10.15 Holy Communion 2nd January 2011 - Epiphany 1

Signs of the Kingdom

The Advent mantra is: Maranatha or ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’  This mantra, means that all of history, all of life has to be lived out in a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfilment. 

In some ways we are a Sunday people living Saturday lives. What I mean by that is that we meet to celebrate a Sunday resurrection, particularly in the Eucharist, but our lives are marked by struggle and only small glimpses of the Kingdom. 

We can use other words for Advent: aware, alive, attentive, alert, awake.  Advent is above all else, a call to full consciousness of a greater reality.  A call to participate in the Missio Dei, the mission of God:  To point in action and words beyond ourselves like John the Baptist pointing to Christ.

If we think of an image, a painting of the crucifixion, then for me it would be Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, which has been described as, ‘the most grotesque depiction of the Crucifixion in all of art.’  With a contorted and agonised Christ covered in sores.  The painting was created for a monastery that helped sufferers of skin diseases.  But another panel shows him emerging from the tomb with beautiful clear skin.  Our reality is of living is something between the struggles and the hope and we are symbolically present in the painting as the figure of John the Baptist pointing to Christ.

John the Baptist pointed beyond himself to the one who’s sandals he was unworthy to tie but not only to the presence of God in Christ but also to a future reality.  When the Baptist asks Jesus, are you the one?  The answer is that the poor hear the good news and the sick are liberated.  These are signs of the kingdom: signs of hope and transformation. 

Today I want to briefly point like John the Baptist to three signs of God’s presence, to signs of God’s future.  There are of course many others and they are always particular.

Firstly people.  Who makes you think of God’s Kingdom?  Who from the great cloud of witnesses?  Each of us has our favourite saints who lived a life formed by the Missio Dei.  You might think that Missio Dei, this Latin phrase is something from the Early Church Fathers but actually the idea comes from the 1930’s and a German theologian called Karl Hartenstein. 

Karl was heavily involved and committed to the ecumenical movement and he was also part of the German Protestant Church which resisted the Nazis, the Confessing Church.  I find that it’s extraordinary that at that period, during incredible political violence and social upheaval, Hartenstein was focused upon the greater reality of God’s kingdom and that he believed in a politically engaged, socially responsible, compassionate Faith.  He was a John of his day and there are so many others, people who have lived sacrificial, courageous lives.
 
Secondly music: What music do the angels use to praise God?  Karl Barth thought that they played Bach but when they were relaxing they played Mozart, which God listens to, ‘with great pleasure.’  Barth believed that Mozart’s music was a parable of the kingdom of heaven. It is clear that the tenderness and passion of his religious music flow from a passionate faith in God. 

Those who consider Mozart a great religious artist are not interested just in his religious music.  They argue that in all his work there is a delight in creation, a balance, a sense of order, an affirmation of light and the final triumph of life over death and darkness.  Most of Mozart’s life was spent in financial insecurity and his short life ended in poverty and protracted illness and he collapsed shortly after completing a Requiem.  Mozart died on December 5th 1791.  Mozart died at the age of 35 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Vienna. 

Barth claimed that in listening to Mozart, we are transported to the threshold of a world in sunlight and storm, a sign of the Kingdom.  We can perhaps experience something of this at the end as we listen to the choir singing a Mozart Anthem, Ave Verum.  Mozart’s music is like John, pointing beyond to a greater reality.
We all know that we live in tension between various polarities between body and soul, public and private, ultimate and penultimate, individual and social, present and future, inner and outer, but we strive to live now something of the reality of God’s future. John the Baptist in our Gospel this morning warns us that we are to give evidence of our commitment to reform. We are to be like the Christ in whose name we are baptized; to become a servant of others as he came to be a servant of all. Thomas Merton sums it up for us: "Without love and compassion for others, our own apparent love for Christ is a fiction."

We are surrounded by cries, of suffering, despair and pain but also of joy. Some of the cries come through the media and some come from people and groups that we know well.  Our task is the discernment of those cries and to respond.  This is the third and final sign of God’s Kingdom that I have chosen this morning is Inn Churches, our winter homeless project where we are seeking to respond to the cries of the homeless.

Inn Churches , like John the Baptist is our response in loving service to the cries of the poor as a sign of God’s future Kingdom

In the drama of the coming of God’s Kingdom we are faced with the challenge of living at a time when the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, together with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost have inaugurated God’s Kingdom but that it is not obviously completed.  Advent and John the Baptist reminds us of this and they remind us that our task is not passive expectation but courageous participation. 

We are right to be joyful and hopeful but we must also be realistic about evil, sin and all those forces which resist God’s purposes and which hold people and institutions into bondage.  We live in a deeply ambiguous world  in which there are momentous struggles and conflicts but the past is not determinative, God’s future, God’s Spirit is given from that future into the present so that there can be fresh starts, new life, new creation, signs of the kingdom of God such as the life and witness of Karl Hartenstein, the music of Mozart and practical loving service, such as Inn Churches.  All of these are like John the Baptist, pointing beyond themselves and proclaiming the presence of a future reality.