In a satirical review called ‘The Secret Policeman’s Ball’ there is a sketch in which Peter Cooke, in his role as Brother Annan, takes the entire cast up a mountain to await the end of the world.  As they wait, a little impatiently, one of them asks:

“When will it be, this end of which you have spoken?”

The rest of them clamour,

“Yes, When! When! When?”

Brother Annan replies, “In about 30 seconds time.”

“We’d better compose ourselves” one of them suggests and Brother Annan agrees. “Prepare for the end of the world. 30 seconds” 5 – 4 – 3- 2- 1-

They all chant, “Now is the end, Perish the world.”

Of course, nothing happens and Brother Annan comments,

“Not quite the conflagration we’ve been banking upon. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow.”

This sketch came to mind when I read the opening words of today’s Gospel.  Mark spends the whole of Chapter 13 painting a picture of the end of time beginning with the overthrow of the Temple.  Rather like those who stood beside Brother Annan, the disciples asked “Tell us when this will be..”  What Jesus gives them is a rather terrifying image of what will happen to the world when God comes finally to judge it – and us with it.  Jesus speaks uninterrupted for 33 verses, the longest speech in Mark’s entire Gospel and we can only guess at the effect it had on the disciples.  We join the speech at verse 24 and what Jesus said then is something that fired the imagination of Charles Wesley in the much loved Advent Hymn we shall sing at the Offertory – Lo, He comes with clouds descending.  No Advent would be complete without it and doubtless we shall sing it as it is meant to be sung – with gusto and with real feeling.  I wonder, however, if we really believe it.  Are we really expecting Jesus to burst through the Church roof with a thousand thousand saints and not a few angels.  Will we  indeed really mean it when we sing

Saviour, take the power and glory:

Claim thy kingdom for thine own:

O come quickly!

Alleluya! Come, Lord, come!

Such words belong to the Advent Hope which is to be found in hymns, readings and prayers during this solemn season leading to Christmas.  This Hope is that our Lord’s final arrival at the end of time will be the ultimate proof of God’s victory over all that is evil and dark in the world. It is the Victory of the Cross but it is the Final victory.      

The New Testament is interspersed with writing which is known as Apocalyptic  which could be described as the Revelation of God at the end of time.  The Book of Revelation is the main example but the Gospels, too, have Jesus speaking about the Last Things which include the old Advent themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, much loved by preachers of old – some of whom simply wanted to instil the Fear of God in their people – as a kind of wake-up call.  Our Lectionary has tended to shy away from these themes but we still have to deal with Gospel passages like today and try to make sense of them.

The Triumphal arrival of the Lord of Heaven and Earth at the end of time carries consequences.  There will be judgement.  Last Sunday’s Gospel of Matthew’s parable of Sheep and Goats carries the same sense of judgement.  Those who cared for others as if they were Christ enter the Kingdom of heaven, whereas those who did not are banished from heaven to the damnation of hell.  Those who lived in New Testament times expected this to happen in their lifetime and this shaped the way they fashioned and lived out their lives. Paul offered his moral teaching in the expectation that Christ would surely come soon.  Keep Alert, Examine yourself, put your life in order, make the most of your time, The Lord will come like a thief in the night, Keep awake, be sober,  are all part of a common theme in Paul’s writings because Paul expected everything to be completed in our Lord’s swift return to Judge the world. 

When it didn’t happen quite as he expected, Scripture was reinterpreted and we are left to deal with it.  What does it mean for us who do not live with the same expectation?  Can Paul, the writer of the Book of Revelation and even Jesus have got it hopelessly wrong?  And if they did, what sort of expectation are we supposed to have – we who still say, Amen, Come Lord, Quickly .  What do we actually mean by that?  What goes through your mind as you say or sing or hear it?  In the face of the evil that seems to be rife in our world – and I speak against the background of the wicked and terrifying things that have happened in Mumbai this week – wouldn’t it be good if Jesus did indeed come and wrap up this sorry mess that humanity has made of life on earth?

Are we tempted to say, “Why doesn’t God do something? Why doesn’t he act?” Why is he so impotent. Come Lord, Come Quickly. Judge us and finish this experiment of trying to love us into your kingdom – clearly we are incapable of ever being what you long for us to be.  Or at least, Judge the others who aren’t like us because we, at least understand something of what you are about and want to live or lives as Jesus taught and showed us. Come and Judge the others, Lord, and prove that we are right!  Of course, it doesn’t work that we and if we are honest, we know it.  It would be a cheap victory costing us nothing.  It would also make the Incarnation – the event we prepare for during Advent – irrelevant.  Yet it isn’t – because God has chosen to save us from the inside, not by some massive show of power from without.  He is involved in His creation and its salvation and that has a personal as well as a global implication.  We mustn’t be deflected from that by transferring our attention onto the world, no matter how dark that world may be.  If we want to change the world then we have to start by changing ourselves.

This is where the Advent call is most relevant because it is we who are bidden to watch, wait, be vigilant.  Keep awake Jesus says to his disciples, and therefore to us at the end of today’s Gospel – You don’t know when the Son of Man is coming and it doesn’t matter – what matters is that you are ready.  The call is to total vigilance. It’s a call to live our AS IF  the Lord was about to burst through the door at any moment.  We aren’t to practice the kind of religion that only gets fervent when things are going wrong either in our own lives or in the world.  We are to live so that whenever God comes in Judgement we shall not be found wanting.  But our desire is always to live that way not because God might catch us out but because we WANT to live that way – it’s our natural response to God’s love for us in Jesus Christ – a love which we see in the Christmas event and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

We love because he first loved us  says the First Letter of John.  As he reminds us: God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  Our Advent Hope is not that God will come and judge the world in some great display of power but rather that he will so take over our lives that we see his full glory of his love within us. Come, Lord Jesus, becomes a rather different cry if by it we mean – renew us and come into our hearts afresh. Become the centre of our being and use us to be instruments of your salvation.  Help us, in other words, to serve Christ in binding up the broken, strengthening the faint-hearted, refreshing the weary, suffering with those in pain and poverty, recovering the fallen and pouring love into a bitter and divided world.   And, of course, start with ourselves.

There is a way in which Christ does come in glory into His world – and it is when we become the kind of Advent people who live our lives as signs of God’s love in the world. 

Brother Neville was a Franciscan monk who lived for most of his life in Cable Street in the notorious East End of London.  In his day, Cable Street was the centre of the London drug scene and there was a criminal sub-culture which dominated life there.

It was a place of squalor and deprivation.  In the 1950’s and 60’s Brother Neville made his home there and became something of a legend.  For him, the drug-pushers, prostitutes, criminals and runaway youth were all God’s children – and He loved them.

He was, it has to be admitted, an eccentric – a holy fool.  He lived totally for Christ’s people in that area and he poured his love into them.  Nothing surprised him and he took it all in his stride.  Gang-fights he would call  ‘little disputes’ and if someone committed a crime he would still accept them as God’s children. He saw beyond what was in front of him and found, instead, a soul worth saving.  What he dealt with would have swamped a lesser person who might have been sucked into the vortex of its sheer sinfulness overwhelming them.  It never did that  to Brother Neville because he was an Advent person – ever watchful that his sights were set on God. He was a man rooted in prayer which kept him on balance when everything around him should have knocked him off centre.  Though at home with the deprivation around him, his true home was always with God.  And so he became a Christ-bearer – bringing Christ’s judgement of love into a loveless part of the world and in pouring that love in, every so often he drew a loving response  from the victims of squalor, degradation and yes, certainly, evil.  To each and every one of those to whom he ministered he came as Christ comes – with power and great glory –  not as Charles Wesley would put it – but in acts of simple, yet pure, love.

It is that sort of Advent Coming that is possible for all of us to be part of.  It happens when we are alert to the love of God and become the loving people God longs us to be – so much does he long it that he became born in our midst.  It is that birth which is the real Advent Hope and we are signs of it to the world.