SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV’D ALLAN B. WARREN III AT THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2007, THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (FEAST OF TITLE & DEDICATION)

Fashion is fickle, and most often fashion is founded on an arbitrary opinion and prejudice, not fact. The most obvious example of this is fashion in clothing. Sometimes the clothes that fashion dictates make a person look terrific. At other times the current fashion makes one look perfectly awful, grotesque. But that doesn’t matter. Whether one looks good or bad isn’t the question, for there is no question. Fashion defines itself.

Fashion is fickle, and within the category of the fashionable the most fickle is intellectual fashion. Certainly, no facts are involved there and little thinking, and in the intellectual realm simple prejudice is usually outdone by ideology.

But wait. I should take all that back. The top prize really goes to theological fashion. Talk about fickle. It used to be that theology was based somehow on Scripture or tradition or philosophy or all three. Nowadays theology is often based on nothing more than what one thinks or feels in a particular situation. Change the situation and one thinks and feels something rather different and theology consequently changes. As I said, nowadays fashion in theology is the most fickle and unreliable of all.

When I was in seminary some thirty-plus years ago, passages like the one we heard for the Gospel this morning or for the Gospel two weeks ago were viewed with embarrassment. From Luke, the Sunday before last: “As for these things which you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (21:6) “There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famine and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” (21:11) Or from Matthew this morning: “Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (24:42) “Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (24:44)

This kind of talk is eschatology – ideas about the end of time and of the world. It was something scholars confessed to have been part of the preaching and teaching of Jesus, but something, they said, which made him strange, incomprehensible, and so out of touch with modern thought and sensibilities. And even worse, some of this eschatology was apocalyptic. Eschatology again, but in this instance it was clothed in vivid and horrifying images of cosmic destruction and conflict. True, this was borrowed from the Book of Daniel, but it was thought by many that Jesus should be held to a higher standard than the Book of Daniel. Where in all this was the simple carpenter and rabbi of Galilee? Hadn’t he become obscured by this talk of cataclysm and the end of time? He may have said it. He may have believed it. But was it essential to his message? So, let’s ditch apocalyptic and de-eschatologize, so that the real and timely message Jesus may be revealed.

That kind of thing was the fashion in theology and biblical study some thirty years ago when I was a student, and even before. Talk of the end of time, of history, of the world was weird stuff which put people off, which couldn’t possibly be comprehended by the people in the pew.

Never mind the fact that this was during the height of the Cold War, and the Soviets had thousands of missiles trained on us, and we had thousands of missiles trained on them. The world could, indeed, have come to an end in less than a day and this in a way which could only be described as apocalyptic. But we’d gotten used to that. The Cold War by then had been going on for a long time, so the very real threat seemed merely theoretical. The bomb-shelters of the fifties became the storage rooms of the seventies. The world seemed solid and enduring, and so talk about Jesus and his message should be placed in a solid and enduring world.

Never mind also, that it is a basic conviction of Christian theology that time and history have a direction. That there was a beginning of things – God created – and that there will be an end of things. The world is not so solid and enduring. And it was a basic conviction of Christianity also that the direction of time has a purpose – God’s end of things will be a consummation and a fulfillment. This is not peripheral, but is rather part of the warp and woof of Christian thought. However we may understand it, to divorce Christianity from this conviction is to deform it and to abandon the teaching of Scripture. But fashion trumped what Jesus and Scripture actually said and de-mythologizing, de-eschatologizing – getting rid of all this weird stuff about the end – was all the rage.

How very different things are now – some thirty years later. Talk about the end of the world, talk about a cataclysm of enormous proportions, doesn’t seem so strange. Indeed, such talk is uncomfortably frequent and has enough to do with fact as to make most people decidedly uneasy. The Cold War with its massive threats may well be over, but the world today seems chaotic, out of control, unpredictable, and very scary. A world dominated by two adversaries pitted against one another is bad enough, but today there are dozens of adversaries, each with its own self-interests, and so it’s us against them and them against us and them and us against another. “There will be wars and rumors of wars.” (Mt. 24:6) “Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.” (Mt. 26:7) “There will be distress of nations in perplexity.” (Lk. 21:25) Words from Jesus about the time before the end according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And daily we hear that we’re running out. Running out of fuel, running out of energy, running out of the stuff which makes the world, as we know it, work. We’ve got to find something else, but what will it be? And will we find it in time? But will it be the right thing? For what we are doing now is poisoning the world and changing the world, perhaps even destroying the world. And there is nothing theoretical about this. Most people can see it all around them, often in their own backyard. Nowadays the solid and enduring world seems to be the fantasy which must be dispelled if humankind is to survive, and all this odd Biblical talk about an end and a cataclysm seems much too close to home. Fashionable scholars used to want to dismiss it because they found it embarrassing. In 2007 we cringe when we hear it, because it presents us with images which seem all too real.

This has happened before. During the twenty centuries of Christian history in times of instability and uncertainty and anxiety this kind of talk – eschatology, apocalyptic – seems to jump off the page and often takes on a life of its own. To listen to some people in such times one might imagine that this was the only teaching of Scripture. Some get so hung up on this that they forget about everything else that the Bible and Jesus have to say, and this is just as much a deformation of Christianity as it is to ignore it. And in fact, one of the most unambiguous admonitions of Jesus is not to get hung up on it, for, as he said, “of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Mt. 24:36) Moreover, to think only of then is to neglect thinking of now, and to forget that Jesus is as much Lord of the present and he will be Lord of the future. There is much more to Jesus than just the end of time, for Jesus is the end of time, and that end is something which can happen right here and right now quite apart from what is going on in the world. In this Church and in our lives Jesus brings about the end of time. He brings about the end of the order of the world in Himself and by his presence and grace. He overturns the order of things and establishes his Kingdom. “If anyone is in Christ,” St Paul tells us, “there is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (II Cor. 5:17)

In one of the first sermons I preached in this church as its rector, I told you a story about the end of a world. Indulge me, and allow me to repeat it:

Some years ago, after I had moved back to New York, I got to know a man who had founded and ran a clinic, a hospice really, for people who were dying of AIDS. He began this when the disease first broke out, and he had a hard time. Money was scarce, and the people in the neighborhood where he found a suitable property were frightened and didn’t want such a place around. But he persuaded and he persevered and finally the hospice was established, and, at the time I met him, it cared for two dozen people who were too stick and too much without hope to care for themselves. When he learned that I had been on the staff of the Advent, he told me a story.

He had been a student at the Harvard Business School, and his life was fairly well and fairly predictably planned. For some reason – he never said why – friends brought him to this church and everything changed. During the Mass he was gripped by something and converted . . . first to the overwhelming reality of God and later to the truth of the Gospel. And as the weeks progressed, his life was turned upside down. To his surprise and perhaps even against his wishes, he found himself yearning to do precisely the opposite of what he had been preparing and planning – now to live his life not for himself and not for worldly gain, but rather to live it for others and for God.

At Mass in this Church the world came to an end for that man and a new world came to be. The advent, the coming, of Christ to that man in this place – the Church of the Advent – turned his world upside down and set him on a different and unexpected course. There have been many such dramatic “ends of the world” in this place, for it is a holy place and Christ seems to have chosen to make his advent here with particular force for many people. We give thanks for that and we can only give thanks, for it is Christ’s work, not ours. But we should also give thanks and perhaps especially give thanks for Christ’s less noticeable advents which come to be through the life of this parish. Not all of us are called to such an abrupt change of life as the man I met some years ago, but all of us are called by Jesus to change our life and let the old world come to an end by his advent in our lives.

When we are strengthened by the Sacraments celebrated here, when we are enlightened by the Word heard and preached in this place, when we are encouraged by the fellowship and godly love of others in this place, Christ makes his advent in our lives. Each time we resist sin and selfishness, Christ has made his advent and the old world ends. Each time we extend ourselves in generosity and giving and sacrifice, Christ has made his advent, and the old world ends. Each time we forgive those who have hurt and betrayed us, Christ has made his advent and the old world ends. Whenever we find comfort in spite of desolation, joy and hope in spite of despair, certainty in spite of anxiety, ecstasy in spite of depression, then Christ has made his advent, and the old world ends. Praise God for this and give thanks, and pray that he will bless this Church and make it always to be a place for the Advent of Christ.

Amen.