Jesus is Coming Back: Sermon Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, Sunday 27th November 2022 (The First Sunday of Advent)

Readings – Romans 13: 11–14; Matthew 24: 36–44

“…the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

I want to start this morning with a question: Do you believe that Jesus is going to, you know, actually return and be your judge?

I know we say in the Creed every Sunday, that “I believe that He will come in glory to judge both the living and the dead”, but if you’re like me, you’ll be more than a little uncomfortable with the topic.

Part of the reason for that is because there are Christians who spend entirely too much time not only thinking about the Second Coming, but also shouting about it. These people always seem to be bad, sad, or mad – or all three at the same time – full of angry judgementalism towards others while howling at the moon themselves. We rightly don’t want to be like them.

So well tell ourselves that Christianity isn’t like that, or at least our Christianity isn’t like that. We remind ourselves that the Bible also says in three plain words that “God is love” – in fact, had our epistle reading from Romans started one verse earlier, we would have heard St Paul state clearly that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” We tell ourselves that means something like “God is all-forgiving and all-accepting”. That allows us to leave the preaching about Jesus coming back to the headbangers and fundamentalists and get on with trying to be more like this all-forgiving, all-accepting God.

Yet avoiding guilt by association is only one reason why we don’t like talking about the Second Coming. Another part of it is, of course, that if all this stuff that Jesus said in this morning’s Gospel is true, then we’re going to be subject to judgement at His hands when He returns, and we’re worried about that. Now, the uncomfortable reality is that especially in Matthew’s Gospel, which is going to supply most of our Sunday Gospel readings from now until next November, Jesus talks about judgement a lot. In fact, He talks about carrying out the Last Judgement Himself, in the same section where he says the nice stuff about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.

Does that scare you?

Well, let’s unpack it a bit.

Scripture is clear that God loves us and takes delight in us as his children. He did not create us to sift through every minor fault in our lives to look for an excuse to punish us.

Yet when we get rid of the concept of divine judgement entirely, we create a God who sits on the side of the winners in life; the people who have had plenty of worldly success; the people who have never had to bear grave wrongs. Most of all, we create a God who sits on the side of the people who have perpetrated the greatest of evils and gotten away with it.

Without the idea of ultimate judgement, which Jesus Christ is just as clear about as He is about loving neighbours and visiting prisoners, we have a universe where the cruel, the violent, and the thieving get away with it and cries for justice go unheard.

What we do when we deny Jesus’ return in glory to judge the world is to replace the Christian God with an idol; a weak idol who is in practice on the side of life’s baddies. Since the Church became uncomfortable with talking about Jesus Christ as the coming judge of the world, and replaced Him with Christ the cheerful cosmic social worker, our churches have emptied, and no wonder. We’re too busy trying to be nice and avoid any possibility of offending anyone to realise that what we’ve done is to place ourselves on the side of injustice.

Earlier this week, I was at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. When I got back to the convent where I was staying, a French lady I’d got friendly with over meals asked me if it was a tough visit. Yes, I replied simply, it was. Plenty of the perpetrators of the Holocaust lived long, healthy, fulfilled, and anonymous lives afterwards. I don’t want them to have gotten away with it; nor the perpetrators of the slave trade; nor the clergy who destroyed the children’s lives and the Church’s reputation into the bargain, nor many others. A morally ordered universe demands judgement, because without judgement there can be no justice.

Most of us aren’t perpetrators of evil on that scale, so I would counsel most of you not to be consumed by fear of divine judgement – but don’t disregard it either. You have a soul – take good care of it, and if it is sick, then seek a cure. At every Communion service you are invited to confess your sins to God, in the privacy of your own mind, before the priest pronounces absolution. We did this not fifteen minutes ago. If you take one thing away from this morning’s service, then please make it a resolution to participate more fully and intentionally in the confession of your sins at the start of every Eucharist.

But quiet English villages also often hold dark secrets, and perhaps your sins are of such a nature that you do have something in your life, present or past, that leaves you in reasonable and understandable fear of divine judgement. If that is the case, then do something about it. You have time – but perhaps not much, who knows. The Church of England does provide the facility to confess your sins to a priest in private, and although it isn’t required for anyone, it is strongly recommended for some. Or perhaps there is some restitution for a past wrong that justice requires you to make – if so, make it, seeking advice on how best to do so if necessary. Whatever the issue, God promises to forgive the sins of those who ask Him to sincerely and intending to lead a new life.

There’s one final point I’d like to make. Protestants and Catholics alike often seem terrified of the idea of Jesus’ return, which our Orthodox brothers and sisters find strange. For them, Jesus’ return is a matter of joy. Our epistle reading captures that approach very well. Salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed; the night is far gone and the day is near. We have far more to celebrate in Christ’s return than we do to fear from it.

As you listen to the news, do you think humanity is doing a good job in running the world? We have power and wealth and knowledge that would astonish even the great emperors of Jesus’ day; yet war, climate change, financial speculation, crime, and corruption all undermine human flourishing. Surely one of the lessons of the 20^th Century is that modern human beings aren’t any less wicked than their predecessors, simply more powerful. Beyond that, as you listen to the news, do you think humanity is making a good job of running the world? We have power and wealth and knowledge that would astonish even the great emperors of Jesus’ day; yet war, climate change, financial speculation, crime, and corruption all undermine human flourishing. Surely one of the lessons of the 20^th Century is that modern human beings aren’t any less wicked than their predecessors, simply more powerful. As we’ve already discussed, judgement, when we think about it properly, is good news. True justice may evade human societies but will not evade Christ when He returns.

In that context, it makes sense to pray fervently for Jesus Christ’s return. It probably won’t happen in our lifetimes, I’m sorry to say. But in any case, all of our lives are relatively short and often end unexpectedly, so the core lesson of this morning’s Gospel stands: we should prepare our hearts and live our lives in a way that we are always ready for the Second Coming.

In a strange way, that frees us to worry much less. For if God is ultimately in charge, and will return in glory to judge and to rule the world, then there isn’t anything we can do to mess up the grand scheme of things, and we are free to serve and to forgive, to love others and to love the wonderful world that God has loaned to us.

So be ready! Seek forgiveness for your sins! Take good care of your souls! And pray for the return of the Lord Jesus with joyful expectation.

And now glory be to God for whom we wait, the Father, and the Son whom He sent to judge and to rule us, and the Spirit whom He sent to comfort and to guide us. Amen.