionary and pragmatist. His vision is just as broad and deep as Isaiah's, but now he says something simple and straightforward. Believers should lead decent lives. Which part of that can't we understand? We shouldn't waste our time in satisfying our selfish needs and instincts. Life's too short. Time is running out. This is urgent. It could be tomorrow. Are we prepared to meet the Risen Christ face to face tomorrow?
And being St Paul, he throws in a wonderful image for us to ponder. "Clothe yourselves', he says, "with the Lord Jesus Christ". Recently, Rose and I attended a diocesan training day, and at one point we were in a small group reflecting together on the Parable of the Wedding Feast. St Matthew's version is rather fiery, and has a strange reference to one of the guests being found without the proper wedding attire. What on earth was all that about? I think St Paul is giving us the answer here. The proper wedding attire is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The Christian lifestyle is about conforming to the image of Christ. Following his example, his way of life.
And doing it now, the only time in which we can do anything. I have always remembered a conversation I heard between a mother and the Vicar of our parish. The mother was explaining why her teenage son had stopped attending church. He had, she said, discovered girls. But she wasn't too worried. He was young: there was plenty of time for him to rediscover his faith. To which the Vicar replied: "Is there? How do you know?"
I thought at the time that the Vicar's comment was a bit harsh; but now I'm not so sure. "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son but only the Father." Or as we say in one of our liturgies, "Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of our salvation."
That's why we must tell and keep telling our story. It really is that urgent.
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