Destined for Salvation: Sermon Preached on 19th November 2023 (Second Sunday before Advent)

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Peter’s, Poulshot

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11; Matthew 25.14-30

“For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

So, Jesus Christ will return like a thief in the night to judge the world, and He told a story about what that judgement would be like that ended with a poor servant of a harsh man being thrown out into the outer darkness—where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have to be honest, this morning’s readings make me uncomfortable, and I suspect they made most of you uncomfortable too.

Partly, I think, our discomfort come from not wanting to be like those Christians, you know, the ones who are very sure that they are going to be Jesus Christ’s personal hitmen when He returns, when they’ll happily help Him out as He casts a few wretches into the outer darkness. We’ve all met a few of them in our time. It is right that we don’t want to be like those Christians, far too certain for their own good that they have this Christianity business nailed down – and far too inclined to forget that Scripture is clear that judgement belongs to Christ and Christ alone, and not to them nor anyone else.

But unless we ourselves are also too certain for our own good that we have this Christianity business nailed down, we should accept that if the Gospel is worth believing, it must be capable of disturbing our comfortable certainties. If Jesus Christ is going to actually come back in glory to judge the world – and He repeatedly stated that He would – that means He’s going to come back to judge us. And we all know that we aren’t quite the lovely people we like to pretend we are for public consumption – certainly, I know that I’m not. Quite apart from that, few of us could mount a case that we have made the spectacular 100% Return on Investment from the talents God has given us achieved by the profitable servants in this morning’s Gospel. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t solved many wars, ended many famines, or brought many people to Faith.

When I hear readings like these from the Bible, at first blush I can find myself thinking that God may be a being I need to fear, but He’s hard to love, and I even wonder sometimes if want to associate myself with this Jesus Christ fellow and His tales of mistreated servants.

But let’s dig a little deeper into the readings, because there are a few points that can be easy to miss, and which are far more hopeful.

Firstly, in the Parable of the Talents, nobody gets punished for trying their best and failing. There’s no sense that the master is angry with anyone because bad luck or force of circumstances prevented them from achieving what they might have done in ideal conditions. Nor is the servant thrown into the outer darkness for failing to achieve the same impressive returns as his more talented colleagues. God’s expectations fit us, in the words of the parable, “each according to his ability”. God knows you better than you know yourself, and what He expects from you may well be very simple, humble, and everyday. Remember the nature of the Kingdom of God that Jesus presented in many other parables – it is a Kingdom where the small is often more significant than the large, where the weak and the meek are of more valuable than the mighty.

The lesson here seems to be to have a go, to take risks for God, to use the talents that you have. You don’t need to fear making a mess of things; you only need to fear God if you don’t even try.

The second point I’ll draw out is that nobody knows the hour at which Christ will return. The first generation of Christians pretty much all thought they’d see it in their lifetime—but they were wrong. Christ will return like a thief in the night; in fact, just before this morning’s Gospel reading Christ said that not even the Son knew the hour He would return, but only the Father. So the people who think they know that Jesus is going to come back three Thursdays from now just in time for afternoon tea aren’t people we should worry too much about, just in case you ever did.

But could we see Christ return in our lifetime? It’s possible. The world does feel like a particularly dark place at the moment, and since 1945, the human race has lived with the possibility that it could bring about its own end, so it sometimes feels like He must have his skates on. I’ll come back to this idea the end of my sermon, but the truth is that, for any of us, the moment when we meet Christ as our judge could come at any time. Life is not all that long for any of us, and the end can be sudden.

So don’t be too casual about your spiritual wellbeing. Take good care of your soul. Don’t let bitterness or greed or hate grab hold of you. Take opportunities to forgive others when they present themselves. When we say the confession at every service of Holy Communion, confess your sins sincerely in your own heart to God so you can receive God’s forgiveness when the priest pronounces absolution. If there is something really weighing on your conscience and you need to see me or another priest in private to confess your sins face-to-face, you can always speak to Caroline or I or one of our colleagues.

The third thing I’d like to draw out are tools St Paul recommended for remaining faithful as we await Christ’s return. St Paul says we need “the breastplate of faith and love” and “the hope of salvation” for a helmet. We’ll be familiar with armour metaphors from other letters of St Paul’s, and we’ll also be familiar with the trio of faith, hope, and love, which are the three things that St Paul writes elsewhere would last for eternity. What’s interesting is where St Paul says our hope should lie – in our salvation.

So, our salvation won’t come from trying to obey a fixed set of rules before having our work checked by the cosmic headmaster; it is given to us entirely by Christ. In another lovely line from this morning’s reading from St Paul, he reminds us that “God has destined us not for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, our judge and the judge of the world is none other than Christ who loved the world so much that He died on the Cross to pay the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

This is why we shouldn’t fear the return of Christ, but wait for it with faith, and hope, and love. The most important decision we could ever make is to invest our trust in Christ and Him alone for our eternal destiny. If we do that, we have no need to fear His return.

In fact, as we look at the state of the world at the moment, we should actively desire the day of the Lord. We human beings are frankly making a mess of running a world that is full of war, and facing climate change and runaway technology, and with no less injustice than there ever has been. Christ will run the world better than we every possibly could. We human beings should trust ourselves less, and trust God more—and Christians should prepare ourselves to meet our Lord, not with fear, but with hope, and pray that we might be lucky enough to live to see His return in our earthly lives.

And now to God the Holy Spirit, God the, Son, and God the Father, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.