Sermon for the 5th of November - Fourth Sunday before Advent

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot

Today, as the rockets whistle past us and explode overhead, we are asked to remember the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, what would now be classed a terrorist attack, designed to blow up King James I and the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. As we know, it didn’t succeed but, as I hear the sound of those fireworks, I can’t help but be reminded of those deadly rockets and shells exploding in the skies above Gaza and Israel in the present war in the Middle East.

 And what was happening there many centuries ago wasn’t so very different. In our reading today (Micah 3: 5-end), Micah (circa 740-670BC) paints a pretty black picture – one of a bloodthirsty society with corrupt rulers, false prophets and dishonest judges who can be bribed ­ and underpinning it all is violence. The leaders are driven by greed for power and money. He addresses them as those ‘who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity’ and says, because of them, ‘Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins’. Micah predicts the fall of Israel and this does indeed happen not long afterwards when the Assyrian army invades.

 This all makes for pretty gloomy reading and our Gospel from Mark today seems similarly down beat. Again, we hear that the Temple, a fine stone building, will be destroyed. The disciples want to know when it will happen (in fact it will be at the hands of the Romans in AD70) and they find Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem. But they don’t get an answer from him, instead they are warned against the coming times when there will be false messiahs, wars, famines, earthquakes and anarchy – and this, he says, is just the beginning. Worst of all, they themselves, like him, will be despised, persecuted and put to death.

 All this reminds me of the catchphrase of Private Frazer in Dad’s Army ‘We’re doomed! Doomed!’ – but are we? For just as we may be losing hope, Jesus slips in ‘But the one who endures to the end will be saved’. I wonder what does it really mean to endure ‘to the end’ and to be ‘saved’. There are many quick, if not easy, answers to this question and many complex theological ones but, I think, the late Revd Professor James Atkinson, puts it rather clearly:

 ‘A Christian man faces pain and death, but in Christ he now knows that, though they are frighteningly real, they are not ultimate. These experiences will not destroy him, but will become his gateway to joy, life and peace. The point is worth demonstrating. When the natural man seeks a fuller life, he reaches out for more and deeper experiences of life, to find in these natural experiences (good in themselves) a deeper awareness of his existence. And this he finds. But, in so doing, he is ministering simply to his own needs and thereby renders himself increasingly self-centred and ever in need of more and livelier experiences. This is the man who seeks his life and loses it. The man in Christ who seeks the things of Christ will be treated as his master is treated – to rejection, mockery, pain and suffering. But he will learn in Christ that these experiences – the pain and suffering, the trials and tribulations of life ­ serve to destroy the real enemy within (the self) and thereby the new man in Christ rises from that death.’

 So in the midst of the firework display of life – the loud noises, the explosions, the flashing lights and the smoke – let us remember to listen for the still small voice of calm, of peace, of love and of hope in the midst of the turmoil.
Remember, remember…

Amen