Sermon preached by Mark Wakefield on 2nd December 2007
Isaiah 2.1-5, Romans 13.11-end, Matthew 24.36-44

Remarkable though it seems to me, it's now getting on for six months since I was ordained at St. Paul's and began life as your new curate. It will surprise none of you to know that this has taken quite a lot of getting used to. For one thing I was never before in the habit of dressing up in frocks, so turning up every Sunday and climbing into one of these gorgeous silk numbers has been quite an experience.

Then there's this liturgy business and the Deacon's role in the service.   It was once said of the intellectually challenged American President Gerald Ford that he was so dumb that he couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.  How I laughed when I first heard that joke but what sympathy I've had with that poor man since coming to St. Mary's as I've stumbled round the church desperately trying not to trip over either my cassock or my words only to end up doing both. 

Before I trained for ordination I was a Lay Reader, so writing and delivering sermons was something that I done a fair amount of already but during my three years of ordination training I got out of the habit of regular preaching so had forgotten what a demanding business it can be.  For those of you not versed in the inner workings of the Church of England - and who can blame you if you aren't - preachers are expected to base their sermons on the set readings for the week and all this is set out in something called the lectionary.  Sitting down to see what the lectionary has got in store for you is a bit like going in to bat in cricket.  And before I take this any further I'd better just make quite clear that my talking about cricket should not be taken by any of you as indicating any kind of sporting prowess on my part whatever.  Normally, of course, I'd have been perfectly happy for you to labour under that illusion but as my brother is in the congregation today and knows the all too awful truth about me and sport I think it's best to come clean.

So, back to cricket, at which I am hopeless.  Some weeks the readings come as nice, easy balls, and as you flex yourself to engage with them you do so in joyful anticipation of a lovely, resounding thwack as you hit them for six over the boundary line.   Other weeks they come with a troubling bit of both pace and spin but even so you can handle them and at least make a couple of runs.  But then there are weeks when they come swerving at you with all the venom that only an Aussie fast bowler can muster against a limey batsmen and you want to run for your life.  Well, as you've probably gathered, this was one of those weeks.

In Matthew's gospel we are presented with an alarming picture of Jesus's second coming which will usher in the last Judgement and the end of the world.   The righteous will be separated from the unrighteous and swept up to heaven.  Those who are together in their earthly life - be they friends, co-workers, husbands and wives - will be separated at the last.  It will all be as terrifying and unexpected as the flood for which Noah built his ark and which swept so many away to their deaths.   There will, as Matthew has it just a few verses later, be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Now much as it's tempting to run away from the darkness and terror of verses such as this, I think it's essential to face up to them, not least because the whole of the New Testament is drenched in expectation of the second coming to the extent that it is mentioned in no less than 21 of its 27 books and - of course - we refer to it in the creed.   What's more, it is something that has perplexed even the most eminent bible scholars down the ages and for all sorts of reasons.

For instance, Jesus says that he knows neither the day nor the hour of the second coming.  But if, according to Christian doctrine, he is both man and God then that surely cannot be right.  There are some who believe that the words spoken by Jesus in Matthew's gospel weren't really spoken by him at all but reflect a belief developed by the early Christians in the light of his resurrection.  There is certainly a case to be made for that view but it's far from commanding any kind of consensus.  

But if, for a moment, we ignore such questions and assume that he did speak these words what are we to make of them?  Should we take them literally - in other words, that Jesus will return to the earth at a specific time and in a specific place?  Needless to say, fundamentalist Christians do take that view and as many as a third of the population of the United States is apparently of the view that Christ's bodily return is imminent.  Indeed, one televangelist has been known to raise funds to ensure that he will have enough television crews to cover the event when it happens! 

However, mainstream scholars - be they liberal or evangelical - see it in much more metaphorical terms.  As Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham puts it, "language pointing to God's future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist."

And as we know, Jesus did on many occasions tell stories that were clearly designed to shock and it's precisely in being shocked by them that we are jolted into awareness of the essential truth underlying his words.  And if we are to really grasp that truth then we have to face up to what we find most uncomfortable about these verses from Matthew's gospel: namely, the prospect of our being judged, of being called to account for how we've lived our lives because what we do with them really does matter.

Whether you believe in God or you don't there's a price attached to your belief.  If you're an atheist then you believe that we live in an accidental, indifferent universe and therefore, ultimately an entirely meaningless one.  That's a huge price to pay for supposed freedom.  But if you believe -  as we do - that there is meaning and value in life and that it comes from a power outside us and infinitely greater than us, then some kind of judgement is the inevitable consequence. 

I think we all of us tend to think that we'll be judged in terms of how we've treated other people.  Essential though that is I'd like to suggest to you that the question of how well we live our lives goes a great deal wider than the how compassionate we are.  And that's because the central goal of Jesus's mission, as John's gospel tells us, was that we all of us might not just have life but have it abundantly.

In other words, life is for living - for living joyfully, exuberantly and extravagantly.  Or, as the second century theologian Ireneaus put it "a person fully alive is the glory of God." 

If you read the gospels at any length rather than in the bite size chunks you hear in church - and my personal recommendation is to try reading Mark's gospel from cover to cover in one sitting - you'll see they pulse, throb, fizz with life.  Jesus was no hair-shirt ascetic but a man who loved life and loved people, a party-goer who revelled in the company of others.  And there's a real sense in which his compassion was the overflow, the consequence of a deep joy in life that was, frankly, reckless - so when someone asks for your coat, give them your cloak as well; if they ask you to walk one mile with them, walk two.

It's one of the least attractive features of the modern world that we're often so busy and stressed that life can pass us by.  We're so caught up with earning living and caring for our families and friends that we lose sight of this great gift that's been given us of life itself.  That's why, if we are to have any chance of living abundantly we need to make regular space in our lives to put aside our chores, forget our cares, to be silent and then just savour the moment, gently calling to mind all that is good in our lives and all that we are blessed with.  We need to recover that child-like sense of wonder at being alive at all, so wonderfully captured in these few lines by G K Chesterton about evening:

"Here dies another day during which
I have had ears, eyes, hands
And the great world round me
And with tomorrow beings another..
Why am I allowed two?"

So when Jesus talks about us staying awake in anticipation of judgement I believe he's talking about this kind of awareness, about us not sleep-walking through life but being fully alive to it and cherishing this great gift we've been given.  And if we believe - as we must - that we will also be judged on how compassionate we've been then we might reflect on how very hard it is to love others if we are not at first in love with life itself.

Amen