Isaiah 2.1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13.11-14; Matthew 24.36-44
SEARCHING for an excellent word to explain the drama of Advent Sunday, I used to be tempted by “cataclysmic”. The “day of the Lord”, the Bible says, will bring darkness, desolation, and destruction. The prophets are particularly energetic in depicting it in terrifying terms. Cruel. Terrible. Dreadful. So, “cataclysmic” looked as if it would fit the bill.
When I read the Gospel in Greek, nonetheless, a penny dropped. “Cataclysm” is just not a vague term for disaster: it specifically indicates deluge — a flood. Mortals are busy with eating, drinking, and marrying “before the cataclysm”: they show no thought for God.
As I write, Hurricane Melissa, a category-five storm, is threatening to unleash darkness, desolation, and destruction on the island of Jamaica. Forty inches of rain are predicted to fall inside 4 days. This unfolding horror is, straight away, beyond my imagination. By the time you read this reflection for Advent Sunday, those affected by Hurricane Melissa is not going to need their imagination to picture the cataclysm: the truth of it is going to be a part of their life-experience for ever — in the event that they survive.
Jesus tells us that the approaching of the Son of Man will probably be just like the flood in the times of Noah. That flood was not only a weather phenomenon: it was an indication of God’s sorrow and regret (“the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart,” Genesis 6.5). The flood, then, was a negative counterpart to the positive rainbow (Genesis 9.13). Most of us have experienced the pain of proffering care and devotion to someone, but then being hurt by finding that what we bestow is unappreciated, even unnoticed. In the times of Noah, plainly God, like King Lear, checked out the recipients of his care and devotion, and concluded, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it’s to have a thankless child.”
Woven through the Noah story is an issue of theodicy (the justification of God to humankind). How can or not it’s right for God to destroy every living thing, in a situation wherein not the whole lot, not everyone, is equally wicked? This was clearly a sensitive issue for the creator (or compiler) of Genesis. It surfaces in one other destruction-story: the autumn of Sodom and Gomorrah, before which Abraham bargains with God for the lives of the righteous (Genesis 18), in a situation wherein the bulk have sinned and fallen very short indeed.
Noah is saved because God approves him for his righteousness. One positive lesson that we may draw from Noah’s story is the infectious nature of goodness: the righteousness of 1 person has a salvific effect on those around him, as Noah’s wife, sons, and daughters-in-law are all saved together with him. This makes for a difficult contrast with Job.
Jesus’s reflection on Noah takes a darker turn — one which a lot of us are instinctively sympathetic to, being uncomfortable with the concept any human individual is completely corrupt or purely wicked. That darker turn is available in verses 40-41. Theodicy drives us to the conclusion that everybody deserves condemnation, since the wickedness of humankind can’t be God’s fault. In other words, we start from the actual fact of humankind’s destruction, and work backwards to the conclusion that every one should die.
This is just not the road taken by Jesus within the Advent Sunday Gospel. There, Jesus eschews low cost reassurance about how the righteous will probably be saved and dodgy theodicy that overrides the infinite complexities of the human mind and soul. Instead, he highlights the arbitrary nature of natural disaster, and the destruction that it inflicts on humankind. Two men are going about their every day work: one will probably be taken, one other left. Not “The wicked is consumed, however the righteous will probably be left.” In case that weren’t a robust enough statement of his message, he repeats it — an unusual move for his teaching style. The first example was men at work outdoors. The second pictures a domestic interior: two women engaged in a domestic task. In the exact same words, Jesus highlights the apparently arbitrary nature of their fate.
This passage is just not concerning the “rapture” (a Christian belief rooted in Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18). Although the fullness of Jesus’s meaning eludes me, one thing I see clearly: that a suffering end to our time on earth is a poor indicator of how God will meet us on the day of judgement.
Buried Treasure: The collected Church Times Sunday Readings by Cally Hammond is obtainable now (Canterbury Press, £24.99 (£19.99); 978-1-78622-567-2).
