God as ruler

That insight is part of what we have to grapple with at Advent. Our imagination cowers. Yes, of course we are people of hope. The same God who created us is the God who redeems us and the God whose kingdom comes. That, though, is his story and not ours to catalogue or control. The truth is that we have no handle on the sheer scale and sweep of God's nature and purpose. Put simply, we do not know God.

I once made that point - 'we do not know God' - in a sermon on the Trinity. A very irritated lady took several days about it but she came to see me and ticked me off in no uncertain terms. You need to go back to Bible school, she said. Indeed, I think she might even have called me 'laddie'. At the risk of offending her (and you), I will say it again. 

Christians are the people who do not know God. It is essential, if our theology or our prayers are to be honest, that we acknowledge that we do not know God. We can- not explain, we do not comprehend, we will not understand. Here is Austin Farrer (he was beginning a sermon on predestination):

I am not going to make you see how difficult it is. I am going to make you look into the unfathomable abyss of God's will; and if you turn away with a dizzy head, you will at least have looked beneath the surface of things.

God is not like anything, and all comparisons will fail. God's glory and grace cannot be mapped any more than we can measure infinity, or eternity. One of the things that should happen in Advent is that we acknowledge that.

That, however, does not help us very much. Mysteriousness is all very well, but it is not always satisfying. I, too, like Advent; one of my favourite moments of the liturgical year comes when we turn off the lights in the cathedral on Advent Sunday and wait to hear a voice sing, from the most distant chapel to the east of us, the Advent Matin Responsory:

I look from afar: And lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth.

I always savour that moment. Then, when the service ends, I routinely have a conversation with someone frustrated that we began a service with something you could hardly hear in a building in which it was very hard to see. The Advent antiphon works for me because I know the text (so I do not need the light on, nor do I have to look at the service sheet) and I know what comes next and why it comes next. It works for me because I have some understanding.

The first thing we have to say is that 'we do not know God'.

The second thing we have to say (or perhaps, better still, the second part of the first thing) is that we do know Jesus Christ, and knowing him we are given a lifetime's understanding and explanation. It is precisely his lifetime that is the explanation, and it will serve for all of ours. We tell the story of Jesus Christ, of his birth, life, teaching and example, of his death and resurrection. We tell that story because we think it gathers-up every other story. 

This is the story of everything, for-ever. In Advent, we just make a beginning; we sketch out a few hints about before and after. Then we tell the story of the life of Christ. We talk about John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, and the rest of the story follows in the course of the Christian year. Each year tells the story again. We take a long look back and forward to horizons we cannot describe. Then we tell the story of Jesus Christ because it helps us to under-stand. We tell his story because we know it is not over. It is not enough to speak of a mystery we cannot penetrate.

We do need to acknowledge that we are working (like those prophets) at the limits of what we can describe, but we also need to be clear that there is indeed a narrative to help us. At the heart of Advent is the conviction that the story of God's grace began in creation and is not over. This is the fundamental idea we need to grasp as we make our way through the Christian year. 

In the midst of lives that sometimes seem unsatisfactory and confronted by events that bring us near despair, we keep telling a story about a God who is the beginning and the end, a God who creates and who will redeem. We are haunted by a fear that it might all come to nothing, that we were born without purpose and might die without meaning. The story Christians tell is that whatever the evidence to the contrary, God will gather-up every loose end. Nothing will be lost, nothing will be meaningless. This is the scale and sweep with which Advent deals. This is the future for which Advent hopes.

Between now and not yet

Advent hopes; it does not expect. Expectation always has to be reasonable, it must be plausible. I cannot reasonably say, 'I expect the fountains in the city will pour forth fine claret this afternoon. So, expectation is always cautious. I might, however, hope that there will be claret. Hope can be extravagant, Real hope overturns what most of us merely expect. 

In truth, claret from fountains is probably more of an ideal daydream, and in all sorts of ways it would be very messy. Real hope, Christian hope, has more bone and substance than that, but it is still always better than what we merely expect. Christian hope is startling. In Advent, that is precisely what we are told. In a reading at the heart of the Advent carol service, we hear the great promise made by Isaiah. We are reminded that we do not know God:

To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? (Isaiah 40.18)

Then, the size and scale of our hope is set out:

those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40.31)

In the same service, we might hear John the Baptist quoting Isaiah and proclaiming, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight' (Mark 1.3). That is a measure of how startling Advent is. John said this in the Judean desert, a place of pinnacles, cliffs and ravines. Any journey there is full of twists and turns. Yet there, in the very last place you might imagine, John declares that there will be a royal highway, a straight road through all the contours. You can read about how that might work in the book of Baruch:

God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low, and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God. (Baruch 5.7)

John imagines a very different future: one glimpse of a world where God and creation are finally, fully reconciled.
John announces that hope, and then we meet Jesus. Jesus appears, we are told, in those days. This is a phrase the evangelist St Mark uses in order to tell the time. Knowing what time it is, knowing that the time has come, is crucially important. Jesus declares,

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near... (Mark 1.15)

Telling the right time is important because Jesus announces that although we live in the present, the future has come near. That is what happens in those days. In all that follows, he continues to steer a course between now and not yet. It is this space between now and not, yet, that is the landscape of Advent.

Jesus taught in parables that described the future. 'The kingdom of God is like,' he says, and offers an illustration. He saw the future in very familiar things: the kingdom is like a wedding, a field, a seed. Yet that sure confidence, that he knew the future and could describe it, was tempered by the conviction that it had not yet arrived. The future has yet to come, and we are not ready. Like bridesmaids who fail to light lamps, or like an improperly dressed guest, we fluff our cues.

The kingdom of God's future is always close at hand and, nonetheless, still at a remove. There is more of the story to follow. The very landscape will be changed, and we too must be altered.
We must change. The future requires something from us:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news. (Mark 1.15)

Repent (metanoein) means 'change your mind', and more besides. It is better understood as 'turn round', or even 'go back again'. This is how Jesus begins his preaching. In Mark's Gospel, these are the first words we hear from him. The kingdom has come near, and we must think again, turn round, face the other way. We must repent. 

There is so much that ties us to the way things are, to the world as it is. While we may not be completely happy with the way things are, we do at least know where we fit in. We conform to the world as it is. To find our way into the future, however, we must let go, turn round. We must repent. We seem to have almost forgotten that Advent is a season of repentance. It is a time to turn.

The turning around is radical. Here is Lancelot Andrewes:

First, a 'turn', wherein we look forward to God, and with our 'whole heart' resolve to turn to Him. Then a turn again wherein we look backward to our sins wherein we have turned from God, and with beholding them our very heart breaketh. These two are two distinct, both in nature and names; one, conversion from sin; the other, contrition for sin. 

One resolving to amend that which is to come, the other reflecting and sorrowing for that which is past. One declining from evil to be done hereafter; the other sentencing itself for evil done heretofore. These two between them make up a complete repentance, or to keep the word of the text, a perfect revolution.⁵

Back to the other side
↪  Forgiveness in Jesus' Teachings
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