Sunday 8th December 2024
Baruch 5
Luke 3:1-6
One of the great themes of Advent is the theme of judgement. Judgement is a word which can strike terror into us. I have been reading Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The three parts of the poem are divided between Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. We all of us know, in our own lives I think, a lot about the Inferno. We look at some of the present infernos in the world, or we might consider those times in our lives when we have felt trapped, enclosed and alone in our own hidden places of suffering. We also know about Purgatory. The in-between places, the places of struggle and purification. Perhaps Paradise is the most challenging state for a modern sensibility to consider. What is that like? That infinite, ever expanding journey into God. We catch glimmerings of paradise, glimmerings of paradise breaking through into our purgatories and even into our infernos.
But Inferno, well, that is what makes us fear divine judgement. Don’t ask me when there developed in the Christian consciousness the idea that there is a spiritual place of ultimate alienation from God. Such an idea has wreaked its own particular havoc in our hearts and minds. There are still many Christians who will say that belief in an eternal hell is some sort of test of orthodoxy. The odd thing is that hell is not a Biblical word. Hell is a bad translation for a variety of names, none of which in any obvious sense imply a place of eternal suffering and torment. But, nevertheless, when we hear about judgement, a dark shadow is cast. Am I ultimately unlovable? Can God really love me when I am who I actually am?
In today’s Gospel John the Baptist goes ‘into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ This, in the themes of repentance and forgiveness, is where we can begin to understand what divine judgement may mean for us. Where Dante is psychologically profound is how his Inferno is a place where we feel we are ultimately trapped and alone. Each of the sinners in Inferno have become fully mastered and controlled by the drives which bind them. Anger, pride, lust, greed, fanaticism. They are no longer free souls and what runs them has narrowed their universe down into a prison. In others words, hell is where there is no repentance, no possibility for a change of mind. You are trapped by who you have been. But John, as a precursor of Christ, was preaching the way of transformation, that that which was most fixed and stubborn in the human soul could be reformed, re-created, in the waters of baptism, which are also the waters of forgiveness. In today’s Gospel Isaiah is quoted in relation to this wider horizon, ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’
‘All flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ This is one of the many verses of the Bible which suggest a vision of ultimate universal salvation for all. Many early Christians, among them Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, probably Julian of Norwich, believed in God’s ultimate saving love for all. They could not conceive of a divine love, and a divine justice, which would ultimately lead to one sinner being left out in the hell of eternal alienation. If we consider how justice works with Christ, we notice how he creates a space for people to see the depth of their failure, the complicated prison which we make for ourselves over time. But with Christ our moral failure is never a prison, it becomes the ground for a new hope born of a new humility and maturity. Here is William Blake. ‘It was when Jesus said to Me Thy Sins are all forgiven thee The Christian trumpets loud proclaim Thro all the World in Jesus name Mutual forgiveness of each Vice And oped the Gates of Paradise.’
When we are looking at Dante’s vision of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, we can, I think, understand these places which are not places as states a soul journeys through. We will know our hells. But with God grace springs the lock on our mind-forged manacles. The long journey to self-knowledge, which is where repentance plays its part, is the long journey through the purifications of purgatory and towards paradise. ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
If God were a God who bought our salvation at the cost of those who were not saved, would this be a God of ultimate love? I suggest not. Such a God would rather be a terrible power of violence to be appeased and placated and feared. As the Collect reminds us today, ‘your bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us.’ God opens the door of our particular prison and says, ‘come.’
As we struggle with the weight of who we are, with the knowledge we are creatures who frequently cause great harm, it is worth remembering the reality of God’s presence is the reality of a love breaking into the trap we have created, either consciously or unconsciously. God is the lover of the soul, and its supreme physician and God takes infinite patience with what is most unlovable in us. This infinite patience and knowledge of us is the foundation of God’s judgement of us. ‘Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction… and put on for ever the beauty of the glory of God.’
The Reverend Ben Brown 2024
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