Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 26 December 2021 Christmas 1 Year C Stephen martyr
2 Chronicles 24v20-22         (Psalm 119v161-168)         Acts 7v51-60   Matthew 10v17-22         Let us Pray:

Well, I guess we have all survived. Christmas really has come and now almost gone yet again? And what have we actually achieved? Yes, an extra inch around the waist, some precious time with family and special friends, and for those of us who make up the household of God, a wonderful remembrance of the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
But what next? The time for new year resolutions perhaps, but that will have to wait a few more days.

So, as we wait, I wonder what common points you found in our readings this morning?
Maybe what struck you was the significant difference in the ending of our reading from 2 Chronicles, about the death of Zechariah, and the last words of Saint Stephen as he was being martyred?
Zachariah, as he was being martyred said what? ‘May the Lord see, and avenge’. Although we know that God said very clearly, ‘Vengeance is mine’, (Deut 32v35), Zachariah’s words starkly contrast with the final words of Stephen, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’.
But do those words of Stephen remind you of anything else? What did our Lord pray as he was dying upon Calvary’s cross? ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23v34).
Such an amazing contrast, and we need to ask ourselves what made that contrast possible?

I am sure we have all heard stories after some deadly assault or murder, of such contrasting responses as, ‘I can never forgive that person’, and yet others can say despite their pain and much trauma, ‘I forgive them’. I pray that we shall never be put in such a position, but how would we respond?

Saint Paul addresses this question when writing to the Christians in Rome (Rom 12v19) where has says that as Christians we are to ‘overcome evil with good’. Does that seem possible to you? Many will say, easier said than done, true, for without the help and presence of God’s Holy Spirit that may well be the case.

But did you notice that there was a second common factor running through our readings. Zachariah, as an Old Testament saint had experienced the Spirit of God with him, but we read that Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit, and of course that was supremely true of our Lord Jesus.
So is there a lesson from Stephens experience for us Christians this morning? A lesson of how to live out our lives to the full as God intended for each one us? How may we have the great hope of the gospel resonating in our hearts? Clearly, we need to be like Stephen, to be full of God’s Holy Spirit.
And that is so necessary for our persecuted brothers and sisters to survive amidst all the hostility that they so often have to experience and endure.

In our reading from Matthew this morning, that hostility was something Jesus had to prepare the early disciples for telling them that, ‘they will hand you over to councils and flog you’, and sadly that has been something which has not diminished down through the ages for true believers, for true followers of our Lord. Stephen may have been the first of our fellow believers to be martyred, but sadly it did not stop with him. The presence and witness to the truth that we Christians have always been called to declare makes us prime targets for attack in an ‘anti God’ society. It was true, and that is still especially true, in many communist and other repressive regimes today, and does not seem to be diminishing.

Saint John in his Revelation issued a call for ‘the endurance of the saints’ (Rev 14v12), and John saw under the altar of God in heaven, the souls of those who had been killed for the word of God and for the witness they had borne (Rev 6v9). In heaven those faithful believers no doubt see our Lord Jesus standing at Gods right hand, just as Stephen saw in his dying vision. They now wait in expectation of that day when they, together with us, shall all be like our Lord Jesus as we share in his glory. Can we yet even begin to grasp the magnitude of that promise? I wonder, is that your hope and expectation as another new year begins?

Joy and I have been reading a most challenging book, and if you start reading it, you will not be able to put it down. It contains the testimonies of women who risk all for their faith in our Lord Jesus in antagonistic middle eastern countries. Yet despite enormous risks, and possible death, these women have become firm followers of the Lord, living on the very edge they seek to spread the good news of the gospel.
Let us pray for strength and faithfulness, that like them we may live to declare the hope and joy that Jesus came to bring to all humankind through his birth in that little town of Bethlehem some two thousand years ago.

Let us Pray: A prayer written at the conclusion of psalm 97 in daily prayer
Most high and holy God, enthroned in fire and light, burn away the dross of our lives and kindle in us the fire of your love, that our lives may reveal to all around the light and life we find only in your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Homily Christmas Eve/Day St Mary & St Peter          24/25 December 2021Year C
Isaiah 52v7-10         (Psalm 98)         Hebrews 1v1-4 [5-12]         John 1v1-14

On this Holy of (nights-Day), I wish to pose to you a question.
What do you regard as the most significant event in all of human history?

Would you answer with Genesis 1, ‘God said “let there be light”, or as a physicist I prefer to say, “let there be electromagnetic radiation”. Possibly, for without the big bang, the universe, you and I would have no being.
Or would your answer be with some great figure or grand event from history? Who or what would then be your response I wonder?
Or maybe you would respond with what we are here to celebrate on this holy of all (nights -days)? The pivotal and turning point of history, that time when God, the one who set our universe into being, compacted himself into the holy babe, born of Mary, in Bethlehem.

The incarnation, as we Anglicans like to call the birth of Jesus, is a far greater mystery than the physics of quantum mechanics for can you, can I, ever conceive of how God could become a human being? How could the ‘Word’, the way Saint John in our reading referred to Jesus, the Son of God, become a living human being?

Certainly God, as Genesis tells us, has amazingly created us in his own image, to be his ‘image bearers’ in this world, now there is a good topic to debate over Christmas dinner. Our brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Church like to express it in this way, ‘God became man so that man could become like God’, created so we could share in the future glory of the God who created all things. Now that is another good topic for conversation. But how and why did God choose to enter into this his physical creation, and at that pivotal point in human history some two millennia ago?

We may not be able to answer the question how, but we can see why. God chose to extended His grace, mercy and love to us, so that we who have rebelled against His ways and gone off along our own paths, may hear the good news of our reconciliation. In our reading from Hebrews the writer described how God decided to send Jesus to speak to us and to make His plan for our reconciliation possible.

We read in the Old Testament prophets how God made king David, despite all his short comings, a man after God’s own heart, and a prince over his people Israel. So God made Jesus, that babe born this happy morning in Bethlehem, the city of David, a saviour for all humankind. But God will one coming day also make Jesus the prince and ruler over all the nations of the world, at the time when Jesus comes again as Messiah and Lord.

St John in his gospel tells us how John the Baptist told us how to prepare ourselves for that time of Jesus coming, he called us all to repent. Sadly there is inside us humans a rebellion to God’s ways so that we need to repent, to ‘turn about’, to seek God above all else. So can we this Christmas commit ourselves to following after Jesus in our everyday lives?

If so then I hope that as we sung in our carol, ‘O little town of Bethlehem’, the truth of the words ‘where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in’, will take on new meaning for each one of us.
What God longs to see in each of our lives is a commitment to follow Him, and His ways.
If you only grasp just one thing from our service this holy (night-day), may it be that God has a phenomenal purpose for each of our lives if we will but humble ourselves and trust and believe in Jesus as our Lord and Master. God has given to us brothers and sisters, a hope that transcends anything that we can possibly desire or imagine.

Some 21 years ago, on Christmas eve, I was in Manger square in that now, not so little, town of Bethlehem. It was full of hope and expectation of many good things ahead, and much investment was flowing into the Palestinian economy. Much of the infrastructure of the town had been rebuilt, the economy was growing, and there was reasonable freedom of movement both in and out. Then came the second Palestinian intifada, and all changed.
When I returned in 2005, entering Bethlehem was then through a gap in a 6m high concrete wall, and with greatly increased security. The image of ‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see you lie’, was in an instant shattered.

Since then those Christians who remain living in Bethlehem, where once the Christian population were in the majority, have become and feel isolated, as there has been an exodus of Christian families from within it. Where now is the hope, the peace and the goodwill between men heralded at the birth of that babe born within its midst?

Yet we as Christians know that it is not man who will dictate the final outcome of human history, and so we can take hope even through all that we see going on around us across the world. God has a plan of redemption, reconciliation, for you, for me, and for all the nations of His world so do not lose heart or hope at all the bad news in the media. God will finally make his purpose of peace and righteousness happen for all. And that through the return of the babe born this happy morn.

The God who said, let there be light, and flung the stars into the vast expanse of space, is still at the helm of His universe despite man’s best attempts to dislodge him. Pray through all the political correctness, that once again the will and purpose of the one true and living God may be heard and impact everyone’s life.
So let us join in with the heavenly host, with all the angels, and with our countless brothers and sisters around this world as today we praise God this joyful Christmas morn.

Let us thank God for his wondrous gift of the baby Jesus, so silently given in Bethlehem, God’s own son foretold by the prophets, and soon to be King Messiah and ruler over all the world.
Let us thank God for his free gift to you and to me of forgiveness for all our wrongdoings, and of a hope that we shall enjoy a place being prepared for us by our Lord Jesus Christ. But right now God has a job for you and for me, a job building his kingdom of peace, justice and righteousness in our stumbling society. Let us work to hasten the day when that transformation will be fully realised at the return of our Lord Jesus.

Yes, the birth of that babe, together with Jesus death on the cross and his resurrection, will for ever remain, the most significant events in human history, for they provide us with hope. Hope, not just for this night, but for all eternity if we but let the holy child of Bethlehem, come to us, abide with us, and be born in us today.
Now for a suffering, weary and war-torn world, that’s what I call a real Christmas present.                  Amen

Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 12 December 2021 Year C Next Advent 3
Zephaniah 3v14-20   Responsory Isaiah 12v2-6         Philippians 4v4-7         Luke 3v7-18

Let us Pray:
More than 300 years ago, king Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the philosopher and mathematician, to give him proof for the existence of God. Pascal answered, ‘Why the Jews your Majesty, the Jews’. And why do you think Pascal give that reply to king Louis? .. Because the Jews have survived for over 4000 years as a separate and coherent people, survived against all the attempts to destroy them. The time when Pharaoh required all the male babies to be destroyed, yet Moses escaped; the time when Queen Esther had to intervene for the Hebrew people to be delivered from the plans of the wicked Haman, a time still remembered today in the colourful festival of Purim; and of course the Shoah, the holocaust of the second world war, the pictures from which seem unimaginable. Yet today there are still regimes looking for the destruction of the nation of Israel.

You may be asking, ‘what has that to do with todays readings?’ Well, the prophet Zephaniah, prophesying during the reign of king Josiah in the late seventh century BC, denounces the arrogant leaders of the nation Judah for abandoning their worship of Yahweh, the true God, and accommodating foreign customs and false gods. They were seeking wealth and power through exploitation, violence and fraud, sounds a bit like our times to me. Zephaniah reminded them that Yahweh, their true God, was Holy and righteous, and greatly offended by injustice. But despite that Zephaniah had a message of hope for a coming time of deliverance, a time of restoration for the people.
Zephaniah’s preaching can be seen as referring to a new age of joy and liberation, a new age when Messiah would bring in a coming kingdom with God himself in their midst. A time when Zephaniah saw that God would gather and bring his chosen people home after their dispersion, a time that we are presently seeing fulfilled before our eyes today.

Is it any wonder then that many in Israel can today join with the words of  Zephaniah when he wrote, ‘Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult, the Lord has taken away the judgements against you’; and we still await the realisation of that time. Yet sadly while we wait, we see even in this country, a rise in antisemitism. Yet it is the Jew Jesus, God incarnate, whom we come together to worship this morning as our Saviour, Lord and coming King. Let us then join in that vision with a renewed hope, looking forward to a future restoration that God, in his love and mercy, has promised to all those who will today believe and trust him.
But in the meantime, as we look around and see all the suffering in our present world, and especially as we remember, and hopefully try to help, the homeless and refugees at this coming Christmas time, with Zephaniah we look forward to the time he described in our reading, ‘I will deal with your oppressors, I will save the lame and gather the outcasts, I will change their shame into praise’. So while the Lord tarries, while he delays his second advent, it falls to us, Jesus’ present day disciples, we who are the ‘image bearers of God’, to meet the needs of these forgotten folk, those at home and those abroad. As Christians our call has always been to help others, to share our resources, and to be content with what we are fortunately blessed with.

Our gospel reading this morning reminds us that John the Baptist was a very fiery preacher. I just love those words that he cried out to those coming to him for baptism, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!’
Not exactly politically correct words for this day and age; and I wonder what would be the response from a family coming for baptism if I shouted out those words as we all moved towards the font at the back of Church?

Yet is not that same call still so desperately needed today when we look around at all the violence and heartbreak seen in much of our society?
And Jesus did not shy away from using similar words. Jesus said to the Pharisees (Mtt12v34), ‘You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil.’ Perhaps if those words ‘repent’ were needed to be said by both John and Jesus when preaching that the kingdom of God has come near, we also need to be bold as we call people to repentance. It is a call for all to stop, to turn around and make new lives, a call that God places upon every person’s life to worship and to follow after our Lord Jesus.

John had words for each group of people coming to him for baptism as to how they should put that call to repentance into practice. Perhaps you could think up suitable responses for the multitude of people who today still need to experience repentance, and accept God’s forgiveness before they can enter with us into his everlasting kingdom of love, peace and joy.

But John did not leave his preaching with just the need for repentance did he? Having made it quite clear to those Pharisees who wanted to know just who he was, and so with what authority he could preach such a demanding call for repentance, John made it quite clear that he was not the long awaited Messiah.
John pointed to one who was coming after him, to the one whose sandal he was not worthy to untie, John pointed to his cousin Jesus as the Messiah.
Jesus the one whom John was soon to baptise; the one who did not need any baptism of repentance for he was the holy and spotless ‘son of God’. John pointed to Jesus who we shall affirm in a moment is, ‘the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’.

No, the coming Jesus was for John, and for us, more than the one who could offer forgiveness of sin, he was to be, and still is, the one who can baptise us with the Holy Spirit from God our Father. You will recall that Jesus refrained from baptising with water, he left that to his disciples, but he was the one who promised, and then sent, the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire at Pentecost. And what was the result?

The Holy Spirit transformed those timid and fearful first disciples of Jesus so that they were enabled to preach with boldness to all those that they met. And Peter was then to see some 5000 converted as he boldly preached on that first day of Pentecost. I wonder if we desire to have that same boldness that the Holy Spirit imparted to Peter that Pentecost morn?

So how are we to make sense today of these things in our own personal lives as Christians? What would be your response? Perhaps, like me, you have found it impossible to live out the commandments of Jesus, and to produce the fruits of his Holy Spirit that Paul lists in his letter to the Galatians (5v22), the fruits of, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Yet do we not all feel, and know deep in our hearts, that those fruits are exactly what Jesus has called each one of us to show and do in our lives as ‘image bearers’ of God?

And why do we find it so impossible to show forth all those fruits?
The simple answer is that we cannot produce those fruits, those virtues, through our own strength; we cannot produce them of our own accord, we need the presence of the Holy Spirit to dwell with us. It is only through the power that the Holy Spirit imparts to us that we become enabled to live the full lives that God intended for us as his ‘image bearers’.
So we need to constantly meditate and ask ourselves if we are experiencing that life giving presence and power of God within us.

Do you remember the story of Paul’s third missionary journey when he went to Ephesus which Luke describes in Acts 19? What did Paul find with those few disciples there?
When he asked them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?’ what did they reply? ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit’.

Well, none of us here this morning can say that we have not heard of the Holy Spirit, but we do all need to ask once again, are we experiencing him in our lives? If not perhaps like those 12 early disciples we need to seek the Holy Spirit through earnest prayer, for when Paul laid his hands on them Luke plainly says ‘the Holy Spirit came upon them’.

With the Holy Spirit in our hearts we know the peace of God, that peace which passes all understanding, and He brings to us a new sense of power and purpose as we live out our lives as Christians. A time when God can bring to our hearts and minds a new experience of our Lord’s presence with us day by day. A time when you can follow in saint Paul’s footsteps and say, ‘I rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say, rejoice’.

Let us pray:         A form of the shorter collect for this 3rd Sunday of Advent

God for whom we watch and wait, you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son: give us courage to speak your truth,
to hunger for justice, and to suffer for the cause of right.
So dear Lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit today and every day, we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.          Amen

Sermon St Eustachius 9.45 21 November 2021 Year B Next b4 Advent Christ King
Daniel7v9-10,13,14         Psalm 93         Revelation 1v4b-8                  John 18v33-37(38)

Let us Pray:

What comes to your mind when we speak of ‘Christ the King’?
You may say, well, we are always talking about the kingdom of God, and for a kingdom there must be a King. How true, but does that really help us understand Jesus Kingship? For that we clearly need to know more about the nature, makeup and time of that Kingdom, for when we look around our present world with all its divisions, inequalities, poverty, oppression and pain, it leaves a great deal still to be desired to my mind. So what do we know about God’s kingdom, and its King, from scripture? There is a great deal, so we can only begin to scratch the surface this morning.

We know that Jesus himself during his earthly ministry often used the phrase, ‘know that the kingdom of God has come near’, so as we look at Jesus, we should get some idea of the kingdom that he came to initiate.
Jesus launched his ministry, very much in the context of what the Old Testament prophets said about a coming kingdom, and Jesus summed their thoughts up well in the words of Isaiah (58v6-7) when, in the synagogue in Nazareth he said, “the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, liberty to the oppressed and the recovery of sight to the blind”. Now that’s the sort of kingdom I believe our world so desperately needs, and Jesus is the King who is going make that a reality at his return, at his second advent.

I think that even Pilate, during his confrontation with Jesus that we have just heard, had a glimmer of an idea that this man brought before him by the religious leaders, was more than could be seen from the outside. “So you are a king” said Pilate to Jesus. “You have said so” was Jesus reply. Yes, indeed he was the eternal King, but he was not to be a king in the way that most people imagined a king to be, a king to set them free of Rome’s power at that time in their history.

Saint John in his revelation was convinced that Jesus was far more than just any kind of king when he wrote, ‘Jesus Christ, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth’. John could see that Jesus was to be King over all the earth. And that is just what the scriptures have to say about the Messiah, and so of what we as Christians say of Jesus.

The great prophet Daniel (Dan 7v11), in his heavenly vision was given a glimpse of the coming time of Jesus kingdom, and he described it like this; ‘I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven’. Does  that ring a bell with you? Was it not the way that the two angels described the coming return of Jesus in the clouds at his second advent. Speaking to the disciples at Jesus ascension, the angels described that as the exact same way in which our Lord will return to the Mount of Olives.

And Daniel continues, ‘And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him’. Daniel was just one of many prophets to see the coming day of our Lord Jesus as King and ruler over the nations.

Also prophesying like Daniel during the sixth century BC, but maybe just a little later, was the prophet Zechariah. He also saw the return of Jesus to the Mount of Olives (14v6), and went on to say, ‘And the Lord will become King over all the earth’ (14v9). But Zechariah adds an interesting description of that time (14v16), ‘then everyone of the nations shall go up to Jerusalem year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast, the festival of tabernacles’. Can you imagine that time? A time when all the nations will have to overcome their prejudices and send representatives up to Jerusalem, and there to acknowledge Jesus the Jew, but the very Son of God, as King over all the nations.

And Daniel was under no misapprehension that this was to be just a temporary kingdom, ‘His dominion is an everlasting dominion and shall not pass away’. Later in his prophecy Isaiah describes what that time will be like. It will be a time of feasting (Is25v6) and where tears are wiped away; a time when we delight, as having waited patiently for our God, we rejoice that now at last our salvation is to be finally fulfilled.

So are you beginning to get just a little picture of what it will be like to have a kingdom where Jesus is King and reigns and rules over the nations?
And in the meantime, are we just to sit back and wait? Sadly that has been the approach of many in the wider church, but what do you think each one of us should be doing? Perhaps first and foremost is that we are called by our Lord to live righteous lives that befit our Lord and his holiness.

Paul, writing to young Timothy (1Tim6v11f) encouraged him, and so us, to, ‘aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness; and to take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, to keep the commandments unstained, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ’.
That is how we should aim to be living out our lives, living lives that delight God our Father, and our Lord Jesus, as we patiently wait the realisation of the coming kingdom.

Jesus said much about the kingdom of God, a kingdom that has both an imminent and a forthcoming aspect. Luke (16v16 NKJ) records how Jesus said, “The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it”. Or as the New Living Translation, rather optimistically says, “and everyone is eager to get in”. That I believe should also be our vision brothers and sisters, a vision that motivates us to encourage all who we know to be among those who are ‘eager to get into the kingdom of God.

To that end we can all look to the Holy Spirit to transform our lives as we invite Jesus to become the King of our lives today.

We are called to use our gifts to show the love of our Lord Jesus; such deep love that Jesus went to Calvary to prove his love for you and for me. We can all work to build up this our lovely Church, and to invest our resources into making it a blessing, a blessing not just for us to enjoy, but also for all within our community here in this beautiful town of Tavistock.

Let us pray:
God our Father, help us to hear the call of Christ the King, and to follow in his service. Help us to build His kingdom that has no end; for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, one glory.                   Amen

Sermon St Eustachius 9.45  7 November 2021 Year B 3 b4 Advent Our High Priest

Jonah 2v1-5,10         Psalm 62v5-12         Hebrews 9vs24-end         Mark 1vs14-20

I wonder if you have ever had to appear in court? If so did you act on your own behalf, or did you employ the most competent solicitor or barrister that you could afford?

Well, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews gives us great assurance that in heaven we have the most competent of advocates to act on our behalf before the throne of Almighty God. We have a high priest unlike any other. A high priest that the writer described earlier in his epistle as ‘after the order of Melchizedek’. A priest who has no beginning and has no end, one who is eternal.

That high priest is none other than the one who has redeemed us and we serve, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jesus who existed with God the Father and the Holy Spirit before the creation of the world.  Jesus who chose to take upon himself our human form, yet without sin, so us to reconcile us to the Holy and Righteous God, our heavenly Father. Jesus who tabernacled here among us for some 33 years before entering back into highest heaven where, at the right hand of God, he is ever ready to make intercession for us. I hope you find that thought as encouraging as I do.

That same Jesus we read in our gospel, came to the Galilee after the arrest of John the Baptist to proclaim the good news of the gospel. To proclaim that we, who through our disobedience and neglect of the commandments and statutes of God, needed to be reconciled back to our Holy God and Father. To be restored to the position God had intended for us his children from before the foundation of the world. Restored so that we may share with God our promised eternal life in the coming new creation.

I wonder if those four early disciples, Simon and Andrew, James and John, knew what they were letting themselves in for when Jesus called them to leave their nets, and the family fishing business, and to follow him. I wonder, did we know what we were letting ourselves in for when we also  choose to follow after Jesus?

In their case it was not just to lose their livelihood and position in their society, it was to take up with a somewhat unknown, charismatic and itinerant Rabbi, he was a teacher from Nazareth of all places.

After all had anyone ever heard of anything good coming out of Nazareth?  Nathanael certainly did not think so when Philip said to him “We have found him of whom Moses in the Torah and also the prophets wrote”.

But three of those four men. Andrew, Simon Peter and John, had already spent some months with Jesus, for Saint John records in his gospel that they had previously gone up with Jesus to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast in the spring of AD 28. So they should have had some idea of what they might be letting themselves in for if they left all and followed after this Jesus. But were they yet ready to start ‘fishing for men’? No, that would take some more time moving around with this Rabbi and learning just who this Jesus really was, the Messiah, the Holy one of God.

It took another two years for them to understand about this Jesus, who could then say of them at the last supper (Jn17v7-8):

“Father, Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for I have given them the words which you gave me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed you sent me”.

A lesson that I hope, each one of us here this morning has also learnt since we came to believe, trust and follow after Jesus, Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed of God.

Yet as our collect this morning reminds us, it is God the Father’s will to restore all things in Jesus his beloved Son, and then Jesus will become King over all peoples. That shall be a day when, as the alternative collect tells us, wars shall cease, and poverty and pain shall end, and the earth shall know the peace of heaven.

Are you like me, looking forward to that day? No more destruction of the rain forests, no more pollution of our fragile environment, no more loss of God’s beautiful species. I must say that I am, so let us pray earnestly that the world leaders at Cop26 in Glasgow start to work for that day by working to prevent any further destruction and loss of our fragile environment, there really is no time to spare.

And the writer of Hebrews has more to say that is especially relevant as we approach Advent. Advent, that time when we think not just of our Lord’s first incarnation some two thousand years ago, but also of his promised return at his second advent, at his second coming. Both the Old and New Testaments are teaming with prophecies of that time.

The return of Jesus is featured prominently in the Scriptures, yet most people are surprised to learn that references to the second coming outnumber references to the first coming by a factor of eight to one. There have been identified some 1,845 references to our Lord’s Second Coming in our bibles.

At Jesus first advent, Jesus appeared, as we read, “to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” and that through his agonising death on Calvary’s tree, an event that will remain for ever as the centrality and turning point in human history. But our writer reminds us that the Lord will return ‘a second time’. Jesus has already dealt with the sin of the world, so what will take place when he does return? That is a long story and we cannot go into all the detail now, perhaps a good bible study sometime.

We also read this morning that at his return Jesus will, “save those who are eagerly awaiting him”. That raises a searching question for each one of us to answer, are we truly ‘eagerly waiting’ the return of our Lord, and the completion of our salvation? We have been redeemed once and for all through our Lord’s death, but we are all still, ‘a work in progress’. Our salvation is an ongoing process as Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians (2Cor3v18) for we are being changed from one degree of glory to another. That transformation will only be completed when we meet with Jesus in paradise or at his return. So can you see how it does behove us to be ‘eagerly awaiting’ Jesus’ return.

If we are not awaiting our Lord’s return and our full salvation, the writer of Hebrews gives to us some ominous, and warning, words. “It is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement”. What do you make of that statement? Do you believe that there is going to be a judgement, or have we as individuals, and as a society, moved on from all that sort of ‘stuff’? We need to take care how we answer that question if we are to put our trust and believe in the scriptures as our faith requires.

There is a simple but true little phrase I heard many years ago, ‘Born once die twice, born twice die once’.

But what can I possibly mean by that? Think about it, and then remember what Jesus said to Nicodemus.

Do you believe the words that Jesus spoke to the Pharisee Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night, “You must be born again”? I trust that we all here have put our faith and trust in Jesus, and so we have been ‘born again’, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and so our eternal life is secure.

Can we then join with the psalmist (Ps62v5-6) and say, “Wait on God alone in stillness, O my soul; for in him is my hope. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken”.

We Christians of all people have a hope, a hope that transcends anything that this world can ever offer. That hope is in the one true and living God. The God who has redeemed us through the precious blood of Jesus shed at Calvary. The God who St John records (Jn 14v3) could say that in Jesus, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also”. Do you not find those words most comforting that Jesus is now in the process of preparing an eternal abode for us so that we shall be with him in the coming new creation.

‘Joy’, said C S Lewis, ‘is the serious business of heaven’.

So as we carry that wonderful promise of our Lord with us, let us also remember the injunction of Saint Peter concerning this present world and age. In his second epistle (2Pt3v11) Peter writes, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God”.

Brothers and sisters we are called, like those early disciples, to do all that we can to hasten Jesus coming again. Just think how you can work to help make that possible. But we are also called to live out our lives and show that we are Christian people, and as such are called to work to establish peace and harmony among all peoples, and especially to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We are charged to preserve this creation that God  entrusted into our keeping from the very beginning of time, and we are to declare that ‘the kingdom of God has indeed come near. Come near both at our Lord’s first advent, and now in Jesus working through us his people.

We all need to seek God earnestly in our prayers. To ask how each one of us can join with him in building the kingdom, and showing its beauty and fulness to our hurting and disordered world.  Amen

Let us pray:

God our Father, King of the universe, our refuge and our strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease and poverty and pain shall end,
that this earth may know the peace of heaven,
we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.         Amen