Jeremiah 33.14-16, Luke 21.25-36
First Sunday of Advent, 2 December 2018
Eldroth, Keasden
Have you ever made a promise you couldn’t keep? I know I have; often with the best intentions of keeping it but ultimately failing; occasionally just to keep another person happy or to avoid conflict or dodge a difficult decision - the sort of empty promises which sometimes come back to bite you.
We’re all only human, we’re bound to get caught up in promises made and broken, well intentioned words which don’t work out. And we’ll also be on the receiving end of those broken promises sometimes, with the emotional pain, sadness or anger that goes with it.
In our time and place, people are inclined to disbelieve promises. We live in an age of empty words in public life, the broken promises we’re daily dealt leading to a breakdown of trust between the people and those meant to serve us, is some sort of crisis of our times.
In private life too, we make it hard for ourselves by speaking promises we cannot keep. I’m thinking of the modern trend in non-religious marriage ceremonies for couples to create their own vows. Almost always they are along the lines of “I will always be at your side”, “I will never let you down”: absolute promises that will inevitably fail. What wisdom, then, in the words of the traditional marriage vows, promising devotion and commitment along realistic lines, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” and so on.
In all of this we appreciate the importance of creating and cherishing moments in our lives when we speak words of solemn 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.
And we deeply appreciate the power of words to transform, to form new worlds from promises made. When we make a vow we know that our words 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 California burn 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 hear the words of Jesus, week by week in our churches and - if it is our practice - we read them day after day in our homes, and we understand Jesus’ words as words of deep promise.“Come unto me, all you that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” he once said, and The Book of Common Prayer call them his ‘comfortable words’.
The words of Jesus in today’s gospel passage don’t seem that comfortable. But they serve 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 promises 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 preached in Somerset in 2015 and at Sourton in 2012.
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