Advent 1 - Year A – GS 2025 The Four Last Things
Advent is a time of loitering – well that’s what the Rector told me a few weeks ago when I asked his thoughts about Advent. A time of loitering. But loitering is hanging about with no real purpose or aim – unless that is, it’s loitering with intent. And loitering with intent used to be a criminal offence connected with vagrancy.
I’m sure Dean wasn’t encouraging either aimlessness or criminality during Advent. But he certainly got me thinking.
We begin Advent, and the first day of the Church’s New Year, with Isaiah’s great vision—all nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord, swords hammered into ploughshares, spears reshaped into pruning hooks. It’s a beautiful picture, a picture of peace, justice and hope. Beautiful and at the same time it hurts when we realise hundreds and hundreds of years later his vision is still not a reality, and we humans have yet to respond to the call to live in the light of the Lord.
St Paul tells the Roman Christians that they know the time and it’s the moment for them to wake from sleep. Wake up. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Get up, change the way you live, the day is near.
What day?
The day when the Son of Man returns – and it’s near. Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, tells us that the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah: people eating, drinking, marrying—life going on as usual—until suddenly everything changes. Be awake, be ready for the Son of Man is coming when you least expect him.
During the early Christian centuries this was the focus of Christians and the Church, and its particular focus during Advent. They believed firmly that the coming of Christ in glory was near and could happen at any time and they had to prepare for it. The time when all will be made new, a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem. When all shall gather at the mountain of the Lord.
The Advent of the early Christians had four themes: Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven. Not cheerful, certainly not the stuff of mincemeat pies and mulled wine and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. They are known as the Four Last Things and contemplating them was central to their Christian tradition.
I’ve rarely contemplated the Four Last Things and never preached about them, but I’m determined not to loiter.
We could fall into the trap of thinking about these in terms that have been generally received wisdom for a very long time – in the sentimentality of the secular world and the complacency of those Christians who might describe themselves as ‘saved’, but these ideas really don’t have their origin in the Hebrew and New Testament Scriptures.
Death – come on we don’t want to think of death as we decorate our trees and roast our turkeys. But wait. What does the New Testament say about death? St Paul is absolutely clear: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)
Walk in newness of life. Paul reminds us that we have died to sin - and St Peter that having died to sin we live to righteousness. New life has begun!
Judgement
Jesus teaching on judgement was clear and specific. The sheep will be separated from the goats. The judgement will be made on how they treated the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned. This judgement is about justice. What have they done to bring justice to those trampled down by inequality, cruelty, intolerance? Jesus tells us that it is not for us to judge others, but to follow him in bringing justice and if we face persecution or ridicule for doing so, we, like the poor, will be blessed. Judgement is about righteousness, not the kind of self-righteousness Burns describes in Holy Willie’s Prayer – or the Pharisee who proudly follows law and ritual to the letter - but the simple righteousness that’s about putting wrongs right.
The sheep, who were righteous in that sense went to eternal life. The goats who did not, were sent to eternal punishment.
And yet… How often do we read in the New Testament that not one will be lost. God’s mercy, God’s unconditional love, God’s forgiveness seeks out the one lost sheep.
We equate eternal punishment with hell. There are different words and concepts in the Scriptures that are translated as ‘hell’ – and certainly one of them is the pit of fire outside Jerusalem. I reckon the life of medieval priests was made easy by the murals in even the smallest country churches of people suffering in the eternal punishments of hell. But is that really what hell is? Traditional theology has developed that understanding – but many theologians question it. Think about the way we talk of hell – we use it as an every-day description of people, places and events. Princes Street yesterday was hellish, my journey from Leamington Spa on Friday was pure hell. What of the hell so many face because of war? The hell created for minorities by the way they are treated by those who see them as the’ other’, the ‘enemy’? The rise of populists who encourage us to think that way terrifies me – they are creating hell. I’ve been reading an Advent book by Paul Dominiak who writes that both C S Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre, in different ways, picture hell as a spiritual condition that misshapes human relationships and closes them off from one another and from God.
This alienation is disrupted by Jesus – he breaks through bringing hope and love. He descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again. Dominiak writes: At heart, the hell that should trouble Christians was the one that humanity created, in all its manifold and insidious cultural, social, political and economic forms. Christ came to empty those hells by the saving act of his life, death and resurrection.
We generally regard heaven as the opposite of hell and yet: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…
Heaven, in the Scriptures, is not a place of eternal reward for the faithful – it’s part of creation and was regarded as being above the earth – the place where God dwells without losing contact with the earth. Earth thy footstool and heaven thy throne. Earth was down here and heaven just above us. Of course we now know that is not the case, but that doesn’t give us permission to separate these two key parts of creation. Over and over again in the New Testament the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven mean the same thing and we pray that God’s will be done and kingdom come on earth as in heaven. They are inseparable. We who are one with Christ through the power of the Spirit and through the waters of baptism live in both. We long for the time when heaven and earth are completely indistinguishable. How then can we stand by and watch as the earth is being destroyed. How can Christian extremists declare that it’s ok because it will hasten the time of the second coming. The way we treat our planet is the greatest immorality and evil of our time.
I love the words from the 17th century priest and poet Richard Crawshaw:
Heaven in earth and God in man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth
Heaven is a present reality in which we share and which we will experience in all its fullness at the second coming of Christ. As we loiter, preparing for that, is what Advent is all about.
So to loiter or not to loiter? I come down on the side of loiter – and loiter with intent. Please, not criminal, but with the intent of contemplating the Four Last Things – death, judgement, hell and heaven – and think what it means to live now in the Kingdom of God. Isaiah’s image is beautiful, but also practical. Hammering a sword into a ploughshare is not an abstract idea. It’s metalwork. It’s muscle. It’s craft. It takes time, sweat, skill.
Sunday 1, Candle 1. What does it mean for us to have died to sin and live to righteousness?
Sunday 2, Candle 2. Recognising that God’s judgement brings justice and restoration, is there anything we can do living as the Spirit filled people of God, to bring that justice and restoration to our broken world?
Sunday 3, Candle 3. Hell, not a place, but of disrupted and distorted relationships; separation from other people and from God. How can we who live in unity with the Risen Christ give hope and bring reconciliation to those in despair?
Sunday 4, Candle 4. Heaven, not separate from earth but created alongside and groaning together in the birth pangs of becoming the New Creation. What part can we play in stopping the terrible destruction of earth and work to reverse the damage, so that God’s kingdom, to which we belong, can indeed be seen and enjoyed on earth as in heaven.
And at Christmas as we light the white candle, the candle that signifies the light of Christ, the light that is not overcome by darkness, may we be ready to walk in that light, the light of the Lord. Christ is coming. Let us be found ready—not frightened or frantic, but awake, hopeful, and beautifully alive.