Throw Those Curtains Wide

The remarkable events of 1989, which famously appeared to reset history itself, now seem ages away; at the same time, dates such as AD1346—the year the Black Death cut deep swathes through Europe—seem strangely contemporary. History continues not so much to repeat as rhyme, as they say. This is a sweeping take on things, certainly. But the temporal unease feels more pervasive to me. The wide-angle view can be scaled in various ways—from the national right down to the community level—without losing the impression that we’re living in changing times, in challenging times. If someone were to ask you “Looking at the world, what time is it, would you say?”, I wonder how you would feel. Because for me, the answer has become more complicated in recent years.

Christians are perhaps somewhat buffered from the apocalyptic force of that question (though surely we are sensitive to the grief it might open up). Although this could be a matter of wilful ignorance, at its purest this liberty is a function of the gospel. The advent of God into the world in Jesus, not only to call and save a people but also to renew creation from within, opens time itself up, like a great house suddenly unroofed. All the closed cycles of mortal endeavour and suffering—the rise and fall of empires, the conflicted harnessing of creation’s powers for some good and much evil, the seasonal ravages of plague—have been definitively interrupted by the coming of King Jesus. From the earliest days of the Church, Christians understood—in their hearts, but also in their suffering bodies—that Christ’s life, death and resurrection had split the wheel of time, straightening out its hopeless bloody rim into a path; from now on, the days alotted to each person—including the time given to any ruler—were numbered from the birth of Jesus, and to be enjoyed in light of his future coming. For followers of Jesus, God-with-us, the times have always been radically laid open to God’s initiative.

As a consequence, Christians have displayed—albeit unevenly—a remarkable ability to meet the times with hope, hope that not only sustains them, but also fuels their prayer, vision, and work to bless the troubling world. In terms of the famously mixed metaphor of Hebrews 6, hope is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” that “enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf” (Hebrews 6:19-20). Having turned away from false hope and “fled to take hold of the hope offered to us”, Christians are secure in the knowledge that their life has been unquestionably and conclusively tethered to life in the presence of God himself. Indeed, as “the people of the light” (Luke 16) whose lives are floodlit by the presence of Jesus, Christians are intended to be signposts that one day all creation will live in the light of God’s loving presence (Revelation 22:5). As the tide of world events rises and falls, the followers of Jesus, like boats at anchor, ride out the watery chaos. We’re not taken out of the storm; we’re by no means immune to changes in weather, or removed from the suffering of the flotilla of the nations. But the anchor is real—I’ve seen it’s effect time after time in the lives of Christians—an earnest token that one day the waters of chaos will be drained for good, and hope will at last burst into flower as hope fulfilled.

It’s a compelling story. But I wonder if we—the Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand—know this in our bones? I’ve wondered about this a good deal in recent years, as the tide of public opinion about Christianity has ebbed, as Covid has come and stressed the fabric of congregational life, and as various gospel substitutes circulate. I find myself praying something like, “Oh Lord, we do believe! But please help us in our unbelief. In our anxious activity, in our wandering thirst for abundant life—in our weariness—do not let us be overwhelmed by the apparent meaning of the here and now! Do not let me be overwhelmed by this present sense that it’s too late in the day; do not let the world set my clock, or let the newsfeed set the terms of hope!”. That’s how the prayer goes, more or less.

Recently, our older two boys came home from choir singing a sacred motet by Josef Rheinberger. Titled “Abendlied”—Evening Song—it’s a choral setting of Luke 24:29: “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over”. The words struck a chord with me, playing on my mind. They’re the words to Jesus of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. At that point in the narrative, they don’t know their companion is he—Jesus alive, Jesus victorious, risen from the dead—although their hearts have been burning as this stranger expounded the Scriptures, explaining why the Messiah had to suffer and then enter his glory. Their hearts are burning, but their vision is still darkened; and so, in their grief-filled care for this man, they only know to say: “Stay with us”. Over recent weeks, those words have stayed with me. They’re warming words. But I’ve felt a caution rise in me, a concern that in the face of troubled times they might mark the limit of my belief—that I might pray only: “Jesus, stay with us, for it is nearly night; the day is almost over.” It may be that this is the prayer we have to hand—in which case, let us pray it with all we have. But to pray only after the scope and manner and feeling of this prayer would finally make for a diminished hope: a foreshortened anchor chain, if you like, unable to reach into that mysterious, templed heart of history, leaving faith too subject to the weather of the times.

How, then, shall we name the present moment? Here, the season of Advent helps us. Since the early centuries of the Church, Christians have understood to mark all time with the life of Christ. On the face of it, it might seem like a backward step to impose the life of Jesus on the annual cycle of the earth around the sun. History has been opened out by the coming of Christ; time has been ordered by the life of Jesus into before and after and is to come. So is the Christian year a reversion to the old cyclical view? Advent launches us into Christmas, Epiphany yields to the pilgrimage of Lent and Holy Week, before Easter erupts in praise. Pentecost ushers in Ordinary Time, lingering at length in the life of Christ, drawing us slowly towards the season of holy anticipation, Advent. And so, each year, around we go, following in the footsteps of Jesus. What is the point of this? Is this a veneer of Christian story laid over ancient seasonal cycles of springtime and summer, harvest and winter? Or is this merely instructive, the application of the life and example of Jesus to my present moment? How does Advent—and the whole Christian calendar—serve our need to know the meaning of our time?

Beginning with Advent, the fulness of the Christian year gathers all my life into the life of Christ. With merciful repetition, quite apart from my choosing, Advent teaches me first to “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14). This imposition, gathering up my present moment into the life of Christ, is making a profound point. Typically, we talk about the mystery of the incarnation from our end of things—how Christ stepped down into our life, God with us. But God is before all things, the sustainer and redeemer of creation, the one in whom creation finds life. And so the deeper truth is that in the incarnation of the Son our life, our time, is gathered into God’s life. Through Jesus’s faithful life, death and resurrection, the door to life with God now swings wide across the centuries. This one, Jesus from Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, God’s own Son, is

the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17).

Advent, then—and indeed, the Christian calendar in general—schools us in a whole-of-life understanding that, as Ephraim Radner puts it, “the Son did not enter into our time; rather, our time flows out from his.” Whether I want it to be Advent or not, the season is upon me, reminding me that through the coming of Christ my time is gathered into God’s time, and finds its meaning there. Radner goes on:

Our times shimmer with the gleaming ripples that spread out from the fullness of his time. This is what it means to glorify God (1 Cor. 6:20) […]. The aching question “How long?” is properly answered with, “Look to Jesus!” For even now “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). Our turning toward Jesus does not require us to subordinate or depreciate our temporal existence; rather, it allows us to see our time “whole,” how it adds up and is incorporated into God’s purposes.

Here is the templed heart of history, the opening up of communion with God through Jesus Christ, the splitting of history’s brutal wheel of fortune. This is why for followers of Jesus, God-with-us, the times have always been radically laid open to God’s initiative; this is why we can “see our time ‘whole’”. My life, your life—the times we face together—find their meaning in relation to God’s coming to set his people free from the dark powers of sin and evil, and from death.

What time is it, then, in Christ? How shall we understand and respond to the darkness of these days? (for the darkness of our times is surely real enough!) Take heart again at the testimony of Scripture. God’s word does not play make-believe, does not downplay the reality of evil, of darkness. Nevertheless, it insists that this time, too, lies open to God’s unfolding purpose. Dark though the times may be, our prayer will not only be “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over”. Because

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

At Advent we’re reminded that the gates of history stand open, that the darkness of these days is not increasing but diminishing—its tide on the ebb. Listen to the urging of the Apostle Paul:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law […].

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkess and put on the armour of light. (Romans 13:8-12)

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. That’s the deep truth of the times: “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4); and we live in the early morning of God’s redemption of all things.

How do we know this to be so? We know by trust in the testimony of Scripture and in Jesus of whom the Scriptures speak. The Church is not meant to be yet another people or institution who, in the words of Isaiah, “light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches.” That is not the way Jesus has pioneered for us. Rather, “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God” (Isaiah 50:11; 10).

And there is more we need to say, for following Jesus is not only a matter of trusting God in the dark! In so many ways we know that “the darkness is already passing” (1 John 2:8). Over and over again, it is the testimony of the Church that only Jesus sets us free from our sin, from evil, from the fear of death. It’s through Christ that we receive power to forgive, and it’s by his grace that such forgiveness is liberating. It’s by the Spirit of a living God that those thrown into the furnace of suffering are able to stand and sing with hope, confident that God himself is with them in the flames. With Jesus, we find ourselves drawn into an ever-deepening conversation of prayer. And it’s by the Spirit of Jesus that we are inspired, and directed, and constrained, in works of reconciliation with God, with others, and with the rest of creation.

This is the testimony of God’s people, year upon year; it’s my testimony also—I’ve seen all these things, seen the resurrection life of God given to people as they call on his name. What else can I say about this, except to encourage you to taste and see for yourself, for your household, for your communities, that God is good? For if you don’t know such things for yourself, I’ll wager you know their counterfeits; and so I have to encourage you: there’s nothing like the real thing.

It turns out, then, that Advent—which is filled with the promise of God’s coming redemption, which is the threshold of the Christian year, which speaks of darkness passing and light dawning—speaks to our need to understand the times. Yes, there’s darkness—Scripture does not deny it; indeed, it helps us to discern it well! But insofar as we’re telling the time, this is the darkness of early morning. As Paul’s words in Romans 13 make clear, this has direct implications for followers of Jesus: “The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness…” Hear what this is saying. It’s as if, lying in history’s crumpled folds, we’ve been roused suddenly from that deep, paralysing sleep, and—with the eager and expectant creation—we sit up, listening to the birdsong of this resurrection day. With Mary Magdalene, we get up “Early on the first day of the week, while it [is] still dark”, to encounter the risen Jesus. Then we recall Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus, and begin to grasp the goodness of the challenge:

            Wake up, O sleeper,

            rise from the dead,

            and Christ will shine on you! (Ephesians 5:14)

And so, in the words of indie rock band Elbow, we get up and “throw those curtains wide”. Sin, death and evil—which are the final horizon of any such life apart from God—have been cracked open. The stone is rolled away, and early on this first day of the week, Mary can see that the tomb is empty, and Jesus Christ is already risen up and stirring (John 20). And so faith, too, understanding the present time, gets up with curtains wide and steps into the day, confident that, even in the early morning of God’s reconciliation of all things, there’s good work to join in on.

This is the understanding that we need to allow to sink down to our bones. This is what we, as the Church, must pray for eyes to see, and outstretched hands to receive: the fabric of the night is torn and already the light is getting in, throwing everything into sharp relief. Let us ask for this: that we come to know it in our own lives. Let us be the early morning people of the resurrection. “The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ,” writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his distillation of life at the Finkenwalde Seminary, which was soon to be closed by the Gestapo. “At the break of light [the Church] remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind.” Already it is dawn; the darkness passing and “the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8). However dark it may appear, let us remember that we are a people of the resurrection morning.

So what might this mean? What kind of life follows from this? There’s much we need to say. Here, I name just three Advent invitations.

First, it means we agree to live in the light. Just as everything in a darkened room is lit up by a crack in the curtains, so the coming of Jesus throws everything into relief. All of life—our relationships with God and others, our money and work, our bodies and commitments, our deepest fears and deepest needs, the desires of our heart and the resting place of our trust—all of this is lit up by Christ’s coming. “So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:12). While “you were once darkness, […] now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light […] and find out what pleases the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8-10). Oftentimes, we find this call to be holy provoking. We are inclined to withdraw, to close our eyes and pretend; we try to curtain off corners of our lives; or, fearful, we get busy, working hard on ourselves and others. But such attempts to deal with holiness on our own terms forget that the conditions for our holiness have already been established. I can’t explain this better than Andre Muller has already put it:

The command to be holy, then, is not like the sort of commands issued in the achievement society. It’s not a matter of trying really hard to be good at something. Still less is it about trying to be the “best versions” of ourselves. Instead, it is a matter of being transparent to the presence and work of God in our lives. It is saying “yes” to that work. It is living into the sanctifying work of the living Spirit of God.

The true light that gives light to every person has come! What else must we do than agree? As we do, we find Jesus spoke the truth when he said: “whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (John 3:21). God who is light calls us to holiness, and it is by God’s Holy Spirit that our actions, our hearts, become full of his morning light. So take heart. This Advent, ask the Lord to illuminate the whole of your life with his love.

Second, we agree to grow up into the life God has opened to us. That is, we agree to grow into love: love for God, and love for neighbour. Look across the ages and you’ll find the same ancient patterns playing out generation upon generation: cycles of violence, cycles of sin among families and peoples, the bitter fruit of our deep mistrust of God. The coming of the faithful human Jesus who meets death’s arrogance with selfless love, exposes all this as a sham, a mockery of God’s true purpose for humanity. We are, in fact, not to grasp at life at the expense of others; we are made to give our lives away. The life God opens to us in Christ draws us into ever-maturing communities of self-giving love:

To each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. […] It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:7, 11-13)

As we cede sovereignty and acknowledge Jesus as Lord over all, he responds with gifts. Like handmade Christmas presents, these retain the signature and purpose of the Giver. And the Giver is intent on a great purpose: the reconciliation of all things. And so the gifts reflect this, and are best used for this end. The result is the Church—an embassy, a microcosm, a wildlife sanctuary of reconciliation: a community marked by wholeness and whose body language is love. Let us agree this Advent to grow into love. Let us open the loaded wallet of faith and share this good news with our impoverished neighbours; let us offer costly care to others, putting ourselves out for the honour of Jesus’s name; let us listen to what the Spirit is saying and encourage and build up others, challenge injustice, and call people to God’s reconciliation. And let us come again and again to give the Lord praise, the wellspring of all our loving. May Jesus of Nazareth fill our view, showing us what love looks like.

Lastly, let us set aside all false hopes and call on the name of the Lord. We’ve said we live in challenging times, times where in many ways the darkness seems to press close. Faced with such dark, the human heart goes wandering, starts reaching for its own home-made sources of light. Looking to our own resources, protecting our own interests, trusting in our own ability to navigate the dark: all this has now been shown up as a night-time charade. We are no longer confused about what time it is: the night is nearly over; the day is almost here. But this does not mean we substitute one charade for another, making out that God’s reign is fully come in what we do! Before anything else, it means that we pray. As we’ve explored recently in Common Ground, prayer is the great engine room of the Church’s action, driving its acts of love. In this Advent season, it’s been my sense that we need to intercede: to come first before God and call on his name for our neighbours and ourselves, and then to let our acts of love from out from this place, shaped and guided by God’s initiative. In the darkness of the early morning of God’s resurrection purposes, we get out of bed, and open the curtains, and kneel before God for the sake of the world. In this way, we are applied to the life of Christ: we join Jesus in his intercessions before the Father for the sake of the world (see Hebrews 7:25). If you, like me, are, as Sonya Lewthwaite has put it, “wandering around with this ache” for the world, then in this season of waiting for the coming of Christ, in these times, let us first learn to call on the Lord. Let us learn to pray with the ancient church Marana tha! Come, Lord! Come to set your people free; come to this or that situation; come to our nation, to our world, to the Church. Come, Lord Jesus. And so, in these ways we will be more and more a people of the resurrection morning, an Advent people: marked by joy, relentless in hope.