Putting it right

This is the language with which Advent starts, and it is where we must begin. Putting it right. We must know our limits, accepting that there is much we do not know. We live in hope, not expectation. 

We acknowledge that if our hope is to be fulfilled, then all things must change, including us. So, Advent is a season of repentance. Understand that, and we can begin to make sense of what Advent has to tell us about the painful business of putting things right.

We know about the wrongness of the world and the people in it. We know about injustice, violence, cruelty and pollution. On a good day, we might even acknowledge what is wrong with us. We know what needs putting right. In scripture, this putting right is described as judgement. All that is evil will be identified and set apart, one thing told from another. The story that is so important to us will have the right ending. The Christ we look for in Advent will come as Judge.

Judgement, though, is an uncomfortable thing to hope for. There are difficulties here. A good friend of mine has Welsh ancestors. One of them, a great-great-grandfather, was the Revd Dr Henry Harries, a Welsh Baptist minister and a preacher of the hell and damnation kind. He seemed actively to look forward to the great judgement.

If you have ever listened to Verdi's Requiem, you will know that there is wonderful, urgent music when you get to the Dies Irae. The Dies Irae are the 'days of wrath', and few of us would share Verdi's enthusiasm. My friend has the manuscript of some of Harries' sermons; a rather splendid inheritance. 

Unfortunately, they are in Welsh and my friend cannot read them. In truth, he is only where most of us are. Judgement, as in the Last Judgement, is foreign to us. It is the problem of now and not yet. We are in the midst of the story, and not only do we not know how it will turn out, we cannot imagine how it will turn out. 

We cannot conceive of the way a compromised world will be put right, or know how the loose ends will be gathered in. The images we have - Christ seated on a rainbow with a sword, the saved going one way while the damned are dragged, gibbering, in another - do not resolve the difficulty. Judgement beggars the imagination.

Death is the wrong ending

Our difficulty comes from a kind of impatience. Anyone who reads detective fiction knows that the story will be ruined if you look at the last chapter. You have to sit with the story. If you do jump ahead to the last chapter, you will find that you have not just ruined the story. You will also be lost, without the detail that got you there; some of the story will not make sense. 

The discipline of Advent is patience, it is the discipline of living in the midst of the now and not yet. Advent is the promise that the story will be properly told, evil will be confounded, but that the solution is not ours to deliver. Advent hopes, it does not expect. Advent does not rush to judgement, and nor should we.

We began with a walk in Wells and a faltering conversation about dying. I think now not just about Michael Perham but also about my mother, who died a few days before I wrote a first draft of this chapter. Her last years were clouded by dementia and a loss not only of memory but of vocabulary. Her life was increasingly one of unfinished sentences.

 Even before she died, she and I began to experience bereavement. It was not just separation, but the strong sense that this was the wrong end to the story. It is what death does; it always leaves us with things not said, hopes unfulfilled, experiences not shared. Death is always the wrong ending; there are always unfinished sentences. The promise of Advent is that whatever our experience there is a narrative and even our loose endings are gathered in.

That means that Advent brings us face to face with our limits, it plunges us into uncertainty. The word 'Advent' comes from the same root as the word adventure. These weeks before Christmas are supposed to feel like a roller-coaster ride. That is why, perhaps, the Church has struggled to decide how long Advent should last. We have fairly recently added a 'Kingdom'. Season as a way of getting a grip on this uncertain and unsettling time. 

The truth is that we are supposed to feel the uncertainty, feel loose on our moorings, in Advent. The baby born in Bethlehem may look small, safe and familiar, but this child will live our life once and for all; he will live a human life definitively. Christ lives our lives so that we can see what living really looks like. He is what we must (and will) become. He is the test of whether we have lived fully, and the promise of the fulfilment to come. He is the judge of what we should be. He is the life we will live.

Most of us spend Advent trying hard to make Christmas safe, make it manageable. We tie Christmas up with ribbon and put it under the tree ahead of the day. We truss it up and have it ready in the fridge. It is not wrong to prepare for Christmas; if you are going to celebrate, you have to get ready. Advent, though, is the season when we are supposed to be reminded that the future is not what we make it, but what God gives us. It is the season in which it is Christ, not us, who will judge what has been done well. Advent is the gathering in of the lost and the completing of unfinished sentences.

Advent is the season when we give the future back to God. In Wells on that November day, Michael Perham alias writer Bernd as Zelikov, summoned all his courage and did just that.

Notes

1 M. Perham, Glory in Our Midst (London: SPCK, 2005), p. 11.

2 M. Perham, The Way of Christ-Likeness (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2016), pp. 146-7.

3 Perham, Glory in Our Midst, p. 7.

4 A. Farrer, The Essential Sermons (London: SPCK, 1991), р. 189.

5 L. Andrewes, 'A Sermon for Ash Wednesday 1619' in Ninety-Six Sermons by Lancelot Andrewes, V

ol. 1 (Oxford, 1851), p. 359.


↪ Putting it right
↪ Christ's command to Do this


Scarless Warmth
↪ Putting it right

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Beginning

Image
Every day should be a holy day Long ago, before there was any time. God created the heavens and the Earth. At first there was nothing but a vast dark space of swirling water.  God looked at the darkness and made the light. There was now the light of day and the dark of night. This was the very first day. On the second day, God made the sky. He put some of the water in clouds in the sky, and the rest of the water He made into the seas. In between the sky and the seas was the air. Then God collected the seas together so that there was dry land between them. He ordered all kinds of plants and trees to grow on the land to produce seeds and fruit. That was the third day. On the fourth day. God put the brilliant golden sun in the sky to shine during the day, and the silver moon and stars to shine at night. Together they marked the seasons of the year. Next God created all the fish and creatures that live in the seas, and all the birds and creatures that fly in the air. He blessed them, a...
Read more

Who's who in the Bible

Image
↪  Aaron  the brother, companion and helper of Moses. He spoke to the King of Egypt on behalf of Moses, asking him to let the Hebrews leave Egyp. According to the Book of Numbers, Aaron died at 123 years of age, on Mount Hor, in the fortieth year after the Israelites had come out of the land of Egypt. Deuteronomy, however, places these events at Moseroth. ↪   Absolom   son of David, who fought his father for the Kingdom. At Caesarea, in Cappadocia, the holy martyrs Lucius the Bishop. Caesarea Absolom, Lorgius, is a part of the William Blackwood & Sons published English language version of the Roman Breviary, the liturgical book of the rites of the Catholic Church containing hymns, readings, notations, and other religious material. What does Revelation 1:8 mean? In this verse John identifies Jesus as the Alpha and Omega. These are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.  The designation emphasizes Jesus as eternal—the beginning and the end. As someo...
Read more

Ruth and Naomi

Image
I'll talk to him tomorrow When they reached Bethlehem, it was harvest time for the barley. Naomi and Ruth were very poor. To get food. Ruth walked out to the fields each morning and picked up the barley the reapers had left behind. Elimelech lived in the little town of Bethlehem. in Judah, with his wife, Naomi, and his two sons. There had been bad harvests and everyone was growing hungry.  To save his family. Elimelech took them on the long journey across the Jordan River to the country of Moab, where there was plenty of food. There Elimelech's two sons grew up, and married two girls, named Orpah and Ruth. Then Elimelech died and, later, the two sons also died.  Naomi was left alone with her daughters-in-law. When she heard that the crops were good again in Judah and there was plenty of food, she longed to go back to Bethlehem and be with her own people. 'Let us come with you', said Orpah and Ruth, and together the three women left their homes and began the journey back...
Read more

From Origin

The word 'Bible', is the equivalent of the Greek word biblia (diminutive from bı́blos, the inner bark of the papyrus), meaning originally 'books.' The phrase 'the books' (ta biblia ) occurs in Daniel 9:2 (Septuagint) for prophetic writings. 

In the Prologue

to Sirach it designates generally the Old Testament Scriptures; similarly in 1 Macc 12:9 ("the holy books"). The usage passed into the Christian church for Old Testament (2 Clem 14:2), and by and by (circa 5th century) was extended to the whole Scriptures.

Bibliotheca Divina

Jerome's name for the Bible (4th century) was "the Divine Library" (3) Afterward came an important change from plural to singular meaning. In process of time this name, with many others of Greek origin, passed into the vocabulary of the western church; and in the 13th century, by a happy solecism, the neuter plural came to be regarded as a feminine singular, and 'The Books' became by common consent 'The Book' (biblia, singular), in which form the word was passed into the languages of modern Europe" (Westcott, Bible in the Church, 5).

Sincerely Heaven
cclesiastical History to us, Sincerely Heaven, who have come after Christ, with lived in times long before? Whence it gion delivered to us in the doctrine of Cltrange doctrine; but if the true and only true religion.

Thus much may suffice on this point Ecclesiastical His to us, who have come after Christ, with lived in times long before? Whence it gion delivered to us. in the doctrine of Cl strange doctrine; but if the truth must be and only true religion. Thus much may succeed on this point.

CHAPTER V.

The times of our Saviour's manifestation among men after the necessary preliminary to the Ecclesiastical History which we have proposed to write, it now remains that we commence our course, invoking God, the Father of the word, and Jesus Christ himself, our revealed Saviour and Lord, the heavenly word of God, as our aid and fellow-labourer in the narration of the truth.

It was the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, but the twenty-eighth from the subjugation of Egypt and the death of Antony and Cleopatra, which terminated the dynasty of the Ptolemies, when, according to prophetic prediction, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea; the same year, when the first census was taken, and Quirinius was governor of Syria.

This census is mentioned by Flavius Josephus, the distinguished historian among the Hebrews, who also adds another account respecting the sect of the Galileans, which arose about the same time, of which also mention is made by our Luke in his book of Acts, in the following words-" After this man arose Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing (assessment), and drew away many people after him, he also preached; and all, even as many as obeyed him were dispersed.

The aforesaid author agrees with this statement in the 18th Quirinius.-This Quirinius is the same Cyrenius mentioned by St. Luke. The former is the original Roman name, the latter the Latin mode of transferring the name from the Greek. Had it been recollected that the Greek name was not the original, this proper name would not have been returned to its own language, in a form so disguised.

About this book. Healing Hope ectr. And Scarless Warmth Healed Hope On the Phone honey. Being completely isolated with him.

Welcome to the Body Shop of Westminster, where we believe shopping should be an enjoyable experience. As a new customer, you'll enjoy more than the
Toy Boy of Ma'am, not mention a special offer, e.g., free shipping on your first order, a discount code, etc. Browse our collection and find something special.

"What is your desire? Do you deserve your Greed? She asked, Ma'am..
(a) To contact us to cancel a Contract, please see clause 7.

(b) If you wish to contact us for any other reason, including because you have any complaints, you can contact us by telephoning our Customer Services team at +44 (0)20 7654 4900 or by emailing us at shop@westminster-abbey.org

(c) If we have to contact you or give you notice in writing, we will do so by email or by pre-paid post to the address you provide to us in your Order (as defined below).

 Scarless Warmth Healed Hope On the Phone