Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36
West Camel, Queen Camel, Weston Bampfylde, First Sunday of Advent, 29/11/2015
‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’.
That’s what Jesus said, and who are we to disbelieve his promises?
Well, we are people of our time, and in our time people are inclined to disbelieve promises.
The promises of politicians: not a week goes by without our hearing of another so-called election pledge u-turn.
The promises of sportsmen: the footballer kissing the badge on his shirt to display his undying loyalty to that club, who then next month signs for a higher-paying rival.
The promises of celebrities: the undermining of public trust in them, following the sex abuse scandals of recent years involving some of our popular culture’s once most-loved entertainers…
In an era of mass-communication where words come too often and too easily, promises are cheap.
And yet we understand the power of words to transform, to form new worlds from promises made.
We have heard such words of promise from politicians: Churchill’s promise to the 1940 war government of ‘nothing [..] but blood, toil, tears and sweat’, but ultimately ‘victory’; Martin Luther King’s Promised Land speech.
We have heard such words of transformation from celebrities and sportsmen too: such as Paralympic volleyball player Charles Walker’s description of how the Paralympic Games changed people’s attitudes: ‘People [now] realise that athletes are athletes and people are people,’ he said. ‘It doesn't matter if you're Usain Bolt or in a wheelchair, we're all people’.
Such words have the power to transform the world of those who hear the promises they carry, and believe them.
And there are moments in our lives when we speak such words of promise. Our marriage vows are the obvious ones, or the words spoken for us or by us at our baptism, the oaths we make in a court of law. Words freighted with deep and heavy meaning, words we don’t speak lightly, words which express our promise that the people we once were, will be transformed into different people for the future. Isn’t it interesting that however little we regard ourselves as religious, so many of us feel the need to utter such words of promise in a church or on a bible, in the presence of God.
Recalling these sorts of promises puts us in the right frame of mind to consider the words which Jeremiah recorded:
‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah...’
Our God is a God of certain promise. The hearers of Jeremiah’s words would remember the earlier promises of God, fulfilled - his promise to Noah of mercy and new beginnings for a broken world, his promise to Abraham of a new nation, to Moses and his people of a promised land. And now, they hear God make the promise of a righteous branch to spring up - one who would bring justice and righteousness to an unjust and unrighteous people, one who would bring salvation to Judah and safety to Jerusalem - one they would call The Lord, our righteousness.
For us, that man of promise is Jesus. For us, Jesus is the source of all that is just and right. For us, Jesus is the one who brings salvation and keeps us safe.
How vital this knowledge is in the world we live in today. A world continuing to promise itself that we are civilised and progressive whilst terror inflicts itself into ordinary people’s lives as never before. A world promising that endless consumption is the way forward while the forests of Indonesia burn and the waters of Pakistan rise, and the icecaps of Greenland melt. It’s a world we recognise as being very much like the world Jesus described to his disciples in this passage which we heard today, a world where ‘People … faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens [seem to] be shaken.’
We have heard the words of Jesus, week by week in our churches and read them day after day in our homes, and we understand them deeply as words of promise. The Book of Common Prayer repeats one of Jesus’ great promises to us in these lines:
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him. Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
The comfortable words of Jesus in today’s gospel passage are to impress on us that though the signs of the times seem dark, and we may feel the weight and the burden of them, nevertheless he is coming into the world, and that means that ‘[our] redemption is drawing near’.
When is Jesus coming into the world? Always and every day, every moment we open the door of our lives to him.
How can Jesus bring redemption to this world? Through the lives of his followers living out the values of his peaceable, gracious, loving kingdom, through small acts of kindness towards neighbours, friends, and in particular towards our enemies, those who persecute us, and the vulnerable ones around us.
These are the words of promise which Advent brings. Words with the power to lift the heaviness of the world from our shoulders; words which shine light into the world’s darkness as we let them come alive in our lives.
There will be other words of Jesus which are especially helpful or comforting or inspirational to you. In this prayerful time we share this morning, you might bring those special words to mind, those gospel passages and messages which have always encouraged you and helped you on your way.
‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’.
So today, again, with confidence today, hold on to Jesus, and his words of promise to you.
Notes
[1] A revised version of the sermon first preached in Sourton, Advent Sunday 2012.
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