Advent Sunday – evening
Sunday 3rd December 2017
Advent Sunday
Isa 1.1-20
Matt.21. 1-13
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Advent is a time of waiting and wondering, but rather than the penitential season of Lent with which it shares its liturgical colour, Advent is a time of Joyful expectation.
It has been compared to getting the house ready for a very special visitor.
Advent is also a time for looking forward, asking what the purpose is of our life on earth? And not just mine and yours, but the whole of humankind…. is there any point to our existence – or as some would have us believe, are we just set on self-destruction as we damage our environment and the planet on which we live?
Genesis says that God created human beings so that we might become his friends, but we spoil this plan through our disobedience. And because this is taught through the form of myth, modern people – thinking themselves so smart and cool, reject it as historically untrue. So how to proclaim the timeless truth contained there in modern terms?
One of the first to try was a Jesuit priest called Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Born in France, he studied theology and philosophy in Hastings and then went on to study evolution. He spent much of his life in China – being one of the team who discovered the fossilised remains of ‘Peking Man’.
He wrote many books – and in his lifetime many were banned by the Roman Catholic Church, although within a few years lots of people came to appreciate his way of looking at things and explaining them.
Teilhard de Chardin pictures the whole history of the universe, through many millennia, as a drama in which God gradually unfolds his purpose of creating human beings who are capable of dwelling in love with him in eternity. This he describes as the Omega Point, when we shall all be one in God.
Long before the Big Bang theory came along, Teilhard de Chardin described something very similar…. He then speaks of God using the laws of physics so that the galaxies and stars gradually form and on this (and maybe other) planet earth, and environment develops. With water and carbon and the right atmosphere and range of temperatures so that life can evolve and survive. Under God’s guidance these life forms become ever more complex and the climax of this development is Homo Sapiens – a being capable of rational thought, able to ask questions, make choices and form relationships.
The story of evolution doesn’t end there however, as these rational beings are able to co-operate with each other in increasingly complex social groups, with a deeper and deeper cultural life.
De Chardin writes that this gradual reunification of the human race under God mirrors the unification of the human body under the control of the brain. Eventually he forsees the human race becoming one in Christ, as the Bible says, either in this world or in the dimension of eternity, at the Omega Point.. That is the purpose towards which the whole cosmic history has been heading, and was the purpose of creation.
Well, that is a very simplified version of de Chardin’s profound philosophy. But perhaps we can see it as a re-telling for the people of today of the Advent message.
Despite what the Atheists will tell you, we are not here as products of random chance. Rather we are here for a purpose, planned by God, with the intention that by learning to love each other and to love God, we should progress towards a blissful fellowship where all are one in love, with each other and with God.
And it’s been a week when love has been much in the news with a new Royal engagement – one that would not have been possible a few years ago, so maybe we are inching forwards in our development?
But, because love requires free choice, God leaves us able to choose whether to accept or reject this glorious future he has planned for us.
And I think that is a more helpful and inspiring way of painting the choices that lie before us as individuals and as society, rather than talk of haloes and wings, demons and eternal flames.
May you all have a joyful and expectant Advent.
Amen.