Sermon: Third Sunday Before Advent

The Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Thistlethwaite is Sub Dean & Precentor

Preacher:: Nicholas Thistlethwaite
Date:: Sunday 7th November 2010
Service:: Eucharist

Few would deny that the Reformation of the sixteenth century transformed the intellectual life of Europe. It discarded the shackles of the mediaeval Church, and prepared the way for the scientific and industrial revolutions of the next two centuries. But it was also responsible for episodes of brutality and collective insanity that have left an indelible stain on the religious history of Christendom. What happened at Münster in Germany is a case in point.

In 1534, a Dutch prophet and former inn-keeper named John of Leyden appeared in Münster and announced that God had commissioned him to make the city the new Jerusalem. The city council was already in the hands of the radical sect known as Anabaptists and they fell in with his plans. All who refused to be re-baptised were expelled and Münster was proclaimed a city of refuge for the oppressed. The bishop with an army besieged the city, but meanwhile the former inn-keeper was proclaimed King of New Zion; he wore ecclesiastical vestments as his royal robes, and held court in the market-place from an improvised throne. Laws were enacted to forbid the holding of private property – everything was to be in common – and polygamy was introduced following the example of the patriarchs in the Old Testament.

King John and his supporters believed that they had been given the duty and power of exterminating the ungodly. The world would perish, and only New Zion would be saved. They attempted to foment revolution, making forays to nearby Amsterdam where they ran naked through the streets crying that the wrath of God was about to fall on the city. Armed with weapons, they invaded a municipal banquet, slaughtering the burgomaster and several citizens. Eventually, under the pressure of siege and starvation, some of the less deluded members of the community opened the city gates. John of Leyden and his closest followers were butchered, and New Zion became Münster once again.

This sordid episode is a warning of the dangers of taking apocalyptic too literally. For John and his unfortunate followers had been inspired in their folly by a reading of those sections of the scriptures known as apocalyptic. Apocalyptic is a type of literature that claims to reveal hidden things, to unveil the future. The books of Daniel and Revelation are examples.

Paul evidently had similar concerns about the Thessalonians. The earliest Christians believed in the imminent return of Christ. So imminent was this return expected to be that some wanted to suspend normal daily activities so as to be ready to accompany him. They waited anxiously for ‘the day of the Lord’, as it was called. Paul has to disillusion them. Christ will not return until a series of events has taken place, he writes, and these have yet to happen. They must wait and treat with caution any rumours that the day has dawned.

Paul’s concern for his spiritual children at Thessalonica is understandable, and yet the Christian Gospel is a gospel of expectation. Jesus announced his ministry with the proclamation, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news’ (Mk 1:15), and much of the teaching which followed consisted of parables about this kingdom: the kingdom is like a mustard seed, like yeast in dough, like seed scattered on the soil; it is like a pearl of great value, a treasure buried in a field. But – and this is Jesus’ point – it is seldom obvious. The signs of the kingdom are hidden, so that only those with eyes to see and ears to hear will understand. Nor is this kingdom a conventional kingdom. The kingdom Jesus announces has no territorial claims, no armies, no political structures. It is the kingdom of God. And that implies something radically different from any earthly kingdom.

The Thessalonians were, of course, disappointed. Their expectations of experiencing the day of the Lord, when Christ returned in glory and the kingdom was revealed in all its splendour, were not fulfilled. John of Leyden, and many other millenarians – those who have predicted the date of the day of the Lord – was also proved sadly mistaken. Yet, as Christians, we go on praying, ‘Thy kingdom come’, whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer. When we say the Creed, we express our expectation that

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

And in these weeks preceding Advent, our liturgical calendar celebrates the Season of the Kingdom.

So we must ask: what is this kingdom that we pray will come?

First, we have to be clear what the kingdom is not. It is not the Church. (Though the Church, if it is true to its Lord, will reveal signs of the kingdom.) Nor is it to be identified with any particular model for human progress, whether biological, technological or political. (Explorations on all these fronts may lead to the betterment of the human condition, but this is not what the kingdom is primarily about.) Nearer the mark is a description of the kingdom as that restored Creation held in the mind of God from the beginning, so that even as the fragility and failure of the material order was exposed, in the stories of Genesis, God’s future – pictured as a new Creation – beckoned.

The kingdom, in other words, is the rule of God: that situation in which his will prevails and overcomes all that contradicts it.

God’s kingdom is the place where the poor are consoled, the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, the down-trodden are given hope, and the dead receive new life. In the Beatitudes, Jesus both describes those who belong to the kingdom and explains what that kingdom will mean for them: comfort, for those who mourn; mercy, for those who show mercy; justice, for lovers of righteousness; vindication, for the persecuted; dominion, for the humble. He promises salvation to those who are on the margins.

A promise points to the future, and any teaching about the kingdom encapsulates a tension between present and future. If the kingdom is ‘now’, the terrorist has his or her cue for violent action to force the issue and ‘bring in’ the kingdom; but if it is ‘then’, the urgent need to be engaged in issues of justice, peace and reconciliation in the name of the kingdom loses its edge, and we can easily slip into a complacent pietism.

But (of course) the kingdom is both present and future. Hans Küng writes that ‘the future is God’s call to the present’ (OBC: 222). What we hope for in the future should transform our view of the present. The values of the kingdom revealed in Jesus’ teaching must determine the way we live our lives here and now. It is why we pray ‘Your kingdom come … on earth as in heaven’.

When will our prayer be answered? Jesus warned his disciples against speculation about this. ‘“It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority”’ (Acts 1:7), he told them. Unfortunately, apocalyptic includes what some people choose to read as clues to when it will happen and what it will be like. In times of crisis, there is an awful temptation to ‘read’ the signs as God’s timetable. A more constructive approach is to say that, just as we now accept that Genesis is not a scientific or historical account of Creation but rather a profound statement that ‘in the beginning was God’, we must also recognise that the apocalyptic literature is not a description of what will happen at the end, but an equally profound statement that ‘in the end will be God’. Scientists may theorise about a cosmic meltdown; Christians have nothing to add to that scientific debate, but we may still believe and proclaim that what began with Jesus, the eternal Word, must also end with Jesus, the Lord of all that is.

‘“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news”’ (Mark 1:15). In a world in which many experience despair, disillusionment, fear and hopelessness, Christians must bear witness to those green shoots of the coming kingdom of God revealed in the life of Jesus and in ordinary, faithful Christian lives down the centuries. We have no timetable, no action plan, no programme for bringing in the kingdom, for that is God’s work. Our task is to demonstrate the power of faith to bring hope so that we look to the future, not with dread of some apocalyptic catastrophe, but with confidence in the God who is (for us and for all his Creation) redeemer, lover and friend.