Your liberation is near

The simple life of the child soon ends and questions arise and never stop. The conference on climate change that opens in Paris aims to answer questions that will not go away. It wants to fix the planet so that it continues to work for us. Some believe it doesn’t need fixing and we should just ignore the warning signs. But most are convinced action is needed at the local and the global level if we are not to bequeath a desert to our grandchildren.

December is our end of year month and a good time to reflect that the cycle of the years will not always continue. The planet has built into it all sorts of limits which we have only become aware of in the past hundred years. Maybe there are those who think the cycle of life will just go on and on – provided we keep fixing things when they go wrong. But the Church insists – and I think even unbelievers know it in their bones – that we are moving towards a climax. The world will end, not because it is exhausted but because it is fulfilled. It will have achieved its purpose.

The scripture passages we have make grim reading – “nations in agony bewildered by the clamour of the oceans” – but at the same time they are full of hope. “Stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.” What is this liberation? It has to be connected not so much with politics and economics and not even so much with personal liberation from all the unresolved issues that dog our lives. It has to be more than these. It has to be liberation from all that prevents us being a world community of sisters and brothers who accept, respect and love one another.

Then the troubling little word “near” crops up! What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean we should consult our watch or reach for our calendar. It is not about “times and seasons.” It is more to do with reaching out now and grasping opportunities that are there before us. They are near to us. We can work for our own liberation as well as receiving it from God. The Lord works with us. He doesn’t have a date for the end of the world hidden in a rust proof box at the bottom of the Dead Sea. The day will come when everything is ready; when we have at last opened ourselves to receive his life and have built a community of his people. Then he will “gather” us (a favourite biblical word) from all the nations, like a shepherd gathering his sheep, and lead us in to his kingdom.

29 November 2015                 Advent Sunday 1 C

Jeremiah 33:14-16                   1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2                     Luke 21:25-28, 34-36