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I've heard of dreaming of a white Christmas but I never dreamt of a white
Advent. I got one on Friday.
Advent is that time of year when the Christmas lights go up, the shops
are full of Christmas decorations, and we begin to look in wonder at the
depletion in our bank balance as it sinks even faster than the thermometer.
In the Church, Advent is the time of year when we focus on the coming
of Christ. For us who believe that God has come amongst us in the person
of Jesus, it is a time when we prepare ourselves - just as John the Baptist
called people to prepare themselves for the one who was coming.
Every Christmas, we are reminded that Christ is going to come again, and
we think of the day when God's time and God's reign will be a reality,
and we remind ourselves that we have to be ready for it. And when we start
to do that, we are so often confronted with how unready we are.
Externally, we know that our world is in an awful mess of injustice. We
know that some people have too much to eat and others die because they
don't have any. And we know that in our generation it has become worse
than ever.
Internally, this getting ready is about how I am, looking at the state
of ourselves. Like in our world, there's a lot more work to be done on
me - let alone the rest of the world.
But sometimes it's easier to concentrate on the problems out there. Its
easier to look at the faults in Mugabe and Blair, than to seriously look
at ourselves. But nevertheless, in Advent, a lot of us do exactly that.
We look hard, at us, not at the other person.
When theologians talk about that day, that time when Christ returns, they
often use the word "eschaton" and you might have heard someone
using the term "eschatology," meaning the way we think about
the end times.
It's a really strange word actually, because the New Testament hardly
ever uses it, and when it does, it isn't talking about a time so much
as Christ himself.
He is the eschaton, the end of all things, and when the Bible writers
say that the eschaton will come, they mean that Christ will come. The
end of things isn't a time so much as a person, the advent of Christ,
the one we wait for.
Now the New Testament does talk about the "end times" but it
uses the word "Telos" to talk about the end times, and telos
is a word which has more of the flavour of the goal, or the intention.
In this word, we have the sort of meaning that is conveyed by the phrase
"Why are you doing this? To what end?" So when the Bible talks
about the end times, it is using a word that conveys purpose and vision
and intention and hope, a telos, a consummation, not a concluding annihilation
of the enemy.
In Christian history, the people who used to go and leave everything,
striving for perfection, used to use the same word, "telos"
to talk about the end point of what they were striving for, a union with
God, to know God better, to be at one with God.
Telos was a word almost synonymous with what Wesley meant when he talked
about Christian perfection. And he didn't mean being perfect humans, he
meant being at one with God, finding union with God.
I hope that is what we will be striving for this Advent, as we move towards
Christmas, the celebration of the coming of God amongst us, man with man
to dwell as the hymn writer puts it. Because, when we come to Advent,
and we think about the One who has come and will come again, we are launching
ourselves into that Christian hope which believes that the will of God
can be done, that his Kingdom will come, not to end all things, but to
the end and purpose that God devises.
This end and purpose, is even now, in this service and in our lives as
we leave here and go to our families, in our homes, is working towards
fulfilment because the presence of Christ is amongst us, even now.
In our Western thinking, we so easily leap to a linear and time related
understanding. But what God is guiding us to is faithfulness and towards
becoming more like God's image, to become what we are intended to be.
That is the end to which Christ has come and will come again.
Someone once asked a wise old man, what is the purpose of life?
The wise old man, took a child and placed him beside his father who was
there, a well loved and respected member of the village. The people were
quiet as the old man looked from the chubby little fair skinned boy with
his black hair and his blue eyes to the tall suntanned man with his balding
white head and his brown eyes.
"Do you think he is like his Father?" he asked.
The people all looked from one to the other and agreed the little baby
boy was nothing like his father.
"This little boy's purpose in life," said the old man "is
to become like his father."
Advent reminds us that our purpose in life, is to become like our father.
This is the end, the purpose, of all time.
This is the task, the end, the telos, that Advent calls us to.
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