“ABANDON HOPE?”
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A sermon preached Readings: Jeremiah
33:14-22, Luke 21:20-28 |
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Blake: Dante and Virgil at the gates of Hell |
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"Now when these things begin to take place,
stand up and raise your heads,
because the day of your redemption is drawing near" (Lk
21:28)
On Tuesday this week the UN Food and
Agriculture Agency
produced a report entitled “The State of Food
Insecurity in the World”
It says that says nearly 850 million people go to bed hungry every night,
mainly in Africa and Asia
The numbers are getting worse, and says the report,
“bluntly stated the problem is not so much a lack of food as of political
will”
Tomorrow is World AIDS Day,
and we remember those suffering from AIDS in our prayers.
It is now estimated that there are 42 million people
living with HIV/AIDS,
with more than three million AIDS related deaths every year.
That is more people dying
in each and every one of the 365 days of the year
than died on Sept 11th when the Twin Towers collapsed.
And the system of world economics which keeps the
poor starving
also keeps AIDS drugs funding tied to patents
and so keep the drugs out of financial reach of those who need them most.
Welcome
to the human race in the 21st Century.
In
Dante's Inferno there is a sign over the door
for those entering hell which reads:
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here".
And
watching the TV news, are we tempted to do just that?
And
say "The world is literally in a hell of a mess, and its
beyond hope"
Either that or we just opt out and pretend it isn't
happening
"Some viewers may find the following news
report disturbing"
"Quick mother change channels to Emmerdale or the football -
we don't want to be forced to
face up the hell of real life thank you"
Are
those the choices, given the mess the world is in? -
throw our hands up in despair, or bury our head in the sand?
NO,
says Jesus, there is another way
"Now
when these (terrible) things begin to take place,
stand up and raise your heads,
because the day of your redemption is drawing near (Lk
21:28).
This is
the first Sunday of Advent –
when traditionally we think about the end of time
and the final coming of Christ in glory.
The
Gospels often talk about the final coming of Christ
coming at the end of a great and cataclysmic series of disasters –
So
the passage we read today from Luke 21
gives a devastating catalogue of
crisis and convulsion, war, earthquakes, famines, pestilence,
persecutions, inquisitions, racial hatreds, martyrdoms;
the
whole world gone mad.
These
tend not to be the favourite reading of many Christians today -
they have after all been all too often associated
with the theological lunatic fringe –
In
Frederick Bueckner’s words –
these passages are too often the happy hunting ground of
”millennial sects climbing
to the tops of hills in their white robes
to wait for the end of the world that never comes.
Knocking on the backdoor to hand out their tracts
and ask if we have been washed in the blood of the lamb.”
[Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark,
quoted in Thornton and Washburn, Times Greatest Sermons, Harper Collins 1999,
p755]
Such
folk have frequently plundered
the apocalyptic imagery of the New Testament
to promise hell and damnation on all outside their own sectarian clique.
But
that is quite to miss the point.
These are words of hope –
When
these things come to pass, said Jesus,
when all is hatred and violence and despair,
- then, of all things, says Jesus,
"Look up! Lift up your
heads!
For the day of your redemption is drawing near."
In
God's power even the worst of times can be the best of times -
never give up hope in God who is more powerful than the greatest calamity.
A message indeed for our troubled and turbulent era.
As
I worked at my desk last night
I was listening the Mandela AIDS concert webcast.
Suddenly I heard the old 80s classic
”Sweet dreams are made of this” with the words
“Keep your head up movin’
on,
Sweet dreams are made of this….”
Which pretty much echoes the
words of Jesus I was reading,
"Look up!
Lift up your heads!
For the
day of your redemption is drawing near."
A Eurythmics Gospel message for AIDS sufferers and all in need
One of the most moving stories
in the many volumes of the Nuremberg war crimes trials
tells how some hundreds of Jews were being shot down by the Nazis,
mown down by machine-gun fire across open graves.
Among them stood an old man and a little boy.
Before they died, the old man bent down and spoke to
the boy.
What he said will never be known,
but as they died the old Jew
raised his right arm and pointed to the sky.
[Gordon Rupp, Principalities and Powers, Epworth
Press 1952, p40]
"Now
when these things begin to take place,
stand up and raise your heads,
because the day of your redemption is drawing near” (Lk
21:28).
The
old man was pointing beyond the horrors of history
to something beyond - to the coming salvation of God.
The
Methodist historian Herbert Butterfield,
once described everything that happened in the world
as being like the notes of the piano -
And the whole of history like someone playing a piano piece.
But then he said -
that at the end of the day there
is
"one note higher than
the top of the piano" -
and when that note is heard, it
takes us beyond the historical record
into the realm of the saving
righteousness of God.
So Jesus says
"when these
(horrendous) things come to pass, stand up and raise your heads,
because the day of your redemption is drawing near" (Lk 21:28).
The pianist may be crashing out discords fortissimo,
but God has other notes to play –
When
things go well, we are oh so tempted to rely on ourselves,
to be smug, complacent -
We
are so full of ourselves that there is no room for God.
But
when we have been knocked to the lowest level,
and
all is awry,
When
there is nothing left within us
then we are most open to God.
There
is within us an aching void
As someone
once said - that aching void becomes like
"a vacuum into which the deep waters of God rise".
Max Josef Metzger was a Catholic priest martyred by
the Nazis.
Each evening in his already gloomy cell,
he watched the evening shadows
deepen, and wrote this –
"He knows not Advent's meaning who has never
sat
By twilight in a dreary cell, its
window dim;
…Evening falls, slowly steals away the sun
Night throws her gloomy mantle around the room
Terrifying, impenetrable.
Will it always be night?
Will ne'er a ray of sunshine pierce the gloom?
And a new day lead on to joy?
A faint light glimmers through the narrow rift, a
witness
That the sun sets never and soon will rise again,
Yes, that the light on which men turned their backs,
The Lord will bring again, with power and glory,
And found his everlasting kingdom.
I believe in Advent!”
[AP Castle, Quotes and Anecdotes, Kevin Mayhew,
1994, p.414]
And
that is the advent message -
Yes
it is a message that we must live through
the pain of the sins and failures of ourselves and others,
but
that ultimately the light shines on in the darkness,
and the darkness cannot overcome it.
The
hymn "Rock of Ages" was famously written by Toplady
in the midst of a colossal storm
as he sheltered deep in the crevice of a huge rock,
watching the storm roar beyond.
Prof James Stewart spoke about the Rock of Ages
in a sermon he preached in the darkest days of the Second World War.
In
it he said that
if you really wanted to sing 'Rock of Ages' as it should be sung,
you had to feel the storm on your face
and the foundations shake under your feet
Only then could you sing it properly:
"You have to know the darkness of advent
waiting
before you can know the thrill of Christmas morning …
and the sheer irrepressible excitement
of that ringing tumultuous shout
'Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!'
You have to look into the abyss of doubt and despair
before you can really believe.
You have to see everything falling from your grasp
and cry 'Nothing in my hands I bring'
before Christ's strong, pierced hands can grip and hold you."
[James Stewart, The Strong Name, T&T Clark 1940
p10-11]
"
when
these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because the day of your redemption is drawing near”
Raise
your heads:
When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark
Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone.
So
let’s fight to cure AIDS
Let’s
fight to end hunger –
For
this is God’s work.
And
when everything seems in darkness and ruin
¨ In the world at large
¨ Or in your own life
Let
us not abandon hope –
For
¨ It is when the prison cell
is darkest
that the advent light shines brightest,
¨ It when earthly life is
ending
that we find an arm around our shoulder pointing us to the heavens,
¨ It is when the music crashes
the discord
that we hear the music of the spheres
¨ It when we are empty and
wrung out and dry,
that the life giving water of God's presence can most easily rush in.
¨ It is when our hands are
emptiest
that we can best find the saving hands of Christ
¨ It is in the very eye of the
storm
that we discover we never walk alone.
¨ It is when the road we walk
seems most hellish and hopeless
that we discover it leads straight to Bethlehem.
In short,
It is when these things begin to take place,
(praise the Lord - right now, in our darkest hour)
that the day of our redemption is drawing near"