Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent 1 2025

 

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:1-end

Matthew 24:36-44

 

You may experience a sense of deja vu on hearing that Gospel reading. Didn’t Luke say something similar two weeks ago? Well, yes, he did. But now we are in a new church year, in which we will read through Matthew’s Gospel on most Sundays. Nevertheless, we start near the end of Matthew, in the equivalent place where we left off Luke.

As with Luke, this section of the gospel is called “apocalypse”, which means “unveiling”, seeing what is going on behind the scenes of the world. We are told to be watchful for something unknown and unexpected. What we are going to see is not what we expect. That something is the “coming of the Son of Man”, which brings both judgement and salvation. 

Judgement that will bring to light things hidden in darkness. John’s Gospel says that the light has come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. If you’re not expecting the light, if you are not watching for it, you will act as though you can keep on hiding and covering things up. But the light will come, and the truth will be exposed.

And the coming of the Son of Man will bring salvation because everything will be brought into the light. Reward, therefore, for those who have been faithful and watchful. Redemption for those who have been the victims of the deeds of darkness.

This season is Advent, which means “the coming”. The keynote of this time is one of penitence, sobriety, and prayer. This is counter-cultural in a world busy with office parties and shops decked with fairy lights, but it is a fitting preparation for the feast of Christmas. There is a character in Advent, in the chill nights when you look up at the glittering stars, that makes you catch your breath. A stillness and a waiting. Something new is coming.

The coming of the Son of Man is something that appears in various ways throughout the ministry of Jesus. His birth in Bethlehem, his baptism in the Jordan, his arrival in Jerusalem in triumph, his lifting up from the earth on the cross. In unknown and unexpected ways, Jesus enters the scene for judgement and salvation. 

Salvation for the outcasts, the sinners, the excluded and unclean. Judgement for the powerful, the content, those who were sure of themselves.

But all that is the prelude for the most unexpected coming of the Son of Man. When all was over, finally and definitively, when the victim was dead and buried and tidied away. What could be more unknown than that the victim should rise from the dead? And what could be more unexpected than that the victim should return, not to seek revenge on those who had betrayed and killed him, but to forgive them? Indeed, to empower them to go and spread his forgiveness throughout the world.

And all of this is bundled together in an image that Jesus also used, and which we repeat in the Creed, that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. 

This looks forward to a final fulfilment. At the end of the Gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus ascends into heaven in the cloud of God’s glory, and the disciples are told that they will see him come again in the same way. Which is to say, that Jesus, the risen victim, is the supreme power that rules creation, and there is a day when he will be revealed as the origin and end of all things. 

The world can be re-imagined in hope, because the way that things always were turns out not to be the final truth. Condemnation, violence and casting out are not the principles behind the universe, although the human race has been living up to now as though they were.

The final coming of Jesus in glory to judge the living and the dead is apocalypse, that is, unveiling. It will be the moment of universal seeing, when the truth that Jesus is Lord will be known and realised in all things. But this truth is already established in heaven and is breaking in to the here and now. 

This therefore means that hope is not displaced to some remote end point that we aren’t at yet - whether that be millions of years from now or the day after tomorrow. For the coming of the Son of Man is the way in which God is redeeming the world, here and now. And, as in the lifetime of Jesus, it is experienced by many people in many ways. 

For us, as for those in the time of Jesus, hope is the rupture in the system. Hope is what happens when things don’t carry on as they always have, the new and unexpected thing breaking in where human life seemed hopelessly death-bound and lost. We cannot save ourselves, for salvation is God’s initiative, God’s interruption and disruption of how life has been up to now. 

So we are called to be watchful for the coming of the Son of Man. The unknown and unexpected breaking in to our lives. The sudden fissure in our hearts, letting in the light from which we might shrink, for it brings judgement, but which also brings healing and forgiveness. Brought into God’s light the truth about ourselves is no longer told as judgement and condemnation but as part of God’s bigger story of mercy and love. So too are the ruptures in the world where forgiveness, reconciliation and peace suddenly break out where before there seemed no hope. 

Watch, therefore, for the signs of the Kingdom. Signs that Jesus the risen victim is the Lord. Signs that the one who was cast out and killed is on the throne of the universe, to judge and to save, to forgive and to heal. Watch and stake awake, because if we think that everything is always going to be the same we will not see the unexpected place where the Lord breaks in, the unknown way in which he is making known his Kingdom. 

“Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.”