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| The Last Judgement Marc Chagall |
Advent I is the start of a new Christian year. The readings
are always powerfully apocalyptic. "People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world" this year's Gospel from Luke tells us, revealing the preconditions of Jeremiah's prediction -- "The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel".
The focus of these readings, as in other years, is the end of time. By implication this means the Second Coming of Christ. Why do we begin the year by thinking about the Second Coming, and not the First – the birth of Jesus? The answer is that the Incarnation is NOT the beginning of the story of humanity's salvation, but rather a crucial moment within it. As a new spiritual year opens, it is essential that we go beyond the confines of our day-to-day affairs, and think about the great cosmic sweep of time within which God acts, from the Creation of the world to its Redemption. By doing so, we are able to renew our sense of the immeasurable ‘power, might and majesty’ of the God we worship -- a sense that is so easily, and comfortably, lost in the more homely images of Bethlehem.
The focus of these readings, as in other years, is the end of time. By implication this means the Second Coming of Christ. Why do we begin the year by thinking about the Second Coming, and not the First – the birth of Jesus? The answer is that the Incarnation is NOT the beginning of the story of humanity's salvation, but rather a crucial moment within it. As a new spiritual year opens, it is essential that we go beyond the confines of our day-to-day affairs, and think about the great cosmic sweep of time within which God acts, from the Creation of the world to its Redemption. By doing so, we are able to renew our sense of the immeasurable ‘power, might and majesty’ of the God we worship -- a sense that is so easily, and comfortably, lost in the more homely images of Bethlehem.
At the same time, this is not simply a matter of cosmic
theology. The task is to shape our own lives around the very same story, and to
grasp this truth -- that for each one of us Birth is the moment of creation and
Death the end of time, and that at some point in our journey from the cradle to
the grave, God comes to us in Christ as our salvation.
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| Bilibin, Last Judgment Mural |
Advent I is also the Sunday on which Anglicans throughout
the world use Thomas Cranmer’s most enduring Collect, a prayer he
specially composed for the first Book of
Common Prayer in 1549. It is powerful testimony to Crammer’s remarkable
gifts that this prayer should have served its purpose for more than 460 years,. Even
now, it has been retained in all the newest versions of the Prayerbook. This
is because
of the incomparable way in which Cranmer uses Biblical phrases to weave
together the cosmic and the personal aspects of Advent. Arguably the
most
beautiful of all his Collects, its words give us the means to
articulate a deep understanding of the human condition within which we
must pursue our lives.
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and
put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which
your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the
last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both
the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.
