December 12th, 2024
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
As I record this video many will be recovering from the last 3 weeks of severe weather. We heard a loud crash when we were putting up Christmas decoration last weekend. It was the tree you can see over the river. 150 years or so of growth ended by a gust at 4.30 on Saturday afternoon. There seems something particularly tragic about one of these majestic specimens being brought down. I’m sure the council will plant another, but it will take many years before it matches it predecessor.
We should be prepared for further weather shocks like these as the climate warms up. Higher average temperature will comprise much less average and far more extremes. Action is being taken to address the climate crisis, but it seems too little too late. As a nation we are more resilient to these shocks. People in other parts of the world are much less so.
Advent is meant to be a season of hope, but as 2024 draws to a close there is much in the news that could make us depressed. In addition to global warming, wars continue unabated in Ukraine and other parts of the world. Bloodless regime change in Syria is a very welcome, but there is little precedent for a disparate coalition of resistance groups forming a new government that prevents strife between different factions.
People will ask us, “where is the hope in all this?” If they are asking, “where is the mechanism for things to get better”, our answer will be nuanced. Jesus never promised his followers an easy life. In fact, he said, “in this world you will have trouble.” As he anticipated both the demise of Jerusalem and the end of the world in Matthew’s Gospel, he said, “you will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” Some have taken this interpretive lens to see the imminence of Christ’s return in particular times of crisis, but of course this is just a description of the world as it is and has always been. Reflecting on these words deepens the question of where our hope lies and indeed what Christian hope actually is.
If you follow the morning prayer lectionary readings it may be that you have found the diet of readings from Revelation similarly incomprehensible. We have had a steady diet of plagues, destruction and mayhem. From our perspective, it’s hard to see how those Christians under severe persecution in the first century, would have read it as it was intended – a book of encouragement, comfort and hope. To us the symbolism is harsh and difficult to understand. Much is explained in the text, but much isn’t. In many ways it is the ancient equivalent of emoticons or icons that our smartphones suggest to us to express an emotional response to messages we receive. I’m not very good at those, but I can see how one could express a message with nearly only icons and symbols and convey a great deal of meaning quite succinctly. Revelation consists largely in such symbolic meaning. It comes as a relief to read clearer passages where the meaning is more directly based in the words rather than the symbols they convey – but perhaps that’s just because I have a more linear brain!
The goal of this writing is to expose a deeper reality lying beneath the one we see. This is not about changing reality, so much as imbuing events with a deeper significance. It is placing their contemporary history into an eternal perspective. As we sang at a licencing service a few days ago, “God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year”. Advent hope lies in our confidence that God is at work moving history to a good conclusion, even when at times it doesn’t feel or even look like it. Much of the symbolism of Revelation focussed on the image of the lamb, looking as if it had been slain. This is a rich symbol calling us to a God who both works his purpose out in the world, but also suffers with it. Our hope is that Christ is with the world in its confusion and pain, weaving even human sinfulness into the story. One day there will be no more mourning, or crying or pain for the old order of things will have passed away.
+Richard