Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
Being ready
“This Jesus who has been taken from you up to heaven will come in the same way as you have seen him go….”
For centuries people have sat in these pews and asked themselves the only two questions that seemed to matter about the second coming of Christ:
When will He come again? Will we be ready?
The early Christian church was buzzing with anticipation. Paul, it must be said, stoked this in a number of his letters and urged the faithful to be ready.
And still we wait.
And while we wait, we wonder….
And, of course, on planning this sermon I turned to wonder ….. if Christ was to return now what route would he chose to talk to our tortured, greedy, dysfunctional world? It occurred to me that he might, logically, choose the UN Security Council. After all, all nations are represented and one voice can be heard by all thanks to the army of translators.
So I checked the internet.
The Security Council is busy this month. Busy with
All in all, I was left with the impression that there was much room in this busy schedule for an unscheduled visit from the Son of God.
So, not the UN.
As I was on the internet, I thought I’d try the European Parliament. Many of the same advantages apply. A big and powerful audience. The same, all important, translation service.
So I looked at its current programme.
The EU and its institutions
Justice and Citizenship
The Horn of
The Arab world
Assessing Euratom
3 days on the internal market and industry
And one final topic that I very nearly downloaded such was the entertainment value: Retrofitting of mirrors to HGVs!
So not the EU.
I turned my attention to General Synod. It’s not meeting at the moment but the corridors of Church House are alive with activity as the staff prepare for the Synod in July and the Annual report of the Church Commissioners. The business for July includes some legislation and changes to Canon Law, the report on the Anglican Methodist Covenant and a report from FOAG – the Faith and Order Group. It wouldn’t be the Church of England if faith were not subject to order…..
Need I go on?
It is clear that our major international bodies are not looking in the direction of Christ’s second coming – even our Synod hasn’t got it on the agenda. And, of course, why would they? There is enough to do in the real world without musing vacantly about some fabled return of a long dead, long ascended Christ.
And the same was true of our PCC meeting last night. For us, as for the UN, the EU and Synod – it was business as usual. Busy-ness as usual.
Yet for all our logic and rationalisation, those two questions nag away….
When will it be?
Will we be ready?
Reading Paul, you might expect it to be soon. Listen to his description in the second letter to Timothy Chapter 3 verses 1-4 where he writes of the final age, the age heralded by the second coming of Christ.
But understand this that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God….
Looks and sounds familiar doesn’t it? This is a troubled age. Never have people loved money more. Never has the cult of celebrity and love of self been more evident. I don’t need to labour the point.
And yet you and I know that preacher after preacher has stood in front of congregations for 2000 years and made these words apply to the world outside the church doors.
No, the fact is simple enough. Although we are fascinated with both questions:
When will He come?
Will we be ready?
Only one question matters and it is neither of the above.
The ‘when’ question is a complete no-no. No we don’t know. No we can’t know. No we’re not intended to know. And if we knew – it would defeat the object of the exercise. Today may look like the final age described in Timothy but when you look at the Hogarth cartoons recently displayed in London – the drunks, the gin sodden woman whose child falls un-noticed from her arms into the Thames, the prostitutes, the gouty men – when you look at those, its not so different from what we see around us today. Not unlike
The ‘when’ question will only be answered when it happens.
What about the readiness question?
I don’t know about you but I often have difficulty with our set-piece intercessions. I have, for example, a real problem with prayers for the world or prayers for the whole church. Because I use the ‘eye of prayer’ technique that we’ve talked about, I have a real problem putting the world, or the church in my eye of prayer. They are just too big. I cannot imagine them whole and healthy. My prayer technique works better on a smaller scale – best of all, I think, when focussed on an individual. Even praying for this congregation is difficult for me. I can do you… and you…. and you.
It follows that I find the ‘are we ready’ question difficult. Even when the ‘we’ is you and me. Even though I know so many of the ‘we’ here tonight.
In the end I can only ask one meaningful question.
Not ‘when?’
Not ‘Are we ready?’
Only
‘Am I ready?’
‘Am I ready?’ and sadly, the answer is ……
‘No….. But I’m working on it.’
Perhaps the answer is ‘no’ for you too…. And you…. And you.
But that’s fine. That’s fine because we’re working on it.
We’re working on it.
Together.
Adrian Pritchard, May 17th, 2007
Office Address:
The Rectory
Church Walk
Kettering
NN16 0DJ