The Last Judgment, by Hieronymus Bosch
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
The Season of Advent begins at the end and it ends at the beginning. Advent Sunday begins the new church year, and yet we focus on the “last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty, to judge both the living and the dead.” At the end of the season, we will celebrate that “he came to visit us in great humility,” in Bethlehem. So Advent goes backwards, from the Omega to the Alpha, from Z to A, as if to say, Keep watch for the morning, and when your patience fails, remember his birth in the night.
One of you told me this week that you love the Season of Advent because it reminds you that “this is not forever.” Whatever your “this” may be—the burdens of your job, the arrangements in your life right now, or the powers that control the world right now—this is not forever. Nationalism is not forever, socialism is not forever, capitalism is not forever, Humanism is not forever, and in a real sense, Christianity is not forever. There is a boundary—on everything, a boundary in the future, the boundary of God’s final righteous judgment when Christ comes again. It’s a relief that this is not forever and will end, even if we are not told the hour, and only vaguely told what will begin.
I’ve been thinking about endings and beginnings, as I’m ending my time as your pastor, and I’ll soon begin my retirement. How will I work out these last seven months? And then, how will I spend my life with more free time and far less money? Can I find a decent part-time job? How tightly will we have to live? Will we have enough to be able to travel? First world problem, I know. How long will I be healthy? How long do I have before my new beginning becomes the beginning of my end?
I dreamt about my death the other night, which I’ve never done before. In the first dream I had six hours to live after my heart was removed from my chest, and the doctor put it on the table and there was no blood, and then he chopped it in half like a unripe melon, and he said that it looked pretty healthy, so it wasn’t heart disease that I was dying from. In the second dream we were having dinner with a group of friends, and none of them knew that I had only a few more days to live, so I was thinking maybe Melody should tell them, or I’d have to, and then what would they all think.
Is it because my life is so good right now that my dreams are telling me that I’ve repressed a fear of death? What if my life were full of suffering, wouldn’t I desire my death as my release? I remember my Grandma Meeter, in her last weeks of cancer, how she looked forward to dying and going to be with the Lord. It was Rabbi Weintraub who told me that Jews know how to suffer, but Christians know how to die. I’m not sure that’s true for me. And then, you have heard it said that the reason that people resist change is not from what they will gain as from what they stand to lose.
The traditional picture of the Return of Christ is Doomsday, the Day of Judgment, Dies irae dies illa, when all the souls that ever lived go either up to heaven or down to hell. We call it Doomsday because of what we stand to lose, even if we’re saved. By gaining heaven we lose the world, and to hell with the world.
This picture began with St. Augustine, and it’s partly why so many Evangelicals don’t care about climate change. It’s assumed to be taught by the New Testament itself, assumed as much by liberal and progressive scholars as by conservative ones, and it taints the writings of the current popular books about the Bible that you will find in Barnes and Noble. But as I study the New Testament, I’m convinced that the apostles saw the Return of Christ not as the end of the world but the beginning of the world. Not as the loss of the world but the gain of the world—this world, as it was meant to be, when the Lord Jesus returns, and God renews all things.
This means that our future hope is not to escape this ruined world by fleeing into heaven, but that heaven comes down upon this world to redeem it and renew it. It means that instead of us praising God upon the clouds we will be praising God as we work in our vineyards and our fig trees. It means the full and final answer to the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” The apostles saw the return of Christ as the beginning of the world as much as the end of it.
Did you ever see that movie from 1959, On the Beach, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner? It takes place after World War III, the nuclear war that ruins the world, and all humanity is dead. Only Australia has survived, but the nuclear fallout is drifting there too, and they’ve only got a few weeks left until the end. You see some people partying with abandonment, and other people crowding into churches, standing on lines make their repentance before the end of the world.
But what if repentance is to prepare not for the end of the world but for the beginning of the world? What if repentance is not to escape a punishment, but to get you better fit for what’s to come, by cleaning you and trimming you and training you?
Remember our Reformed theology, that all of our sins are forgiven us already, thanks to the cross, so repentance is not to get forgiven but to enjoy the forgiveness already applied. Your repentance comes after your forgiveness, not before it. You repent, not to escape a penalty, but to renounce your bondage and to claim your freedom. You repent to prepare for the beginning of the world, not for the doomsday but the great birth-day.
Protestants don’t do penance, but a Roman Catholic once told me that there was nothing better than going to confession and coming out clean. But the penance was saying thirty Hail Mary’s and fifty Our Father’s. Like writing lines. They probably don’t do this anymore in school, having kids stay after and write lines, like “I won’t shoot spit-balls in class. I won’t shoot spit-balls in class.” I saw a cartoon once, with a girl at the blackboard and a stern nun standing by, and the girl is writing, “I am personally responsible for all the sufferings of Christ. I am personally responsible for all the sufferings of Christ.”
What if repentance is less like writing lines and more like handing in your homework? You do your work and you hand it in to get corrected. Repentance is saying, Correct me, teach me, train me, discipline me, disciple me, show me, let me rehearse this so I can learn it and do it better. It’s good that this is not forever, because your time of trial is a time of testing and proving, like in a laboratory class. Your repentance is not to get you out of a penalty but to prepare you for your future.
At least for Advent repentance. We have two penitential seasons, Advent and Lent, and they differ. Lent approaches a death, with its pain of sorrow and remorse. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Advent approaches a birth, with its pain of pregnancy and a poignancy of expectation. It’s a positive penance of costly investment, sacrificial creativity, old life generating new life. It’s like physical therapy, discomfort made bearable by the comfort to come.
Next Sunday I hope to offer examples of what positive repentance might look like. For now let me be general. It is the self-giving works of your creativity and the live-giving actions of your imagination. Not punishing yourself but serving others, reconciling, cleansing, shaping, sharing, creating examples within your life and the world of what you imagine will be typical and normal in the life of the world to come. Your examples will cost you. Like giving birth. But in so doing you prepare yourself, and you prepare the way for Our Lord’s coming, even now.
At my cottage I go down to the lake before dawn, and before the sun rises I can see it shining already on the seagulls flying way up high. Already the light of Our Lord can be seen from this present darkness. And Our Lord is coming already in these long years before he comes again.
The vision is offered by Isaiah: For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord. God’s instruction and God’s word give light already in the night-time of the world, and by this word and this instruction God is already judging between the nations, and already arbitrating for many peoples.
And the many peoples are coming and saying, “Come let us go up to the house of the Lord, that he may teach us his ways, that we may beat our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, to work our vineyards and our fig trees, so that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall we learn war anymore. Come let us walk in the light of the Lord!” That’s you, and by your positive repentance you bear witness to that light.
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
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