Horizon

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Luke 21:25-36)

Advent is here.

We might be wondering why Advent begins with such an apocalyptic proclamation. Many generations have speculated on this over the centuries. Surely, it’s the beginning of our new church year now, as well as the lead in to Christmas?

Well, yes, it is, but Advent has a special place on our faith journey, reminders of the reason for the season, why God needs to come and be with us and among us. “Emmanuel.”

Advent, from the Latin adventus, means ‘coming or arrival’, a word full of expectation and challenge as we wait.

It’s not entirely certain when Christians began to observe the season of Advent – but it does seem to have been a practice by the fifth century. Back then the focus was similar to the season of Lent, a season marked by regular fasting and penitence.

These days many most often think of what’s coming: Christmas Day and the birth of Jesus. And it is, but in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the “Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”. So, we are reminded of the much bigger story; reminded by Advent about the coming of our future, and a time when we prepare, as best we can, if we can, for that future. 

It’s a season, then, marked by themes like waiting, watching, longing and hope – and, to be honest, not a lot of fasting and penitence. Each week, on one of the Sundays of Advent, we focus on one aspect – this week it’s Hope. Candles are lit to symbolise the light that shines, even in the darkness, and the Gospel readings call us to think of God’s way of justice and love in our world today. This is surely the fulfilment of that part of the Lord’s prayer when we pray together, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

How, then, do we prepare for our future? We all have a future and we all deal with it in our lives. Some look toward the future with fear, anxiety and worry. We heard in the reading from Luke’s Gospel, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”  Have you ever felt like that?
Others look to the future with hope, eagerness and optimism. They “stand up and raise [their] heads” with anticipation and expectancy.

Every generation has lived through times of great change and, thanks to our connection to mass media, we could indeed join in feeling despair for the future of our world. The resources sent from Christian World Service this month have shared a story of hope from the Solomon Islands involving life-affecting change of coastal erosion and inundation of small islands there – the term used locally from the local people’s observation is “restless seas”.
A positive response in the Solomons involves citizen scientists being recruited to record rainfall data and weather observations, to be used in long term analysis by government and international organisations. Many of the rainfall stations are monitored by the clergy and a team from the local church community, as part of their faith life pattern.  Every island has a church, and this is one way of ‘keeping watch and praying’. Reliable data over many years will be valuable to climate scientists and hopefully lead to better outcomes for small island dwellers.

In our lives, where and how do we keep watch and pray?
Many of us feel that our life is a journey of past, present and future in a straight line.  Over the years it’s not been uncommon to hear a religious leader or celebrity spokesman pop up and attribute maybe an earthquake, a pandemic, a war as pointing to a ‘sign’ that this generation is near to the end of time, trying to second guess the words in Luke’s gospel.

But another suggestion, that came in the CWS resources, worth thinking about is that we could consider viewing time as ‘horizoned’. If you can imagine being on a boat well out on the ocean, no land in sight. Is the horizon past? Is it behind us? Or is the horizon future – ahead of us? Well, both. The horizon is actually all around us, 360 degrees.

In the reading it says, “… raise your heads, for redemption is drawing near.” So, if time is ‘horizoned’, then redemption is drawing in – behind, ahead and all around us.

In the past, 360 degrees behind us, are the redeeming acts of God in Scripture and the redeeming way of Christ in the Gospels. Let’s get a feel of that Past horizon – and listen to a carol that links us to the time of exile for the Jewish nation, almost 600 years before the birth of Jesus:

O come O come Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

In the future – 360 degrees ahead of us – drawing near in God’s redemption in all of life, God’s will for love and justice being done on earth as in heaven. We will sing about this as we go out from here today:

From this Holy time, from this sacred space
we go now to serve our own day and place
committed to follow the way Jesus trod:
do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God.

All around us – 360 degrees either side as we watch and pray for God’s redeeming drawing near in the lives of people we meet and in the communities we serve.

Again in one of today’s Advent song’s words:

“Look around, Christ is found, far beyond our sacred ground”.

So in the events and times that cause us unease, God’s people are urged not to flee, fight or freeze, but to watch, to pray, and in a ‘horizoned’ way: look about to see where love and justice are needed so that all are included to live their best possible lives.

Mary Oliver, my favourite American Poet, sums it up:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it.

In that way we can, as Paul encourages the church in Thessalonians, “truly feel strengthened in our hearts to come blameless before our God at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” ( 1 Thessalonians 3:13)