Advent I

Year A
Sunday 28 November 2010
St. John’s Church in the Village
New York City
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator

I
Advent is a season of preparation. At one level, it is simple to think of it as a preparation for Christmas, for all the world right now is preparing for Christmas. I had not been up into midtown on a Black Friday for several years, and so this year I went. Everyone was preparing for Christmas, why shouldn’t I?

But, the Church points out that there is something else to prepare for. We prepare for Christmas, but we also prepare for the end of time, something we do not like to think about very much. Or maybe, to put it better, something we have a hard time thinking about. Our minds just don’t work that way. Maybe if we were prescientific agrarian nomads, we might, but we are 21st century men and women living in the shadow of the scientific revolution.

Christians who think a lot about the end of time, the final judgment, make me uncomfortable. In one place, Jesus speaks of the end of the time as the moment when he will separate the sheep from the goats, and treasure the sheep and dispel the goats into outer darkness. What troubles me a lot is that millenialists, that is people who believe in the last judgement, usually toss their enemies into the goat brigade, and I suppose I wonder if I have a destiny with the goats.

And yet, if we are honest to our tradition, we have to think about the final judgment. It is the whole theme of the first reading. Every time we recite the Nicene Creed we talk about the life of the world to come, the life for which we are held accountable at the final judgment.

I have always been a little uncertain about the final judgment. But I have come to believe it for no other reason if not that we desperately need it.

First we need it because we get submerged in the ordinary. That is what Jesus was saying in the gospel when he said that at the time of the flood in Genesis, people were eating, drinking, getting married, doing all the ordinary things of life. And, he goes on, people are grinding at the mill, working in the fields. The coming of the son of man will be in the midst of the ordinary. There we will be, waiting for the uptown express train, comparing some DVD equipment, making a shopping list and bang, in the midst of the ordinariness of life, God will come. And he comes because we need him. He is the antidote to the depressing, ordinary eight of life.

We also need the final judgment because we are procrastinators. There is a story about Satan and three apprentice devils who were trying to get their satanic certifications. Each is laying his plans to lead people astray. The first said to Satan, I will tell them there is no God. Satan replied, that will do no good, most men tend naturally to believe that God exists. The second one said, I will tell them there is no hell. God said, that will never work. Anyone who has ever spent any time stopped in the Holland Tunnel will believe in hell. The third one, sly and crafty, narrowed his eyes, and said: I will tell them there is no hurry. That should do it, Satan said approvingly. Final judgment is something that each one of us needs because of our fallen condition. Part of what has gone wrong with the human scene is that we procrastinate. I am convinced of that. Absolutely. If I know that I have an article due by say, April, I will put it off well into March before getting to it. If we are not called to account, we will not be accountable. If there is no final exam, we won’t rad the course material. Make up your own metaphor, but know this: we all need to be checked up upon.

And third, the final judgment is, oddly enough, a part of God’s love for us. If God does not come to check up on us, then God does not care. The final judgment is also a component of our belief in the dignity and responsibility of humanity. God expects the best of us, cares about us deeply, and believes in us profoundly. Indifference just does not fit in the picture at all. In this way, judgment is a positive thing, raising our sense of self-esteem and positive pride. God knows us and loves us enough to expect the best of us, and to be eager to proclaim, this is my son, my beloved.

The task of the Christian is to live each day as if it was the last. In the midst of the ordinary, filling it with the special. Giving without calculating, and eagerly awaiting the day when we may with Christians in all ages and places, proclaim, even now, come Lord Jesus.