01.12.2012
Archbishop’s Second Address At Advent Quiet Morning in Christ Church Cathedral
Archbishop Michael Jackson is currently (Saturday December 1) addressing an Advent quiet morning in Christ Church Cathedral. Throughout the morning he is speaking on the themes of preparation, expectation and carefulness as Advent begins. His second address is reproduced in full below. The third talk will be published at 12.00 noon.
Quiet Day Address 2: Given by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, in Christ Church Cathedral on Saturday December 1.
THE PACE OF LIFE
EXPECTATION
It is surely part of the genius of the cycle of The Church’s Year that we grapple with expectation at a time of the year when we see very little in natural light. I am reminded of those very challenging verses from Roman 8.24 and 25: Now to see something is no longer to hope: why hope for what is already seen? But if we hope for something we do not see, then we look forward to it eagerly and with patience. The challenge is not, to my mind, unrealistic but somehow flies in the face of an easy optimism which often seems to need to sweep through life itself if we are to get through it, from day to day. Hope we are told here, from the early days of the Christian church and from the precarious position of persecution is in the things which we do not see. It turns completely on its head any lingering arguments which we, as church people, might have that we can uncritically take anything and everything which we like from the past into the future and call it living tradition.
This type of expectation is combined with patience. And this tension of expectation and patience is very important as itself asking questions of our ways of thinking in the world which we inhabit. And combined they tie us back into preparation also, the theme of our first short meditation. I don’t know about you, but often I myself find that I prepare for something in particular – and something different happens. Yet the preparation has been useful in dealing with the thing for which I have not prepared. And so, if I follow the thread of my own argument, all I can conclude is that the spiritual discipline of expectation carries me from what I thought might happen to what I had not even begun to think might happen.
The language of Apocalypse is something which we tend to want to avoid. But Advent is rather good at helping us to address this strange language and these strange ideas. The old year is nearly out and we find ourselves expecting what so many people delight to expect – the birth of a baby, whether their own or the baby of a friend or relative. And so the expectation is very focused around new life and all the excitement which this brings in its wake. It is not, of course, without its anxieties but the expectation is still at the heart of it all. If we initially thought that expectation and patience form a strange pair, maybe we might now like to try out for strangeness end and beginning. Throughout the run up to Advent and into Advent itself we find ourselves facing stories about The End, about how expectation suddenly finds itself surprised by what it is called upon to do and about how patience is and can be rewarded. The one thing, of course, which will not see anyone through this End Time is carelessness as the stories make abundantly clear – and often frighteningly.
Apocalypse and the Apocalyptic are not the invention of Christianity although we do find sustained Apocalypses at the end of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and the Revelation to St John the Divine is itself an apocalypse. The rise of Christianity happened around the same time as a number and range of Jewish writers began to offer revelations – whether in terms of what people saw or what they heard – which of themselves tackled some of the key issues which had, and still have, no ready explanation: God’s purposes for the world and the reasons for human suffering. Not only are there elements of prophecy, there are also elements of Wisdom and also, because life was dangerous and secrets had to be kept safe for communities to survive, much of the literature can be read in a number of different ways. We can see what today we might call theological recycling – the fourth beast in Daniel 7 which reappears in Revelation 13 – making its way right up to the present day. There are always Signs of the End, an end which never seems to happen, even though it might have done so at the turn into a new millennium or after 9/11.
Standing as we do today on the threshold of Advent, we need to sharpen our focus on apocalypse and on apocalyptic precisely because of the specific Christian uses in passages such as St Mark 13 and 1 Thessalonians 4.16. Their main concern is with something new and earth–shattering: the coming of the Redeemer into history. And everything needs to be seen backwards from the Resurrection. Because the earliest Christians were convinced that Resurrection was more than a departure and that the Lord would come again, we ourselves can surely see how the development of Advent holds together as a theme for the whole of the Christian Year: that the coming of the Redeemer into everyday life is inescapable in every part of Christian belonging and belief. I think it is very important that we grasp that Advent Sunday and the Season which flows out from it gives to Christian people the confidence to hold together the end and the beginning. As with all of these pairs of things you can use a whole range of combinations. My suggestion is that you choose – each one of you – such a pair and work through it for Advent. It could be birth and righteousness; it could be judgement and opportunity. Try a new combination which is, perhaps, unexpected and see where praying it through brings you – and I hope you will be surprised. You can find any number of these for yourselves. But I should like you to carry it with you throughout Advent and to test it against your reading, your praying and your worshipping – and your interaction with other people, particularly those of whom Rabbi David Rosen spoke as he encouraged people of faith to hold together Torah and Prophecy – the rejected and the marginalized.
Apocalyptic centres on the Son of Man and the arrival of a new age. This is much more important than is the over emphasis on the sort of disaster routine which we associate with late night television or films that go bump in the night of which often we use the term: apocalpyse. The other thing which is rather important is the recognition that apocalypse is in a real sense a reworking of prophecy. It is also a dramatic reconnection of heaven and earth at times of crisis where the connection can and often becomes fractured because of historical events and happenings. In this way, it deals in big dramatic gestures and on broad canvases. The arguments harden and thicken as the contrast is drawn between the justice of God and a world order which is opposed to it. And so, apocalyptic draws us into the world which is being created by God through John the Baptizer and Jesus Christ with and for the poor, the dispossessed, the marginalized and the despised. It is they who are the people who will walk on the High and Holy Way and it is they, as we notice in the parables and stories of apocalypse, who are invited in to the banquet when the lists of official guests find themselves too busy to accept the invitation of the Messiah. We are instantly connected with world–changing events and the breaking in of the Redeemer into the current world order with a deep reversal of injustice by justice. Once we see these themes as central, then we are in a very different place in taking on board the excitement and the electricity of apocalyptic for what it is – the breaking in of the good into the world of the compromised. From this flows rather beautifully the vindication of those who follow the way of Jesus despite, or I dare even to suggest because of, their fragility. And the fragility imposed on those of us who work with the apocalyptic groove is that we must ever and anon ensure that it is the Spirit of Jesus who is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19.10).
It is possible to take any of the parables or stories in the run up to Advent and to be surprised by the interplay of the components which I have outlined above. I will opt for only one and shall begin by reading it. (St Luke 16.1–9) You may regard it as either pertinent or impertinent, considering the financial state in which the country finds itself. It is what by convention is referred to as the parable of the Unjust Steward. There are many parables involving stewards in the apocalyptic sections of the Gospels. Why? It was a situation which obtains right across the provinces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. And it involves those people to whom I referred earlier – those who live on a fault–line. The stewards like the tax collectors needed to be able to look both ways at the same time – into new Rome and into old Palestine. Others who inhabited this fault line included the tax collectors. The writers of the Gospels take us into real–life situations which can shock us by their realism and their pragmatism. This one is particularly interesting.
The steward is in a very difficult situation. He had been found out as squandering the property of the absentee landlord. He has been asked, indeed summoned, to give an account. He is sufficiently well aware of himself to realize what a life of administrative privilege and a considerable degree of self–serving has done to him: I am not strong enough to dig, and I am too proud to beg. His pragmatic approach is designed to cover all eventualities. And it is noted in the parable that the master, although knowing he has been cheated, applauds the unjust steward for his astuteness. What he does is to cut a deal with the debtors which means – in a phrase that we use often – that there is something in it for everyone: there is not maybe as much as everyone might like, but there still is something in it for everyone: the debtors were rowing back from a position where they had no liabilities but had full liability when called to account by another, new steward who would cut no deals with them; the master was rowing back from a position where he had a full entitlement, or maybe at this stage no entitlement; the steward was in fact at this stage rowing forward to a position where if all went badly he had friends who might take him in. The element of surprize I think is to be found in the fact that the master applauds the steward. We are not exactly told that he reinstated him but we are told that his worldly wisdom was applauded; the master would not have been where he was without such worldly wisdom, we must understand also.
But some of you are probably wondering about this parable? Is this the sort of behaviour which Holy Scripture is commending and encouraging? I think that we see here something of what I tried to outline about the genius of apocalyptic literature unfolding before our eyes. It takes a situation in the world as we know it and delightfully describes this world as follows: ‘For in dealing with their own kind the children of this world are more astute than the children of light.’ It is not a moral tale – and this is where people in churches get confused. It is a worked example of survival with your wits about you in very complex and slippery situations. The conclusion which St Luke offers to the parable derives directly from the heart of the parable: Make your money work for you to win friends, so that when money is a thing of the past, as will be all things worldly, you will be received into an eternal home. The apocalyptic parable has the confidence to take a shady sort of situation and to see in it something that The Disciples can learn. Apocalyptic, therefore, is about this world, what people call the real world because they see alarming signs of unreality in the world inhabited by us who are church folk. And, as I said earlier, these are the sorts of parables and stories which Advent brings before us to ease our transition from End to Beginning.
Expectation is a dynamic thing. It is a surprising thing. Advent draws together the ways of the world and the Wisdom of God in pictures and in people who are much closer to our lives and experiences than we often have let them be. Let us live this expectation with imagination.