Posts Tagged ‘Second coming’

Are we drifting apart?

November 30, 2019

Advent 1 – 2019

Matthew 24:36-44

Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. Amen.

I heard a tragic story the week. It concerned a young man, Brandon Richard Webster who is in Australia as a Fullbright Scholar researching how to use drones to assist farmers. Given his traumatic childhood, Brandon may never had made it this far. He only lived with his mother for the first eleven years of his life and as he tells it, the relationship was particularly toxic. For reasons that he does not understand, his mother did not want him to be happy and found the cruelest ways to make his life miserable. His only respite was a weekly visit to his grandparents and even then, they had to say that the visit was to give his mother (not him) a break. He was still quite young when his mother’s drug habit saw him spending hours alone in the houses where she bought and used the drugs. He often missed school and was frequently starving. At age eleven he took his mother to court. She lost custody and he has not seen her since (1).

Physical and mental abuse are just two reasons why relationships break-down. Tragic though the circumstances are, ending such relationships is usually the only way that the abused person is able to move forward and have any chance of happiness. Other reasons that relationships fall apart are nowhere near as dramatic and include such mundane things as ‘drifting apart’, ‘not communicating’, ‘the pursuit of different goals’, ‘having different values’ or simply ‘losing touch’.

Relationships, whether they are a marriage, a family or a friendship require an effort from both parties – taking an interest in what the other is up to, listening to their concerns, being there when times are tough, keeping in touch and ensuring the channels of communication remain open – especially when there has been a difference of opinion. Each relationship has its own peculiar properties. Marriage has to move from the heady days of first love to the building of a solid working partnership. Parenting has to shift from being in control to allowing increasing independence. Friendships must weather changes in occupation, marital status and address and must face the intrusion of partners and children. All relationships need to navigate carefully changes in circumstance especially when those circumstances involve loss or disappointment.

The break-down of a relationship – particularly of a marriage or between parent and child can be devastating. For some there is a sense of failure, for others a concern that they are being judged and for most the grief that something that once was so strong and so full of potential and hope has come to an end.

Today’s Gospel consists of a number of sayings relating to the coming of the Son of Man and two exhortations to be watchful and to be ready. The passage itself is just one small part of Matthew’s discourse on the last things which begins with Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple and concludes with three parables which reinforce the need to be prepared for Jesus’ return – the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the parable of the talents and the parable of the sheep and the goats. Without the wider context of the gospel, these sayings and parables would be enough to put one constantly on the alert, living in terror of Jesus’ coming and of being found wanting.

That may well have been Matthew’s intention. He is writing some fifty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The first disciples have died, and it would not be surprising if the initial enthusiasm for the gospel had waned. Most of those in the community would be a second generation of believers who had not known the intensity of a conversion experience. Their opponents and the sceptics among their friends may well have been challenging them to explain why it was that Jesus has not yet returned. Matthew’s apocalyptic discourse may be just the shot in the arm that this community needed. However if, in our day and age, these chapters lead to a belief that God is a distant and demanding God who is just waiting for us to put a foot wrong in order come down on us like a ton of bricks then we have completely missed the point of the Incarnation – God’s presence among us in Jesus. God is nothing like the fickle, unkind mother in Brandon’s story. God, as the life, death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrates is always reaching out to us with love. God is longing to be in relationship with us.

The key is relationship.  Our relationship with God requires as much nurture and labour as any other relationship if it is going to weather the passage of time and if it is to develop and grow. Our relationship with God is at much at risk of drifting apart if we do not put the time and effort into maintaining it.

On this the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year, we might take time to stop and ask ourselves how our relationship with God is going. Are we in danger of losing touch? Have we stopped communicating or at least stopped communicating in a meaningful way? Is our relationship with God stuck in a rut, unable to move forward because of some barrier or another that we have put in the way? Or is our relationship with God limited because we are failing to grow and mature in our faith?

I can’t answer for you, but I would not want to come to the end of time or the end of my life only to discover that I no longer had anything in common with God, that I had neglected our relationship to the point of estrangement, or that I had become stuck at a certain point in my faith development so that I had only a stunted and partial relationship rather than one that was rich and meaningful.

In the end it is all about relationship – God’s with us and ours with God. It is about God’s constantly reaching out in love to us, our willingness to be embraced by that love and our desire to enter into a relationship that grows and matures such that nothing, not our death and certainly not the end of time will be able to separate us from the God who has given us everything, even God’s very self.

 

  1. Brandon says that if he were to see his mother again, he would tell her that he forgives her.

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Domesticating God

November 29, 2014

Advent 1 – 2014

Mark 13:24-37 (Isaiah 64:1-9)

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose power exceeds anything that we can know or comprehend. Amen.

This week I was half way through a wedding rehearsal when there was the most eerie sound – a sound like the intake of breath that ended with what I can only describe as a rather loud popping noise. Moments before I had seen black clouds to the south and so I knew without further investigation that what I had heard was the decrease in pressure before the clouds unleashed a torrent of hail. Even though I knew what to expect, the experience was terrifying. All along the southern side of the church hail smashed into our beautiful stained-glass windows – shattering the glass and sending shards flying from one side of the church to the other. The force and impact of the hail was extraordinary and all that I could think about was finding a place in which we could wait out the storm in safety.

Hardly had the storm begun than it was over – leaving a swathe of destruction throughout Brisbane. Windows were shattered, roofs blown from houses, trees uprooted, cars crushed, power lines brought down, roads and even stations flooded.

Experienced up close, nature is absolutely formidable and totally uncontrollable. In the face of such ferocity human ingenuity is completely ineffectual. No amount of technological advance can withstand the force of nature at its worst. The best that we can do in the face of such power is to hope that we will survive and, having survived, pick up the pieces and start again.

Natural events – earthquakes, storms, tsunamis – all expose the insignificance and vulnerability of humanity in comparison with the vastness and potency of creation as a whole. Earthquakes, floods and tsuamis can destroy entire cities and change the topography of the land. Floods and mudslides can carry all before them. Nature is as violent and unpredictable as it is benign and life sustaining. Despite our best efforts, it cannot be manipulated or bent to our will.

If creation is beyond our reach to control, how much less is the God behind creation within our grasp to manage or direct?

The prophet Isaiah knew this and could only imagine that if God were to visit the earth it could only be in a dramatic and world-shattering way, that the God who created the universe and all that is in it was more powerful and more terrifying than anything that the natural world could throw at us. God’s coming would tear the heavens apart and God’s presence would do nothing less than change the face of the earth – the mountains themselves would quake, the valleys be raised and the mountains laid low, there would be no need for sun and moon, for God would provide perpetual light.

The gospels took up this theme and developed it even further. As the gospel writers saw it, the coming of God would completely transform creation – the sun would be darkened, nor would the moon give its light, the stars would fall and even the powers of heaven will be shaken at the coming of the Son of Man.

Despite these breath-taking and frightening images, I suspect that most of us are rather blasé about the Second Coming of Jesus. If we think about it at all, we associate it with our death or else we have rather romantic images of Jesus’ arriving peacefully on a cloud and gathering us to himself. Centuries of Christianity have led to a certain complacency, a tendency to domesticate God, a belief that all is right between ourselves and God and an assumption that we can know and understand God and God’s purpose for us and for the world.

The readings today put the lie to that kind of thinking. We are reminded that God is magnificent and awesome – beyond our ability to understand, let alone control. We are forced to consider that in the scale of things and in comparison to the universe as a whole we are of less significance and are less powerful than a speck of dust. If nature cannot be contained by our best efforts, how much less are we able to control God.

Advent begins, as the church year ends, with dramatic and vivid descriptions of God’s coming among us. The intention is not to make us cower in terror, but to fill us with awe at the nature and power of God, to remind us of who we are before God, to prick our inflated egos and to expose our arrogance and self-reliance.

Whether God’s coming is as quiet and unobtrusive as a birth in a far off land, or as dramatic and earth shattering as the re-arrangement of the universe, it will not to be caught unprepared. It does us good to be reminded that God is always just beyond our grasp because familiarity can lead to complacency and lead us to believe that we are in control when nothing could be further from the truth.

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