LIFTING THE VEIL
Jesus said, And then shall they see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
Power and great glory!
How very different the second coming will be from the Incarnation of God
the Son as Jesus Christ. On that occasion
the glory of God was veiled in human flesh.
He came among us as one of us, sharing with us the discomforts of human
birth, exposing Himself to the trials, the pains, the exciting temptations of
childhood and adolescence.
Through that long, slow climb to the mountain peak of human
maturity He remained sinless, obedient in every way to the will of the Father,
allowing the Father to show us His great and abiding love for us through His
Son and setting for us an example of perfection in everything good. The first Advent of God the Son was the Advent
of Love.
Veiled in human flesh the glory of God indeed was, but as
with any other veil, we are provided with ways of glimpsing what lies
beneath. In the case of this veil, it is
the explicit will of God that we should lift it and not just peer underneath,
but touch and embrace it. In so doing,
we are embracing the
Every day, in the daily offices, we recite the Apostles
Creed and in it look forward to the Second Advent, with the words, From
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. Whereas the first Advent was the Advent of
Love, the Advent of Redemption, the second Advent will be the Advent of
judgment. And for that we must be
prepared, ready in the way that Jesus taught us to be ready, hopefully and
humbly ready to give an account of our lives.
Our readiness for the Second Advent must be a veritable
state of readiness, of expectation that Jesus may come at any time. Our readiness cannot be sporadic because
Jesus warns us, Therefore be ye also ready for in such an hour as ye
think not, the Son of Man cometh.
Mt.24:44.
Those words point us to a third Advent, one in which Jesus
Christ comes, or waits to come to each of us.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice,
and open the door, I will come in to him. Rev.3:40. This is the Advent of faith, when we open our
hearts to Jesus and through the Grace of God, welcome Him in.
Then, and only then, we may turn again to the first Advent,
lift that veil and truly embrace what lies beneath it, or perhaps it is more
accurate to say that we will be embraced by what lies beneath it. We will find the glory of God revealed in His
beloved Son. We will find the glory of
God revealed in Holy Scripture, where God has made available all the knowledge
we need to understand our sinful nature and the gift of salvation offered
through the Cross.
Today is known as Bible Sunday, the day on which we pray in
the Collect, Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written
for our learning…
The Bible is the workshop manual for our lives, at least if
we seriously want to live those lives in accordance with the God’s instructions
and Jesus Christ’s blessed example. It
is absolutely required reading if we wish to lift the veil of humanity donned
for a moment in time by God and tremble in wonder at the divine glory then
revealed.
There, in the Old Testament, we will find numerous
references pointing towards the first Advent.
The God who led His people to freedom from Egypt; the God who punished
them justly when they fell away in wickedness from His Law; the same God was He
who sent them prophets to utter words of hope.
The same God to whom Isaiah prayed, O that thou wouldest
rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down. Is.64:1. And in His own time God opened the heavens
and with the utmost tenderness the Holy Spirit lodged the world’s salvation in
the womb of Mary, a pure, virginal womb made fit to bear the Son of God.
The Old Testament contains a number of prophetic references
to this miraculous event and in our study of the Holy Scriptures it is
important that we encounter them and understand them for what they are. Suffice it to say just now that they provide
a glimpse of God’s greatness in that all these ancient scriptures were
fulfilled in Christ Jesus. So Philip
introduced the long promised Messiah to Nathaniel with these words, We have
found him, of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of
Indeed, Jesus Himself referred to the Scriptural prophecies
revealing His Advent, Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have
eternal life; and they are they which testify of me. John 5:39. He goes on to castigate those listening to Him
for their disbelief, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me for
he wrote of me. But if ye believe not
his writings, how shall ye believe my words. In that we must surely hear a call to treat
Holy Scripture, the Holy Bible as an indivisible whole. As the Collect says, Blessed Lord, who
hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our
learning.
It is in Holy Scripture that we learn also of the Second
Advent, not least in the passage we read today from St. Luke, Ch.21. But there are other references to this event
and they make it clear that we need to maintain our awareness of it at all
times. In Acts, for example, St. Peter
tells Cornelius that the disciples were commanded by Jesus, to preach unto
the people and to testify that is is He which was ordained of God to be the
judge of the quick and the dead. Acts
Notice the undercurrent of warning in these verses. The second Advent, the Advent of judgment,
will not be a pleasant event for those who are not ready. Jesus Himself tells us there will be no
excuses for those who have rejected Him, If I had not come and spoken unto
them they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin. John 15:22.
We have four Gospels, the Book of Acts and 21 Epistles to
tell us how to get it right. We really
do have no cloak for our sin. We may
think our sins are in secret, but to God they are as visible as the guts of a
road killed animal and to Him their stench is just as unpleasant.
The first Advent was indeed the Advent of Love and it
brought salvation through the Cross. But
let us be under no illusions that the Cross also brought responsibilities. We are each and every one of us responsible
for doing what we can to learn what is there to be learned in Holy
Scripture. And we will find in what we
learn that the knowledge we gain, in and of itself is not enough. That knowledge will not by itself give us the
When we hear that knock, if eternal life is our goal, we
must respond, not grudgingly but with a joyous, unreserved giving of ourselves:
Come
to my heart, Lord Jesus,
There
is room in my heart for thee!
Perhaps you have seen by now that these three Advents are
inextricably interlinked. The first
Advent, the Advent of Love was made necessary by our fallen, sinful
nature. Upon the Cross, the second
Advent was made inevitable because the unfathomable love which took Jesus to
the Cross embodies perfect, divine justice.
Once the first Advent came about, the second Advent became inescapable.
And in between, the third Advent, the coming of Jesus Christ
into our individual hearts determines how we will truly believe in and
understand the first Advent and how we will fare in the Advent of
judgment.
Jesus Christ will come again and it will be an awesome
thing. Do we know what it means to
expect Him? Are we ready for His
judgment? We are if we love Him and we
know that we Love Him if we can honestly say that we are doing our very best to
keep His commandments, not just one or two of them, but all of them. The commandments which we find in the Holy
Bible, the workshop manual for our lives.
It is not easy, but just as the Holy Spirit was intimately involved in
the writing of those books, He will, if we ask Him, be involved in our reading
and learning of them.
The Holy Spirit will bring the Bible alive for us, making it
at the most intimately personal level what it really is, the living word of our
living God. The word in which we must
come alive if we hope to stay alive for ever.
Jesus Christ is the life blood of that living word and with the help of
the Holy Spirit we are to be the veins and arteries through which that life
blood flows, carrying our souls to that perpetual river of eternal life.
Let us pray.
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be
written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word,
we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which
thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Peter Jardine+
Advent II, 2006