Curling: a great sport for Lent

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Richard Berling from Flickr

Last month we had the spectacle of the Winter Olympics in Italy.  Despite some people dismissing them as just lots of different ways of sliding, I really enjoy the Winter Olympics and will happily watch almost all of the events.  But my particular favourite is the curling.  For those that have never seen it, it is a cross between archery, bowling and housework on ice: players throw/slide stones into a target area (or 'house') and the team with the closest stones to the centre wins that 'end' and the team with the most points after a set number of ends wins.  I enjoy it because it's a games of tactics, but it's also dramatic with stones smashing into each other, and slightly comical with people sliding while sweeping the ice.

Target games like curling, archery, bowling and darts have an ancient pedigree, probably stemming back to practicing for hunting or warfare. They are useful practically but also metaphorically: we talk of being 'on target' to achieve things.

This metaphor helps us to understand what the biblical concept of 'sin' means, which is especially relevant in this season of Lent.  We often think of sin, if we think of it at all, as being individual acts that are morally wrong.  We also often rank some sins as being worse than others, almost like the rings of the archery target, and as long as we get closer to the centre than others, we feel satisfied with our performance, and consider ourselves to be good.  However, in some ways curling gets us closer to the biblical meaning of sin.

The stone closest to the centre scores and so do any other of that team's stones that are nearer to the centre than any stones of the opposing team. The non-scoring stones are discounted and swept away. Thus, one team can have all eight of their stones in the house, but if the other team has just one closer to the centre, all eight stones are worthless.

In the Bible, to sin is to 'miss the mark'; it doesn't matter how close you get, if you don't hit the target the effort is worthless.  Jesus tells us what the mark is: "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).  Anything less than being as perfect as God is being sinful.  Unlike archery where you get points for being near the centre, when it comes to morality only the bullseye will do, all other shots are worthless. (Of course, in curling you only have to have the stone closest to the centre and in the house, so you can score even if you're not in the centre, but this just proves that metaphors are limited!)

So Paul says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), echoing Isaiah who said “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”  (Isaiah 64:6).  That means that even our best efforts and best actions are so far away from the target that they don't count for anything. Therefore, “the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James 2:10 The Living Bible), 

If you want God to judge you on your good deeds, he will, but the target is perfection, the pass mark is 100%  - anything less and you fail.  But Jesus, the only one who hits that target, invites us to join his team so that we win the prize of eternal life, not because of what we do but because of what he has done.

The Opening of the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12-17)

Sermon on the Opening of the Sixth Seal

Preached at St Andrew's, Redbourne

31st July 2022

Photo by J.Guffogg & J.Hannan (flickr.com)

Matthew 24:29-39

[Jesus said]

29 “Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,

    and the moon will not give its light;

the stars will fall from the sky,

    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ [Isaiah 13:10; 34:4]

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

Revelation 6:12-17

12 I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13 and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14 The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

15 Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and everyone else, both slave and free, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. 16 They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?”

Sermon

Are you sitting comfortably? Well you might not be at the end of this sermon!  But before we get into the subjects of hell-fire and damnation depicted in our window and the passage it's based, I want to highlight the Gospel reading we had from Matthew 24.  This is Jesus teaching about his second coming.  And the reason I wanted to have this as our first reading is because when the subjects of judgement and hell come up, an objection is often raised that these subjects aren't very Jesus-like: the argument goes that Jesus' major teaching is about love and that a God of love cannot be a God of judgement.

Our passage from Matthew 24 reminds us that Jesus was just as happy teaching about judgement as he was about love, and reading through the rest of the gospels it is arguable that he taught more often about judgement than he did about love.  And it is precisely because he is a God of love that he is also a God of judgement: it is because he loves his creation so much that he cannot bear anything that mars and disfigures it, and that he must punish whatever does.  And top of that list for judgement is humanity, through whom sin has come into the world and spoiled God's perfect creation.  But I'm getting ahead of myself; the important thing to remember for now is that the teaching in Revelation 6 is perfectly consistent with Jesus' own teaching, which in turn is consistent with the teaching in the Old Testament.

So let's now turn to think about our window.

The title is “The Opening of the Sixth Seal” which we can also deduce from the image at the bottom of the window of a lamb with a flag [Fig. 1].  There are seven ribbons hanging down beneath the lamb, the first five have nothing at the end, the seventh has a seal with a cross on it, and the sixth has a broken seal.  But before we can understand what's happening in the window, we need to think about what's happening in the book of Revelation up to this point.

 Figure 1: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

John, the writer of the book, is having a vision from Jesus in which he is being shown “what is now and what will take place later” (Revelation 1:19).  As part of this he sees the throne room of heaven, which is recorded in Revelation 5.  On the throne he sees God who is holding a scroll with seven seals on it.  This scroll contains God's instructions and judgments and opening it would signal that these instructions are to be carried out.  The seven seals are for each of the seven instructions, with the number seven (like elsewhere in Revelation) symbolising perfection and completeness.  So we need to imagine a scroll with something like wax seals keeping it closed.

And here is where we need to be a bit careful about our language, because this reminds me of my favourite story of theological illiteracy.  You may remember the David Koresh cult in the early 1990s; one of my professors had an academic interest in end-of-the-world cults and spoke to former members for research.  He told the story that in 1993 the FBI laid siege to the Branch Davidians' headquarters at the Mount Carmel Centre in Waco, Texas.  As part of the negotiations during this siege, Koresh told the FBI that they had to stay there until the seven seals were opened, referring of course to Revelation.  However, on hearing this the FBI called in the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, because they thought that some seals were going to be slaughtered!

So just to be clear, today we are talking about wax seals not sea creatures!

But back to Revelation.  God is holding out the scroll with seven wax seals on it and John weeps because there is no-one worthy to open the seals, meaning there is no-one worthy to pass judgment.  Then one of the elders says “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals” (Revelation 5:5).  So John looks up and sees a Lamb, who had been slain and he takes the scroll, resulting in the song of praise which we said in our opening canticle.

Revelation 6 describes the opening of each of the seals, ending the chapter with our second reading, and our theme: the opening of the sixth seal.  It starts with a dramatic description of the literally earth-shattering events so vividly depicted in the window: the blood-red moon and shattered rocks [Fig. 2];

Figure 2: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

the darkness with the skies receding, revealing the light of God's presence [Fig. 3]. 

Figure 3: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

And most dramatically, the reactions of the people, mostly knocked down or cowering. We see a king fallen, with his crown and sceptre rolling away, and a general, upside down with his sword out of reach, and treasures spilled on the floor [Fig. 4].

Figure 4: Photo by J.Guffogg & J.Hannan (flickr.com)

 

So what's going on?  We know from Jesus' words, from the Old Testament passages he's alluding to and from what's happening in the vision that this is a description of judgment, and that the day of judgment will be a day of mourning.  This is because on the Day of Judgement, as God says in Ezekiel “I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices” (Ezekiel 7:3).  That is why the people in Revelation 6 cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from God and his judgment, because as it says in Psalm 130:3 “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?”  When we are faced with the holiness of God, we realise our own sinfulness and our inability to live a good life compared with God's standard of goodness.  We realise that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and that it doesn't matter if we're rich or poor, powerful or weak, kings or generals, none of our talents or achievements can make up for our sins.

When we realise our sins we also realise the consequences of our sins.  As Jesus said in the parable of the net: “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:47-50).  And we see this at the bottom right of the window, [Fig. 5] where those who have been judged are falling into the blazing furnace and barely recognisable as human.

 Figure 5: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

So the question that faces us as we look upon this graphic description and portrayal of the Day of Judgement is the one the people in Revelation 6 and the Psalmist ask: in the face of God's all-knowing judgement, who can stand?

If we turn back to the window there is one figure standing [Fig. 6] almost in the centre of the picture: and he has broken chains hanging from his wrists.

 Figure 6: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

He probably represents those whose chains of judgment have been broken, i.e. those who have been judged and have been forgiven.  This possibility of redemption could also be suggested by the zig-zag of light in the top right [Fig. 7] which might be lightning splitting the rocks or it could be a path back to the light of the presence of God.

 Figure 7: Photo by Steven Graham (www.in-glass.uk) from Facebook

So how can the chains of judgement be broken; how can we be forgiven; how can we stand in the face of God's judgment?

For the answer to that question we need to turn to Revelation 7, which is still part of the opening of the sixth seal.  In this chapter we hear about more seals (and again not of the sea variety!), and this time they are not sealing up scrolls, but are more like a stamp of ownership and they are on the heads of the servants of God (Revelation 7:3).  John is told that there are 144,000 of them which is symbolic of 12 times 12,000 representing the combining of the Old Covenant (the twelve tribes of Israel) and New Covenant (the Church represented by the twelve apostles).  The whole people of God.  But just as John was told about the Lion of Judah being able to open the scroll and when he looked he saw a Lamb, so he is told about 144,000 people and when he looks he sees “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9).  We are told that “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).

So the whiteness of their robes is not because they lived lives of total holiness and purity, because as we've just heard, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  But instead their robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.  What does this mean?  Well, the background is the story of the Passover in Exodus 12.  God warned that he was going to send a final plague on Egypt, the death of the first-born, but that if the Israelites put the blood of a spotless lamb on their door-posts, the angel of judgment would pass over those houses.  Fast-forward to the New Testament, where Jesus is called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and whose death is seen as the sacrifice necessary for the punishment of sin.  And in Revelation 1:5 Jesus is described as the one who “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”  Therefore, those who connect themselves with Jesus' death are 'passed over' on the day of judgment.

How does this happen? On the day of Pentecost Peter quoted the prophet Joel talking about the day of judgement in language reflected in Revelation 6, and said that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21; Joel 2:32).  And calling on the name of the Lord meant repenting of sins and asking him for the forgiveness that is possible because he has died in our place.

The people facing the opening of the scroll of judgement ask: who can stand?  The answer is those whose sins have been forgiven by their repentance and trust in Jesus' atoning death.

We don't often talk about judgement.  Partly for the correct reason that we should not be pointing out other people's sins.  Jesus tells us “Do not judge, or you too will be judged...Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1,3).  But mainly because we don't like the idea that one day we will be judged, and we will be found guilty and deserving of eternal punishment.  We can and should warn people of the actions that God himself has told us are sinful, but we should do that in the knowledge that we too are sinful, and just as guilty as they are.

So what do we do when we look on an image such as this window, which depicts very clearly the consequences of the coming judgement?  Do we admire its artistry but dismiss its subject as being a relic of mediæval theology, designed to scare people into submission to church authorities?  Do we celebrate our more enlightened thinking and carry on living for the present with no thought for the future?  Do we hide behind our wealth, our intelligence, our achievements, our popularity, our good works and hope that God won't notice our sins?

Or do we listen to Jesus, who when describing his coming to judge the living and the dead said “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35)?  He is the firm and steady Rock on whom we can build our lives; he is the Rock in which we can hide so that judgment will pass over us.

Jesus will come again and will judge the living and the dead, and as no-one knows the day or time it may even be today!  If the thought of facing the judgement throne of God today makes you uncomfortable in your seat, then good!  Come to Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, the Rock who was broken; repent and ask him to break the chains of judgment caused by your sin and wash you clean.

I'm dreaming of...

Here's my July magazine article:

This month the first live-action film based on the Barbie doll will be released.  From what we know about it already, Barbieland is a perfect place for perfect beings but Barbie starts to question it and becomes imperfect.  So she goes to the real world to search for happiness.  The film plays on the concept of Barbie's world being a dream or fantasy world, not necessarily in the sense of it being a fictional world, but in the sense that it is a world we'd dream about living in.  This of course is part of the appeal of the Barbie range of toys – through playing with the toys, children escape into an imaginary world where life is perfect and dreams can come true: Barbie lives in a dream house with her dream vehicles in a dream world.

Having dreams and aspirations are part of a child's development, helping them to shape their future life choices.  But because children can imagine a perfect world they are often more able to see the imperfections in our world, and want to do something about it.  As adults we often resign ourselves to an imperfect world (“that's just the way life is”) and lose the will to try to make things better.  Sometimes however people's dreams and lives are crushed by circumstances.

In a very different picture to Barbieland, at her lowest point the character of Fantine in the musical Les Miserables sings “I had a dream my life would be / So different from this hell I'm living / So different now from what it seemed / Now life has killed the dream / I dreamed.”  As she discovered, and as we all discover, the perfect world and the perfect life cannot exist, because all of us make mistakes which hurt and damage ourselves and others.  The Christian world view names this as sin: our rejection of God and his ways in order to make ourselves the god of our lives – and tragically we are naturally inclined to put our own needs above others.  The Genesis creation story tells us that the consequence of this sin is death: human sin spoiled the perfect world God created thus allowing death into it.

The trailer for the Barbie movie shows one of the moments where Barbie spoils the perfect Barbieland by asking “Do you guys ever think about dying?”  Even in Barbie's world the thought of death spoils the dream.  We don't know from the trailers how Barbie's situation will be resolved: whether she will have to choose between the imperfect real world and the perfect fake world; or whether she brings the imperfection of the real world into the perfection of the fake world and this somehow improves the perfect world.  Or will none of these questions be answered, making way for a sequel!!

What we do know is the Christian good news: that Jesus came from his perfect realm into our imperfect world, so that he could take our sins onto himself on the cross, that through his death we might be forgiven, and through his resurrection death might no longer reign thus opening the way to a perfect everlasting life.  Our dream world becomes reality through Jesus.

"I'm not as bad as Hitler"

Here's my article for the November magazine:

This year marks the 80^th anniversary of the start of World War Two and also, perhaps, the start of a new way to personify pure evil. During WWII, the person of Adolf Hitler was unsurprisingly used by the Allied nations in their propaganda to illustrate the immorality of the Nazi regime. However, this association of Hilter with evil continues to the present day in a way that isn't true of Kaiser Wilhelm who was used in similar propaganda in WWI. Hitler continues to be used to personify evil; perhaps because in our secular world that cannot acknowledge a supernatural realm, there needs to be something to replace the devil.

Hitler has also indirectly contributed to the field of logic. A reductio ad Hitlerum is an attempt to invalidate someone else's position on the basis that the same view was held by Adolf Hitler, e.g. he was a vegetarian and against smoking. In the world of the Internet, Godwin's rule asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. This has the unfortunate side-effect that making any reference to Hitler or the Nazis, however justified, is now seen as a reason not to listen to that argument. This is particularly dangerous when it comes to issues of censorship and restrictions on freedoms of speech and belief, which were used by the Nazis to quash any opposition or disagreement and are also increasingly used today to stop any questioning of the cultural zeitgeist.

There is another way that Hitler is used in arguments. Again he is used as the embodiment of evil, but this time people use him to compare themselves with: they say “I may not be perfect, but I'm not as bad as Hitler.” This has particularly dire consequences when it comes to the subject of sin and judgement. The Bible teaches us that one day Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:5). It reminds us that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's standard (Romans3:23) and that we all therefore need to repent in order to be forgiven (Acts 3:19) and enjoy eternal life with God (Revelation 21:27).

Now I doubt whether anyone considers themselves to be perfect, but the problem is that when we compare our sins to other peoples' sins we will always be able to think of people who do worse or more sins than us, and if we can't, we can always rely on the argument that “I'm not as bad as Hitler”! When we do this we minimise and trivialise our sins to such an extent that we don't feel the need to repent. But if we look at this from God's point of view rather than our own we see that “the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James2:10 The Living Bible), because Jesus tells us that the standard is to be as perfect as God himself (Matthew 5:48).

To have a right view of ourselves is to say that we are just as bad a Hitler and that we don't deserve eternal life any more than he does, no matter how many good things we do in our lives. But the glorious good news is that even though we are that bad, Jesus died to take our punishment so that through belief in him we can enjoy eternal life with God and with no more pain, suffering or war.

How to end all wars

Here's this month's magazine article:

On Sunday, 4^th August 1918, the fourth anniversary of the declaration of war, King George V and Queen Mary joined members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords for a special service at the Church of Saint Margaret, Westminster. The King had asked that 4^th August 1918 should be observed as a National Day of Prayer: 100 days later the war ended.

This year we commemorate the centenary of the end of World War I and our remembrance is particularly poignant as we consider how we have failed all those who died or whose lives were affected by the war. In Peter Capaldi's final episode in Doctor Who, a WWI soldier gets lifted out of time and the Doctor says that he is a WWI soldier to which he replies “Yes, but what do you mean, 'one'?”

For those who fought or suffered in the Great War, the only thing that made the hardship and slaughter bearable was the belief that it was the 'war to end all wars', as H.G. Wells wrote in 1914 “This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war!” They were told that their sacrifices would make the world a better place, indeed in the new world there would be no war. The reality of the trenches probably put paid to the idealism of the first few months of the war, but it probably also confirmed in them the horror of war that we find in the war poems of that time.

We have failed those all those who died or whose lives were affected by the war because we have failed to learn that war cannot end war; that violence only leads to violence. And if this seems to be an inevitable vicious cycle, that's because it is – at least humanly speaking. The root cause of violence and war is our sinful nature. All human beings are pre-disposed to evil and this affects us individually and collectively. The worse news is that we cannot put this right ourselves, but the good news is that if we truly repent of our sins, God will forgive us and give us his Holy Spirit so that we can live as his children.

And like our sin, this salvation affects us individually and collectively. One of the prayers for Remembrance Sunday is “Almighty Father, whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son, the King of all: govern the hearts and minds of those in authority, and bring the families of the nations, divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin, to be subject to his just and gentle rule.” It reminds us that we are divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin, and that the only remedy is the just and gentle rule of Jesus, the King of all. Jesus died so that we can be forgiven; he rose from the dead to give us new life; and he will come again to rule over all things.

If we really want to see an end to all war, we need to follow the example of George V: come before God in repentance and with prayers for help; for ourselves, for our nation and for the world.

Check out Glen Scrivener's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=StuOWU4b1to

Christmas Playlist. 2: Zechariah's Song - Why do you need God?

Four songs that bring you to the heart of Christmas

2: Zechariah's Song – Why do you need God?

This Advent in our weekly sheets we're going to be looking at the four songs of the first Christmas, which were heard before, during and after the birth of the baby who lies at the heart of the real Christmas. The reflection will be adapted from Alistair Begg's book, 'Christmas Playlist' (buy it here). This week we're looking at Zechariah's song - Why do you need God?

While Mary's is the first song recorded in Luke's gospel, hers was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described by Luke. That belonged to her elderly relative Elizabeth, whose husband, Zechariah, sang abut his son, John, as he held him in his arms (Luke 1:68-79). The song has come to be known as the Benedictus. The first line of the song (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them”) contains two words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message - “come” and “redeemed”. God has come to visit. If you want to understand the first Christmas – if you want to grasp the purpose of God's visit – you need to understand redemption.

Redemption is the act of providing a payment to free someone. And Zechariah is explaining God's work in his present situation by referencing God's work in the past – in the time of the Exodus a millenium and a half before. This was when God rescued the Israelites who had been enslaved in Egypt by Pharaoh. Now, God is redeeming his people all over again. Not form enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their sin – to our own sin. We need, he says “forgiveness of [our] sins.”

Sin is an unpopular word, but it is a word the Bible unashamedly uses, and it is a word which explains both what we see within us and what we see around us. Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be – in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course. It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don't want you, I won't obey your commands, I will not listen to your word. I will call the shots.

Sin is our greatest problem because it separates us from the God whom we are made to know and designed to enjoy. But in another sense the truth about sin is also our greatest insight because it explains life as we experience it. There is a mighty, loving God who made us – and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness. But we reject that God's authority – and so we are capable of selfishness and evil. We were made to enjoy life with God eternally but we all choose to live in defiance of him. Hence the flatness, the 'blues' that come after Christmas as once again we get beyond the busyness and distraction of the festivities and think deep down, I don't have the answer. None of the gifts, books, music, family or friends can fill the hole in our lives. So, we're really asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen – from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot repay.

At the heart of understanding the first Christmas and why it is such good news is an understanding of the nature of your predicament. And that involves accepting the nature and seriousness of sinfulness – your sinfulness. God did not come down to provide a little religious Energizer battery that would make us nicer people. He came because you were drowning, pulled down by the weight of your sin and miles from the shore. If you're drowning it doesn't help for someone to come along in a boat and say Come on now, thrash a little bit more. Try a little harder. Swim a bit better. You'll be able to get yourself out of that mess. No, you need someone to reach down their hand, grasp yours, and pull you up to safety and take you to shore. And if you know you are drowning, you don't refuse the person whose hand is offered to you. You grab it, and you splutter your gratitude.

And that is what Zechariah is doing. He knows that John will spend his life saying, Hold on. God is coming. And God will rescue you. And so Zechariah sings, just as everyone who grasps what God was doing at the first Christmas sings: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.”

Advent Reflections - The Four Last Things: 2. Judgement

 Continuing our meditations on the four traditional themes of Advent

- Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell; this week it's Judgement.

Divine judgement often makes us feel very defensive if not angry - “who are you to judge me?” is an unspoken question in our minds. And this is particularly so in a society where any notion of an absolute moral standard is dismissed. Society believes that the morality of an action depends on the situation rather than any concept of rightness or wrongness. Added to which is the relativist idea of something being “right for me” so that what is right for you is not necessarily right for me and you shouldn't impose your 'rightness' on me.

Yet at the same time we cry out for justice. Our world is seemingly full of people who do bad things and get away with them, things like murder, fraud, dishonesty or hurting us in a more personal way, and we want justice for that. The Psalmist wrote “it made me jealous to see proud and evil people and to watch them prosper” and as if to add insult to injury “all goes well for them, and they live in peace. What good did it do me to keep my thoughts pure and refuse to do wrong?” (Psalm 73:3,12-13 CEV). Evil goes unpunished and good goes unrewarded, so we want justice.

But we can't have it both ways, either we want judgement and justice or we don't – we can't ask God to judge other people's sins if we don't also let him judge our own. But whether we like it or not the justice that is clearly missing in this world will happen at the end of time, when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead.

So the question is, on what basis will he judge us? The common view of Judgement Day is that Jesus will have a set of scales and on one side he'll put all the bad things we've done and on the other he'll put the good things and if the good outweighs the bad we'll be OK. And of course the bad things that 'other people' do, like murder, paedophilia etc., hugely outweigh the little bad things we do!

But that's not the criteria for judgement. Jesus, when talking to the lawyer in Luke 10:25-28, says that you could earn eternal life if you perfectly love God and your neighbour constantly, knowing that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). Therefore Jesus is saying it's impossible to pass the judgement on the basis of the good things we do because we can never be good enough.

And deep down we know this is true. In the Christianity Explored course we heard the illustration of seeing the whole of our life as a film; every thought, word and deed and all the things we should have thought, said or done. Although there would be many times we were proud of, there would be more times that make us ashamed. Rico Tice, the presenter, said that if we're honest we fail to live up to our own standards, never mind God's! When Jesus comes to judge the world, we all deserve to fail.

The good new of Christianity about judgement is that Jesus, the only perfect human being, died to take the punishment we deserve. He calls us to “repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). 'Repent' means recognising and saying sorry for the things we do wrong (sins) and resolving not to sin in the future, and 'believe' means accepting God’s forgiveness made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross, putting Jesus at the centre of our lives and living in line with his teaching. If we repent and believe, in the words of the hymn: “Because the sinless Saviour died, my sinful soul is counted free, for God the Just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me” ('Before the Throne of God Above' - Words by Charitie L. Bancroft). The consequences of our response to Jesus' invitation to repent and believe are the subject of the next two weeks.