Isaiah 2.1-5 Psalm 122 Romans 13.11-14 Matthew 24.36-44
| But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. … Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. |
The Lord speaks to us. He addresses us as people who want to hear and to be taken seriously. We want to know that we have a future, that our lives and our achievement are acknowledged and confirmed. We want to know that life will go on, and that whatever we have achieved will continue after us and not simply disappear. We stand on the layers of achievement of our predecessors. It is the culture that they created that supports us. We have made our contribution because we stood on the foundations they laid. Following them we have laid foundations, started projects and set up institutions in the hope that they will continue after us and so that we can pass them and that those who come after us will take them on.
Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left…
The Lord is coming. Those who hear and recognise him, will drop everything and follow him. Those who do not get up and follow will be left where they are. The Lord and his people will move on without them. The nation will divide into those who hear and those who do not, those who get up and follow, and those whose remain, heads down, where they were. In a moment it will be clear, who wants life and who doesn’t.
We must be alert to threats to our way of life. We must be aware of our vulnerabilities and weak points. We should close the gaps through which trouble could come. We don’t want to be taken by surprise. We know that it is best to confront trouble early on. We should prepare for a range of eventualities. We do not want to be utterly caught out and have things suddenly break down in front of us. If people are working against us, it is best that we recognise it, discover who they are and what is the offence they hold against us, and so defend ourselves against them.
Will the troubles that come singly suddenly turn into a torrent? What is the flood that may come and sweep us away if it is not simply consequences of our own acts? What we have done is certainly enough to destroy us and render our society unrecognisable. Which of us will survive it? What can we do to ensure that it is us and our children who survive?
Perhaps we stand before an epic event. The slow disappearance of everything known and precious may seem to be speeding up. Perhaps it will accelerate, and the world we know while vanish to leave a world of sudden poverty, of mistrust and hostility. Suspicion is growing, trust is vanishing; the social capital that accrued over centuries, and which enabled us to live together as a united society is no longer so strong. Everything that was done by consensus and learned sense of obligation is now centralised and imposed through regulation. We have experienced a great levelling, which we have welcomed and all contributed to, but now we find that it is proceeding well beyond what we envisaged. The movement that started as our general emancipation and enfranchisement has changed into a movement to dissolve every tie except our loyalty to the central power of the state. The idealists and reformers now have us in their sights. Those movement towards greater tolerance that we launched are now being directed against us. We who once regarded ourselves as pioneers are now seen as opponents. The microphone has been taken away from us. It is us who are being levelled down now. We who were once someone, but now no longer. We are suffering an undignified decline in political status. We cannot get ourselves heard. We are becoming nobodies in our own country. We are divided between those who notice this and those who have not, and have no wish to notice it. Our children will never realise how great was the society made confident by the gospel. The shaking has begun.
But about that day and hour no one knows
We could say that at least this makes future quite democratic, because it is equally unknown to everybody. And yet it is possible for those who want to, who can read and explore the political, economic and demographic analysis us to look ahead and identify some of the possibilities, and to act to mitigate some of them. We can look at the graphs that indicate trends in demography and energy supply, in debt and purchasing power.
Now, again, as ever, the West is faced by its opposite. The society that has only known internal peace for so many centuries cannot imagine or that it could ever lose that peace. It cannot imagine that the very things it does is now eroding that peace. It cannot imagine how different, and how violent, is any society that has not undergone and how rapacious and predatory it is. Yet the West can also see such a society, because colonies of that society, emerging right here among us. Now we are face to face with the society by the society that is everything that the West developed away from. It is faced by the cult and society that promotes community over freedom, and indeed which has no room for freedom at all. It is opposed to freedom, and regards freedom as a mistake. Freedom is an error. The demand for freedom is the one pathology which the cult is committed to eradicating. The eradication of freedom. The collective is supreme, the individual is nothing. This cult and society have taken teachings of Christianity and Judaism and turned them on their head to produce a monster that destroys stood Christianity and Judaism on their head. Our leaders have poisoned our political discourse by suppressing discussion of these opposed identities.
We are mortal. We live in time. Our life here has an end as surely as it had a beginning. We will be succeeded by other people, who may follow the way we have taken or reject our way. They may be our heirs and inheritors, or they may despise us and refuse to take anything from us. Will our civil life, our culture and political system continue? The culture we inherited brought about a secular liberal political system. This culture has demonstrably brought about the lifting and exaltation of man. It values freedom and consent, over coercion. It tolerates dissent and despises totalitarianism. It has brought about the rise of exploration, science, technology and medicine. It has looked with pity on those static societies sunk in poverty, misery, ignorance, disease and social immobility. It has brought about the modern world.
Keep Watch
If the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and not have let his house be broken into…
Keep watch! Stay alert! Each Church service is a going on watch, a stand-to, in which this guard is inspected, its readiness confirmed and its report made. Our commander calls us to assembly before him and show that we are ready. He appears before us to check that we are ready. We are to serve the world by watching out for the forces coming against us, and for the forces of the Lord coming to our aid. We are on guard duty. Our job is to give warning or news of relief. Keep patrolling, and when those patrols come in, make should that they are de-briefed, refreshed, recuperate and are re-equipped ready to go out again. It is only this patrolling that keeps the society around us peaceful, secure and confident. The sight of these patrols stops the bullies from being tempted to humiliate the weak. We hope to discourage the enemy by the intensity of our attention. We want to intimidate our enemies by such a show of force, to convince them that we cannot be overpowered, and that we are strong because we take our supplies and strength from our invincible Lord, never allowing ourselves to be separated from him.
