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Readings:
Jeremiah 33.4-16
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will
fulfill the promise I made to the house of
Israel
and the house of
Judah
. In those days
and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up
for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in
the land. In those
days
Judah
will be saved and
Jerusalem
will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be
called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’
Luke
21:25-28
There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and
on earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the
sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding
of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the
heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these
things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near.’
verse
36
Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the
strength to excape all these things that will take place, and
to stand before the Son of Man.
All
around our island nation there are clocks. Big Ben is the most
famous, standing majestically above the House of Westminster
and on the hour ringing out its chimes in deep sonorous tones
as if to indicate the seriousness of the situation.
As railway stations are refurbished, sophisticated
digital clocks not only indicate the hours and minutes, but
also the seconds. The
message is unmistakable: every second counts and our trains at
least aspire to punctuality even though they sometimes (or
some would say often) don’t achieve it.
Here at St Peter’s we have our own precious clock –
a nice looking large clock placed in a prominent position in
the tower. Those
who live in
Church Street
often tell me how much a part of their lives it is as they
glance out of their windows to find out the time.
It too has chimes – every 15 minutes.
For me, it is a profoundly moving moment when in the
course of our prayers each day, we wait at Evening Prayer for
the chimes at 5.00pm to ring out.
It is as if God himself is speaking to us, reminding us
of the importance of prayer; of the uniqueness of each hour of
that day which can never be repeated.
Somehow, the brevity of life, and the remorseless march
of time point to the preciousness and potential sacredness of
each moment, encouraging us to use our time wisely and
profitably.
But
while we love our clocks and watches and live our lives
constantly checking the time, we need to recognise that
recording the precise moment of time does not always capture
the meaning of that moment.
Sometimes we need to sum up an event or an era with a
description that can enable us to cover long periods of time.
So we talk about the Middle Ages, or the Tudors, or the
Elizabethan Age, or we reminisce about the War Years or the
Swinging Sixties. Of
course in our stark post-modern era, everything is stripped
down to the bare minimum.
The greatest shocks to the Western World are just
rather ominously given numbers – 9/11 and 7/7 – referring
to the attacks on the
Twin
Towers
and the Pentagon and the
London
tube and bus attacks. But
even when we talk about these events, we are filling those
numbers with memories and meaning far beyond what anyone could
have imagined. In
our own personal lives too, we often describe our lives as
marked by particular moments – marriage, the birth of a
child, the death of a parent or a spouse, getting a new job,
retirement. Suddenly
the actual dates may fade a little and it is the memory of
what that period of your life actually felt like which is what
remains.
People
in biblical times, of course, had no clocks.
Time keeping was regulated primarily by night and day.
People had generally a good idea of 3 hour stretches.
You will remember how our gospels talk about the 3rd
hour of the ninth hour, or talks about the watches of the
night. But
despite having no watches, the ancients were aware of the
importance of time. The
early church put emphasis on particular days and seasons.
Sunday was to be a special day for Christians out of
respect and joy for the resurrection of their Lord.
It was to be the day of re-creation, re-birth for
God’s people, and it should be marked by thanksgiving, rest,
and fellowship. God’s
people should gather together in worship and praise of God and
share bread and wine in Eucharist (which is the Greek word for
thanksgiving). The
season of Advent was to be a time of waiting, and preparation
– second only in austerity to Lent – so that Christian
people could prepare themselves spiritually for the birth of
their Saviour. There
was to be a renewed focus of prayer – an alertness in the
wonderful words of the collect ‘to cast away the works of
darkness and put on the armour of light’.
Moreover, the focus of this prayer was to rediscover
that part of the religious life which was so fundamental to
the Jewish people – namely the yearning for God’s coming
and intervention in the world.
Social scientists inform us that when peoples are
oppressed, and experiencing considerable hardship, then the
greatest yearning for change, for a better and transformed
future, is at its most creative.
Visions emerge of a future time when the injustice is
thrown off, and oppression banished.
The prophet Jeremiah, for example, in exile in
Babylon
speaks words of hope to a broken people – God will deliver
the people and bring salvation or safety to
Jerusalem
and its people. Hard
to believe, if you too were in exile in
Babylon
and could remember the city being destroyed.
But the prophet declares that God has made a promise
that things will be different, and God is faithful.
So
as we survey the world at the end of 2009, what should we be
yearning for? How
does God view our world and what utterly transforming changes
would our God like to emerge as a sign of his kingdom coming
here on earth?
Back
in 2000, all the member states of the United Nations pledged
to achieve eight goals by 2015.
They said ‘We will spare no effort to free our fellow
men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing
conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of
them now subjected.’ Let
us just consider the first of these goals and then assess how
we are doing.
1.
Eradicate
extreme poverty and hunger.
Specifically the aim is by 2015 to reduce by half the
proportion of people whose income in 1990 amounted to less
than one US dollar a day, and reduce by half the proportion of
people who were hungry.
Currently
1.1 billion people live on less than one dollar a day, and 852
million are hungry.
So
9 years on how are we doing?
On
the Goal to eradicate extreme poverty, there have been
improvements. For
example in Sub-saharan Africa in 2000 58% of the population
lived in extreme poverty.
That figure is now down to 41%. The aim is to get
it down to about 25%.
The report noted that worldwide, ‘the number of
people living in extreme poverty in 2009 is expected to be 55
million – 90 million higher than anticipated before the
global economic crisis.’
This means that in our world of 6 billion people, some
three-quarters of a billion people are living on less that
$1.25 a day.
It
also noted that conflict breeds poverty for millions –
‘the number of internally displaced persons worldwide is 26
million.’ From
the Palestinian ghettos, to Darfur, to the displaced of Iraq
and Afghanistan, to the hidden conflicts and violence in the
Congo, southern Sudan and Burundi there are 26 million people
who have lost their homes, or for whom it is not safe to go
back to their homes.
As
regards eliminating extreme hungry, rising food prices have
reversed some of the progress made since 1990.
‘Rapidly rising food prices cause the proportion of
people going hungry in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania to
increase in 2008 When
China is excluded, the prevalence of hunger also rose in
Eastern Asia. In
most of the other regions, the effect was to arrest the
downward trend.’ The
report notes that ‘governments and their development
partners should implement measures to increase the
availability of food, including raising production, and
strengthen social policies that address the negative effects
of higher food prices, especially on the poor.’
There still are over 500 million people who are hungry
and under nourished.
We
have just dealt with one of the Millennium goals.
Back in 2000, governments and the UN thought that 15
years was a reasonable time span in which to deliver the
goals. But now
time is running out. The
commitment is wearing thin. Talk is in the air of targets
being missed; the deadline needing extending.
Which
points to the problem facing our world.
We are good at setting deadlines way ahead in the
future, but then we fail to meet them.
Because we have set them, we go to ways of shifting the
goalposts. Who
will notice? Who
will bother? We tried and failed.
So what? The
forthcoming climate change Conference in
Copenhagen
will aim to set deadlines far into the future so that carbon
emissions can be cut and the amount of carbon in the
atmosphere arrested and then reduced.
If the Millennium Goals are anything to go by, the
targets will not be met. There
will not be the will power to make the necessary sacrifices to
bring about the successful meeting of the reductions required.
Does it matter? Will
anyone notice?
Well,
actually, it does matter.
The actual future of the planet is at stake,
This is God’s world and if humanity fails to live as
God invites us to live, then humanity faces a frightening
future. If you had
been with me in Keswick, Cockermouth area this time last week,
you would have had a foretaste of what this future might
entail and the misery which it brings.
And of course, there is much misery in the poverty and
hunger of the world’s poor: this shouldn’t be happening in
our world. God,
our God, will demand justice and seek to bring it about.
So
today, our spiritual journey through Advent needs to be
grounded, grounded in a yearning for the righteousness of God.
We know that God is with us in Jesus – Emmanuel –
and we pray and yearn for his coming.
But we also know that this Emmanuel is no push
over – he invites us to be his followers and he makes
demands of us. So
let us not be sentimental about the coming of the Saviour.
He is the one who says that the righteous are those who
give practical help: ‘I was hungry and you gave me some
food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
I was naked and you gave me clothing.
I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and
you visited me.’ Here
we find the righteousness of God which the prophet foretold.
And here we find our ultimate challenge.
No
doubt you are looking at your watches.
Gone on a bit long today, you’ll be thinking.
But don’t look at your watches.
See your life cast in the eternity of God – a God who
is beyond all time, but who through the time which He allots
to you on this earth, gives you the opportunity to join His
Son in fixing this broken and suffering world.
Remember, just like the landlord in the pub, God at one
point will say to you and to me.
Time’s up. It
might be wise to let that concentrate your mind.
Michael
Rusk
29.11.09
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