THE DAY OF CHRIST
From My Book of the Church's Year. Art by Enid Chadwick.
I have a little book called My Book of the Church’s Year. It’s a lovely illustrated children’s book by the English artist Enid Chadwick first published back in 1948. It fell out of publication years ago but the illustrations became so popular among Episcopal nerds on the internet that for a brief period it was available and I got one. Sadly, I don’t think it’s currently available.
It begins, of course, with Advent. As you can see in the excerpted image above, here’s what it says about Advent:
Death, Judgment, Heaven, & Hell. So, you know, pretty big and scary stuff. End time, cosmic, apocalyptic stuff. Advent isn’t all calendars and chocolate.
It also isn’t just a 4-week preparation for Christmas. The pressures of the word’s Christmas season can make it seem that way. Even Advent calendars and wreaths, as much as I love them, can also make it seem that way.
But the Advent season brings its own important themes for our consideration. I find myself drawn to that big apocalyptic scary stuff: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, and in particular their relationship to Jesus’s appearance on the last day as our judge - what St. Paul calls in our Philippians reading, the Day of Christ.
More than any other season, Advent invites to ponder these apocalyptic, confounding, dreadful, and hopeful themes. On the Church’s calendar, it uniquely orients us to the future - to the age to come and to God’s final victory.
It reminds us that the new age has begun in the life of Christ, but we live in between the inbreaking of God in Christ and the final victory. We live in between the times.
This is why John the Baptist figures prominently in Advent, because he is a link between ages. In his ministry and life, he brings together the entire prophetic witness of the Old Testament. John calls Israel and all of creation to prepare the way for the long-awaited Lord.
In our reading from Luke, John isn’t heralding the infant Jesus, but the appearance of a fully grown Jesus coming in power and wisdom to carry out the work that will ultimately lead him to the cross. John sees that it is in Jesus that, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
In the appearances of Christ, Advent reminds us that our ultimate hope has come, and he will come again to judge the world.
So that’s where my thinking has been while preparing to preach here on this second Sunday of Advent.
Then on November 30th, the terrible events at Oxford High School shook our region and nation. Four young lives were cut short much, much too soon. A community is forever changed and we’ve all been forced once again to face the sickening, awful, and ongoing crisis of gun violence in our schools.
I won’t rehearse the details of what happened here. Undoubtedly, you know them and maybe you need a break even if that isn’t really possible. There’s been a fog and darkness over our entire region as we reckon with what happened, its aftermath, and what we should do about it. And there’s certainly no break for the victims and families in the Oxford community.
That dark fog surrounds us as we continue our Advent season and turn towards the Advent themes of judgment in the Day of Christ. These themes take on a heightened importance and feel a little different after the events at Oxford High School.
The grim reality of our present age, of evil, and the powers of sin and death are the inescapable context of our Advent hope.
What can we say in the midst of such darkness? What can we say to our friends and neighbors in the throes of tragedy? At the relational level, the right answer is probably not all that much.
We’re told to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn. In other words, we offer presence and silence.
But as a church, as Christians, we do need to speak. At least I do, seeing as I find myself in a pulpit on a Sunday morning. So I’m going to do my best to proclaim our Advent hope in judgement on the Day of Christ.
Advent situates us exactly where we find ourselves both locally with current events and cosmically in redemptive history: in the darkness, waiting for deliverance, waiting on God’s victory.
We live at the collision of ages. To truly understand this we have to introduce one of the weirder aspects of our faith: God and God's creation have an Enemy. The world as we know it is occupied territory.
In the gospel of John, Jesus calls the enemy the “ruler of this world.”
St Paul says we contend with “the cosmic powers of this present darkness” or in the language of the King James bible, the “principalities and powers.” The Enemy is called the “prince of the power of the air.”
I’m not introducing the Enemy to imply something simplistic. “The devil made me do it” is not the way we understand evil. But the New Testament is very clear, humanity and creation itself is in bondage to the powers of sin and death and the good news of the gospel is our liberation from that bondage through God’s freely given grace.
The second coming of Christ at the day of judgement is the final blow in the apocalyptic war between God and the Enemy that will end the present age and set the world right.
That is our Advent hope and God’s promise: that sin and evil will be judged and purged from the created order and in Christ’s reign, God will be all in all.
But it’s fair to ask, why does any of that matter, particularly in light of recent events? Doesn’t a focus on future victory seem a bit distant, fantastical, or even, weird?
Here are a few reasons I think that isn’t the case.
First, the Day of Christ’s judgment reminds us that it is the culminating event in the ongoing mission of rescuing and renewing creation for God’s self. We follow an active and living God. When we speak of building God’s kingdom, we’re always fundamentally talking about God’s redemptive initiative and work. God’s creative and redemptive activity is always the foundation of our own work.
God isn’t sitting back and waiting on us to get things right. Wherever goodness is found, God is at work. Our role is to discern by faith where God is at work and get in on it, to participate.
Where is the fight for righteousness, justice, and peace? Where are vulnerable people taking a stand and in need of support? Who are voices speaking out against gun violence and for our children?
We need the eyes of faith to discern God’s activity working against the present age and the confidence to recognize it, even in surprising places. God has and will accomplish the victory, we need to participate.
Second, it reminds us that the dreadful day of judgement is, in fact, good news. This present evil age needs judging. The persistence of evil in us and in the world requires judgement. Judgement tells us the world needs to be put right and we cannot do it on our own. But God’s judgement is not the same thing as condemnation. Christ did not come to condemn the world.
With the eyes of faith we see the coming Judge as the one who loved and died for us and has promised to rescue God’s creation from bondage to the powers and principalities of the present age.
We can trust God’s redemptive goodness and work with our lives and destiny - God justifies the ungodly: that’s us. The refiner's fire will bring us into the fullness of God's righteousness.
St. Paul tells the church in Philippi, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”
But God’s salvation is even more fundamentally cosmic and all encompassing in scope. God’s work is the restoration and renewal of the entire cosmos in the new heaven and new earth. We can trust the good and gracious God’s victory to bind up the wounded and heal the broken-hearted.
Third, the final defeat of the Enemy shows us evil has no role in God’s purposes and no remaining foothold in God’s final victory. As St James tells us, in the Father of Lights there is no variableness, there is no shadow of turning. Jesus came exorcising demons and in God’s final victory evil will be finally and fully exorcised from God’s good creation.
This should free us from the notion that we need to understand evil as part of God’s providential design, as part of God’s plan.
To help illustrate that final point, I want to read a few passages from a book called The Doors of the Sea by Eastern Orthodox scholar, David Bentley Hart. It’s a very small book, sometimes difficult but for the most part it’s accessible and readable. I’d commend it to anyone struggling to understand evil and the reality of God. Hart says,
“God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable…rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, [God] will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes – and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away and he that sits upon the throne will say, ‘Behold, I make all things new.”
“Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate evil with a perfect hatred…As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is…a faith that…has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead.”
Our Advent hope is cried out from the darkness, at the collision of ages. God’s victory may seem distant but it is also assured.
In times like these when the present age of sin and death seems to rage all around us, we hope against hope that in Christ, the Lord has come to redeem us, and the Lord will come again in victory.
Amen.
