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The Second Sunday Of Advent
Merciful God, who sent thy messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the HolySpirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Second Sunday Of Advent
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 1:1-8; II Peter 3:8-15a
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Mark 1:1-8; II Peter 3:8-15a
✛
Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell, and a Very Merry Christmas to You
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. And a Merry Christmas to you! Advent’s warning of the Last Things comes to us starkly in this morning’s reading from the Second Epistle of Peter, an encyclical letter with a message addressed to the whole Church concerning the End. Not by water, as in the days of Noah, but by fire shall the End of this world come. Life on Mother Earth was born in water; its ending will be by fire, out of which will come the new heavens and the new earth. (II Pet 3:13)
Brought up as were the first American children of the age of the atomic bomb, I recall my hair standing up when I first encountered today’s passage: “The day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
Tempting and understandable though it may be to define the fire spoken of in Scripture as a modern nuclear holocaust, just as it may be tempting and understandable to predict the times and dates of the end, to do so is to subject God to human calculation. This has been done many times in Christian history, and it is presumption. No one, said Christ, not angels, not even the Son, knows the time of the End; but only the Father.[1] This he said to warn his followers against such attempts to figure out the time of the End.
Not by water but by fire shall the world end, Scripture says. Fire is spoken of frequently in the Bible, and fire, like water and wind, is closely associated with God the Holy Spirit. Most notably the Holy Spirit descended in tongues of fire upon Jesus’ disciples at Pentecost, inspiring and empowering them to preach the Gospel. John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner and the last of the prophets of the Old Covenant, said that the Messiah would baptize his people with the Holy Spirit and with fire; and this fire would purge away dross like a refiner and would consume the chaff entirely. [2]
When we prepare for a solemn procession in the ambulatory, while I spoon the powder of the incense onto the hot coals in the censer, the boys in the choir nearby (usually the younger, newer boys) will sometimes cough or even fan their faces. This gives me the chance to teach them that they need to get used to that perfumed smoke – because in eternity there is a choice of two smells: incense or sulfur!
The ceremonial of incense provides an insight into biblical fire. The fire is ever the same element. The smell is determined by the nature of the substance the fire touches. Incense is a sweet-smelling savor. Sulfur makes for a foul stench. The difference is that which signifies life or death, heaven or hell. When the fervent heat of God’s judgment comes to purge the earth and burn the works upon it, some human souls (the sheep on Christ’s right hand) will be a sweet savor of goodness and be part of the new heaven and the new earth of God’s kingdom. The rest (the goats on Christ’s left hand) will be something else.
The word, Gehenna, which the Jews of Jesus’ day, including Jesus, used for hellfire, derives from the name of a valley in the ancient city of Jerusalem, the Valley of Hinnom, in which garbage was perpetually burned. The valley was used this way, because the idolatrous kings of Judah infamously performed pagan rites and committed child sacrifices in the place, and so it became associated with the stink of sin. [3] Gehenna and the local Valley of Hinnom are in the picture as Jesus speaks of the hellish “worm which never dies,” and the “fire which is never quenched.”[4]
The point of II Peter is to scare the hell out of us and to turn us towards heaven: “Seeing then all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” Souls change their smell from a bad odor to a sweet savor as they repent from dead works, watch and pray, seek peace and do works of charity and become presentable before God, without spot and blameless. The Lord delays his coming because he is merciful, and he desires everyone to return to him. Thus he gives us the priceless gift of time.
Time is a mysterious thing. With the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day. (II Pet 3:8) Abraham lives to God as surely as you and I do. Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of time, the same yesterday, today and forever, the Alpha and the Omega. “Abraham rejoiced to see my day,” said Christ. “Moses wrote of me.”[5] Thus the Day of the Lord will bring together in Christ God’s people of all times and all places into the new heaven and earth. Being ready for that Day is not a matter of calculation but of spiritual readiness. In today’s Gospel John the Baptist says God’s kingdom is at hand and that his hearers are to prepare the way of the Lord. We do this by constant repentance, which means turning constantly, every instant, to God and practicing his presence in everything we do. “Christ will come whether we wish it or not,” says Saint Augustine. “Do not think that because he is not coming just now, he will not come at all. He will come; you know not when; and provided he finds you prepared, your ignorance of the time of his coming will not be held against you.” [6]
There is a story which bears repeating about Saint John Bosco, a nineteenth century servant of destitute children in the slums of Turin, in northern Italy. One day Don Bosco was involved in a ball game outdoors with his very poor and very tough charges. The Cardinal Archbishop drove by the field in his carriage and called out, “Don Bosco, what would you do if the Lord came now to end the world?” The saint replied cheerfully, “I would finish this game.”
That’s just right. With that readiness, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
_______________
[1] Mt 24:56; Acts 1:7
[2] St. Luke 3: 17
[3] Under such wicked kings as Ahaz and Manasseh – who repented (II Chron 33:1-13) – children were offered as sacrifices to Baal and to Moloch, Canaanite gods. King Josiah, the great reformer, stopped these practices and defiled the place. Jeremiah (7:31 ff; 19:5ff) prophesied that the valley’s name would be changed to the “Valley of Slaughter” in the Day of Vengeance. By the time of Jesus, it was used as a refuse dump where dead animals and garbage were burned and the smoke from the burning rose continually. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, General Editor; Volume Two, articles “Gehenna” and “Hinnom,” pp. 423, 717.
[4] See St. Mark 9: 42-48.
[5] St. John 8:56; 5:46.
[6]Celebrating the Seasons: Daily Spiritual Readings for the Christian Year, compiled by Robert Atwell, “A Reading from a commentary on the Psalms by Augustine,” pp. 11-12.
