Romans 13.11-end;

Matthew 24.36-44

IN GEORGE MACDONALD’S haunting tale At the Back of the North Wind, the child Diamond sees the sinking of a great ship in a terrible storm. Diamond is visited by the deeply mysterious “North Wind”, the elusive and unexplained “Wise Woman” who comes and goes in many of MacDonald’s stories.

Diamond asks North Wind how she can bear the piteous cries of the drowning sailors. North Wind replies: “I will tell you how I am able to bear it, Diamond. I am always hearing through every noise the sound of a far-off song.” In Advent, we strive to catch the strains of that song.

Our first reading is an anthem anticipating that far-off song. Isaiah sings of what he has seen — seen, notice. He rejoices in what he has witnessed, the day when the Lord will reign from his holy city, and war shall be no more.

It is important to relate the rhapsody to the reality. It is not all bad news. Swords have been already been turned into ploughshares. When the bitter and protracted civil war in Mozambique ceased, Sousa Manuel Goao swapped his stash of arms for sewing machines, and with them started a family tailoring business. Goao was provided with his sewing machines by a Christian charity that persuaded him and hundreds of other former freedom-fighters to exchange their guns for tools.

The promise to the prophet has been fulfilled, but only in part. For nation still lifts up sword against nation, and still they train for war. Still they slaughter each other in Iraq, and still we send our princes to Sandhurst. Goao’s sewing machines seem a ludicrously feeble fulfilment of the soaring vision vouchsafed to Isaiah. But, lest we pooh-pooh those sewing-machines, we recall what Jesus said about how God’s Kingdom grows. It grows, says Jesus, from mustard seeds, “the smallest of all the seeds on earth”.

The seeds of what we long for, of what we dare to believe will one day come to pass, must be nurtured. Advent is not a season for sitting on our hands waiting for something — or even for someone — to turn up.

The charity that offered tools for guns in Mozambique was faced with the problem of what to do with all the weaponry surrendered to it. Their brilliant solution was to cut the guns in pieces and to give them to local artists as raw material for their work. Some of the pieces they made came to London and were put on show in an exhibition held in the Oxo tower.

The exhibition, six years ago, was something of a sensation. One sculpture was entitled Catching the peacebird. A critic commented: “The peacebird of the sculptor is no gentle dove with an olive branch. It is feisty, feral creature which needs to be grasped and, perhaps, tamed.” Peace, as much as war, has to be waged.

Paul has bracing advice about the frame of mind — and the physical condition — in which we must serve our coming king. “Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy.” We may congratulate ourselves that those with whom we worship this Sunday are not a conspicuously debauched lot.

That sentiment is not to our credit. It reflects how far we are from the Church of the New Testament, which included the debauched — even if, to be sure, their debauchery had to be dealt with. We note in passing — at the start of a church year that is to include the Lambeth Conference — that St Paul sees quarrelling as equally injurious to the health of the body of Christ as the sins that the nicer class of Christian finds more objectionable.

In Advent, we tend to ask what is going to happen, and when. Jesus turns all such questions back on us. To use long words, Christian eschatology is through-and-through ethical. What we are we told about what is to come is not to provide us with information, but with motivation. Jesus does not say when it is all going to end, for the simple reason that he himself does not know.

Some of the early editors of our Gospel reading, embarrassed by Jesus’s admission of ignorance, left out those three little words — “nor the Son” — that tell us so much about the humanity of Jesus. Jesus does not satisfy our curiosity. He tells us how to live.

The paradox of the coming Kingdom is that it is both a realm to which we advance one small step at a time — a sewing machine for an AK-47, a well of fresh water instead of a two-hours’ walk to a brackish river, a communion table open to children — and also a personal visitation that will overtake us, unannounced: “The coming of the Son of Man”. What the latter means is beyond us: what has to be done in the mean time is not.

Text of readings:

Isaiah 2.1-5
This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:

In the last days

the mountain of the LORD’S temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.

Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war any more.
Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the LORD.”

Romans 13.11-14
¹¹Brothers and sisters, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; ¹³let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Matthew 24.36-44
Jesus said: “No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”