The other week I went to Stansted Airport to pick up some visitors. I arrived in good time so I had a bit of a wait before they came through the terminal.  I noticed, nearby, a few people standing with placards bearing somebody’s name – a usual sight at airports as people come to collect strangers they don’t actually know.  I have had the occasional fantasy when coming through airports that I might try and impersonate one of the expected visitors and go up to the placard bearer and say something like “I’m Mr Stephenson, I believe you are expecting me.”  I would then be taken to a luxury limousine and transported to some top notch hotel for the night and given a slap up meal.  Of course the placard bearer would be completely taken in because he wouldn’t know exactly who he was looking for.  Because of that my deception would be easy.

Recognition is everything – and that is what Jesus was talking about in today’s Gospel.  Luke’s Gospel together with those of Mark and Matthew has a section just before Jesus goes to Jerusalem to face his Passion and Death in which he talks of the end of the World when the Son of Man will return in glory to bring time and history to a conclusion and how we may recognize the signs that it is happening.  These passages don’t make easy reading and in some ways are a bit at odds with the rest of the Gospel.   They are known as Apocalyptic writing  - visionary writing which paints a picture of the end of time and history when the world, as we know it, will be brought to a climatic conclusion. The classic New Testament writing in this respect is the Book of Revelation.  Doom-watchers have quarried that book for all sorts of predictions about the end of the world.  Every time disaster strikes the earth – whether man-made, in the case of devastating wars or of nature such as Tsunamis and earthquakes there are those who rush to tell us that the End is Nigh rather like a man who used to walk up and down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich-board placard with just that message.  He isn’t there now so presumably, as far as he was personally concerned, there has been some fulfilment of his message.

But, back to St. Luke.  First, we need to  place this passage  in its context.  Jesus had been with his disciples to the Temple.  Some of them were remarking  what a lovely building it was.  Maybe so, said Jesus, but there would come a time when not one stone would be left on another; all will be thrown down.  The Disciples, being curious souls, asked when this would be and what sign will be given that it is about to take place.  There then follows a long section of rather depressing imagery:

Nations rising against Nations,

Kingdoms against Kingdoms

earthquakes, famines, plagues. 

The disciples would be arrested, persecuted, imprisoned, betrayed. 

Jerusalem would be destroyed by Gentiles – The Romans – and people would flee in terror.

And then, as we heard in today’s Gospel, the world would be shaken to its very foundations.  And then, at the height of all this mayhem we will see The Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  That would be the moment when the world, time and history would be brought to an end and God, in Christ, would descend in Glory to Judge the World.

Though the Destruction of the Temple is the thing on which Jesus hangs all that he has to say, it is clear that the context is much wider because by  the time St. Luke wrote down what Jesus said, the destruction of the Temple had already happened.  It was razed to the ground by the Romans in 70AD and Luke was writing a few years later.  So what was he trying to say?  Since the Christian Church was founded  there has been a belief that there will come a moment in God’s Scheme of things when he will wind up history and time in a great Second Coming of Christ.  For the first Christians this was something they thought would happen very soon and Paul’s Letters are written with that expectation.  But by the time Luke was writing His Gospel it was less clear that Christ would return soon and there was a revision of the expectation. 

As time has gone on we have become less urgent about the Coming of the Son of Man in glory though we still sing about it – in hymns like Charles Wesley’s Lo, He comes with clouds descending,  a Hymn which takes up the imagery of this morning’s Gospel and the equivalent passages in Mark and Matthew.  I wonder what we are thinking when we sing

Lo he comes with clouds descending,

once for favoured sinners slain,

Thousand thousand saints attending

Swell the triumph of his train:

Alleluya!

God appears on earth to reign.

Are we really expecting Christ to arrive any second with a whirlwind of angels?  What would we do if he did?  Certainly all the shoppers in Tesco’s would be mightily surprised, if not more than a little afraid – but we- would we cheer and rejoice?  That’s what Luke tells us to do when he says:

stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

Of course, we don’t think seriously about it because, for two thousand years the physical end of the world hasn’t happened and despite all the efforts of humanity to destroy the Planet it may not yet happen – a lot hangs on the Global Summit in Copenhagen in a few day’s time.

Why this passage is so important is less about the course of History and much more about how Christians are to behave within this world of time and space.  The watchwords for our behaviour come in today’s Gospel and in the corresponding passages of Mark and Matthew.  They are:

be awake, be watchful, be alert, be on your guard, be ready.

This is the language of action and of caution.  We are to act as people who believe that not only has the Kingdom of God come in Jesus Christ but also that we live in that Kingdom.

Christians live in what is often called the Now and the Not Yet.  We live within the sphere of God’s love Now  but we expect to experience that love fully beyond death when we enter into the fullness of life which is sharing in Christ’s Resurrection.  There is a sense in which every human life must end in extinction.   Do we not say ashes to ashes, dust to dust  at every funeral?

But Christians have a different expectation.  We believe that we shall move on from death into a Kingdom Life – as we enter the realm of God’s eternity and are embraced by His everlasting Love.  This is the promise of Resurrection and of new Life in Christ which begins here on earth and is brought to a glorious fulfilment beyond death when we take our place in God’s eternal Kingdom.  We expect that when we reach that fulfilment we shall be judged on how we have lived our life on earth but we also believe that this judgement will be made with love and mercy if we have tried to live as Christ would have us live – as he showed us how to live.

It matters therefore what kind of people we have managed to become in this world because what happens to us when we meet God beyond death is determined by how we have met him and lived in his presence on earth.  So here is the language of caution.

Be alert and be vigilant that nothing swerves you from  loving and serving God and witnessing to His Loving Salvation here and now.

Live as Advent People.

Advent is the season of the Church Year when we look at those Old Testament people and those on the cusp of the New Testament who believed that God coming to dwell with us as Man would make all the difference to Human destiny and to the shape of Human lives.  The difference the Christmas Event, that we are now looking forward to again, makes to humanity is that we are able to live not just as inhabitants of earth but also, much more joyfully, as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Yet the world has a habit of diluting and diverting that joy and even we, who profess faith in Jesus Christ, can grow lukewarm and complacent in the practice of our Faith.  Advent is therefore our wake-up call to a deeper faith and a renewal of our love for God.

In this we must not be deflected by the other distractions of this season before Christmas because it is so easy in the midst of the pre-Christmas hype to lose sight of what it is all about.  The Christmas preparations – which should concentrate our faith, minds, hearts and souls on God’s coming to us in the Christ-child to lift us up to His Kingdom – can actually hide him.  We can get too bogged down on the trimmings of Christmas and so lose its meaning.  The meaning is in the gift of love by which God comes to us in Christ and claims each one of us for his Glorious Kingdom.  This Advent we need to renew our faith in that truth and reawaken the joy it brings to us.  The Question we would then be answering isn’t how we shall see the signs of Jesus Christ coming in glory but rather How Jesus Christ in Glory can see the signs of that glory in us.

Maybe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ isn’t about descending in clouds but about human hearts which are raised up to heaven.  When we joyfully embrace the Gift of God’s Love for us and shine brilliantly with it – we become the Signs of God’s Coming to Humanity to Save it from within.  Think less about looking for a sign of God’s coming – because for faith-filled people that has already happened.  Think instead of being a sign of His Coming in Love - for others.