Reflection by Frances Flatman on next Sunday's Readings :-
As we begin a new year in our Gospel Readings, this time following Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus, and we prepare for his coming at Christmas by way of the Advent preparation time, we enter into a period in which our expectations are all overturned and we are encouraged to think differently about our lives. There are times when the preparation for Christmas can seem quite a hassle, and we wonder if it’s all worth the bother, but our Readings all come from times of catastrophic material change, when the world we are so comfy with, and have grown to accept as sluggish and even boring, is cracked wide open and we are invited to experience the coming of the Lord as an event which shatters our complacency and makes us consider who precisely we are and where we stand in our faith. We have to remember that Matthew wrote his Gospel in the aftermath of the shattering failure of the Jewish Revolt, 66-70 CE and the end of all his hopes that Christianity was and would remain the culmination of Judaism. Other Gospels, such as Luke’s which we have just followed, saw the faith go out to the pagans; and we experienced through Theophilus the demands and challenges of this new faith on people whose lives, formerly lived as pagans, ran quite contrary to the life of Jesus. For Matthew, the rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the Jews meant that all his hopes for the future lay in ruins, his Gospel would be a lament and exploration of this catastrophe, and the radical rethinking required by this disciple and his community as it adjusted to belief in Christ in a new convert world.
First Isaiah (1-39) comes from the 8th century BCE, and our passage (2:1-5) looks forward very positively to a time when the entire universe will come to faith in the God of Israel. Jerusalem will be the site of the faith and raised up as the highest of mountains, thus proclaiming its power and ‘All the nations will stream to it’. Isaiah longingly speaks of a universal peace (don’t we all) and where weapons of war are turned to agricultural use and all are orientated towards unity. But sadly this prophet, and arguably Israel’s greatest lyric poet, was rapidly disillusioned as by chapter 5 he sings his great vineyard lament, which was taken up by Jesus just before his passion, for a nation which had lost its way and was to be rejected by God. Isaiah believed that the rise of Assyria, which conquered Mesopotamia, Syria, Israel and even lower Egypt was to be seen as God’s punishment on his faithless people as the countryside was devastated by war and violence and Samaria and Galilee were overrun by foreign invaders.
In Matthew’s Gospel (24:37-44) we find Jesus in Jerusalem for the Passover and his crucifixion, and as is common with this chronicler, much time is devoted to teaching the disciples and preparing them to become the Church after his death and resurrection. Once again, like Isaiah, he pictures a time of peace, when all trudged on quietly with work, marriages and occasions for feasting; but Jesus reminds them that centuries ago this placid harmony was smashed to bits by the action of God with the Flood and his judgement of his people. The coming of the Lord, it seems, is going to shake us all out of our routines, messing up our plans and demanding that we radically rethink and re-evaluate our whole lives. The story of Noah and his boat and the animals is not one of a quiet trip down the river, but rather of destruction and change; and the warning to us is that we must be ready for these shifts. Espousing the God of creation is not to be an insignificant event, but something which will turn our lives upside down, and we are called to action, to be alert, which is why we have the parable of the ‘House despot’ and the burglar. Anyone who has become a refugee will know exactly what he means, and God knows there are enough of them at present; with lives and even their very identities ripped from their moorings. Jesus gives this teaching because he is shortly to be crucified and knows the effect this will have on his disciples and needs to keep them on their toes, so that when it and then his resurrection happens they are equipped to act decisively for the faith. When my husband worked at Campsfield Asylum Centre near Oxford he met a Vietnamese man who had escaped the regime there and travelled north through Russia into Europe and eventually made his way to the UK; what journeys, at very least of the heart and mind do we need to make as we prepare for the Incarnation?
Our Reading from Romans (13:11-14) is the latest extant Pauline Letter, from the late 50’s CE. In it, Paul writes ‘The time (Kairon) has come’, and as he develops this theme we need to consider just where we are in real time in Rome. The Emperor Nero took the throne in 54 CE with the poisoning of Claudius, and at first due to the guidance of Burrus and Seneca, ruled moderately well for a precocious 18 year old. But by 59, Burrus had died of natural causes and Nero, increasingly depraved, had murdered his dominating mother and was well on the way to rejecting Seneca the Stoic philosopher’s help. There were increasing purges of the Senate, where opponents were either murdered or forced to commit suicide, and by 63 with the Pisonian Conspiracy major men from the elite and the equestrians were killed. Seneca was forced to take his own life. As the great fire of Rome destroyed the centre of the city, Nero scapegoated the Christians and a significant persecution of them broke out. Peter and Paul were among its victims. Is this what Paul saw as the kairos, the moment of the in-breaking of God when, in the catastrophe believers are called to make life threatening decisions for or against the kingdom? Certainly, the end of our passage is uncompromising about the life changes we shall have to make. Advent then is not to be seen as a quiet preparation for the blow-out of Christmas but a period of dramatic and radical revision of our lives as we renew our relationship with the God who dared to become human for our salvation and paid the price of that risky choice for the creation he loved into being, and with which he longed to share his immortal life.
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