'The kingdom of God is near': a homily for Advent Sunday
Luke 21:25-36 (Year C)
"When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."
On Advent Sunday, over many centuries, these words of Jesus from our Gospel reading have been heard as Christian gather for the beginning of the Advent season.
Century after century, as empires have risen and fallen, as fixed assumptions have given way, the ‘nations confused and the powers of the heavens shaken’, Christians have seen the truth of Jesus’ words …
It is not the kingdoms of this world which endure. It is not worldly power, wealth, values, and ambition which last. It is not the injustices and inequalities of this world which abide.
In our own times, in recent years, we have seen ‘the nations confused and the powers of the heavens shaken’: political turmoil, failed wars, global economic crisis, an environmental crisis, a pandemic … the assumptions governing our society fundamentally questioned and challenged.
"When you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."
For as empires rise and fall, as fixed assumptions give way, the ‘nations confused and the powers of the heavens shaken’, the Advent hope endures, abides.
Week by week, we confess it in the Creed: "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end".
We confess that what endures, what abides, what ultimately determines and shapes creation, history, our lives, is not passing claims to power, not wealth or might, not fanaticism or indifference, not failure or death …
But the grace, mercy, and love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. He will judge the living and the dead: the purpose, worth, and destiny of each of us, of all of us, is not determined by what is passing, what is transitory, but by the judgement of Christ, the One who died and rose again for us.
It is, then, the grace, mercy, and love of God in the Crucified Lord which is the Advent hope: that in peace and turmoil, in good times and bad, in prosperity and in a pandemic, in life and death, we are forgiven, restored, reconciled everlastingly in Jesus Christ.
This Sacrament of the Eucharist assures us of the Advent hope. Here, in the midst of our earthly journey, we partake of the Crucified and Risen Lord, for the forgiveness of our sins, to renew us in the communion of God’s love and grace.
So here, in the words of one of the great thinkers of the Christian tradition, St Thomas Aquinas, "the pledge of future glory is given to us": the assurance that, in and through the Crucified Lord, we, in life and in death, belong not to that which is transitory, but that which endures - the kingdom of God.
In the Advent season may this hope renew and encourage us in our earthly pilgrimage, amidst the changes and challenges of this life, knowing that the kingdom of God is near, pointed to and anticipated in prayer and in silence, in scripture and in sacrament.
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