The Four Last Things
Setting aside, if only temporarily, the question of whether or not God is Love, I notice that we are fast approaching the season of Advent, when preachers are traditionally expected to tackle The Four Last Things - Heaven, Hell, Death and Judgement. Given that few Shipmates I think accept that the God in whom we believe despatches believers to a world of endless psalm-singing, or unbelievers to one of endless torment (could the two be the same?), and that the subject of death, usually taboo in England, is currently intensely topical, thanks to the Assisted Dying Bill, I wonder how any of my fellow passengers, if asked to preach an Advent sermon, would approach these matters.
Comments
I think that would probably be a good idea even among cradle believers, particularly in churches where the liturgy does not reinforce doctrine week by week.
I don't recognise these Four Last Things. Preachers at my regular church invariably used to preach Jesus and the cross.
I thought the four things of Advent were Hope,Peace, Joy and Love
And I thought they were Patriarchs, Prophets, John the Baptist, and the BVM.
I take them to be death, judgement, heaven and hell. The Second Coming sort of encapsulates the last three, though we mostly handled the topic biblically and not systematically--so the emphasis fell on "what to expect" and "being ready" and "What not to do, that is, fart around trying to predict what God has told us is unpredictable."
But yeah, when I was writing the sermon summary, I couldn't help seeing the parallels with today.
In the RC parish in which I serve, I find that the practice more reflects @Nick Tamen's preparation and anticipation than penitence. I, too, am unfamiliar with a "Four Last Things."
Don't they always? To quote Don McGregor, all our past generations have seen revolutions. Likewise, all our past generations have had some convinced that they are the end times. When Jesus said that we will not know the day or the hour, he knew what he was talking about. I often think that that passage should be more loosely translated as: "You idiots will never figure it out."
That sermon sounds good to me. ❤️ One aspect being that Heaven, and the New Creation, aren’t really supposed to be the stereotype/comic strip notion of “endless psalm-singing” mentioned in the OP (usually on clouds with harps, halos, and wings 🙄 ).
I certainly believe in the Four Last Things, and I know other Shippies do too… ❤️ Just not the stereotyped images.
Advent: we are called to a 40 day fast before Christmas*, a number of Feast Days for Old Testament Saints appear, the second Sunday before Christmas is the Sunday of the Forefathers and the one immediately before Christmas is the Sunday of the Fathers (both looking to the righteous of the Old Testament).
* or the Nativity According to the Flesh of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ if you prefer more words...
German Lutherans usually still refer to the last Sunday of the liturgical year as Ewigkeitssonntag (Sunday of Eternity) or also Totensonntag (Sunday of the Dead) Whatever the name it is a reminder at the end of the Church's year of the end of our own earthly life. (I don't know if this tradition is followed by American Lutherans.)
The Four Last Things used to be a particular feature of Catholic parish missions, though I would say that this has now disappeared.
Advent is indeed not so much a penitential season as rather a time of (quiet ?) preparation
but with the liturgical colour in the Roman rite being penitential purple and the attempt at least for it to be season of meditation it gradually became to be seen as a penitential season.
Again that has changed even in the RC Church.
I think that the calendar of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod simply calls the day “The Last Sunday of Church Year,” but as the Revised Common Lectionary is followed, many congregations observe it as Christ the King. @Lamb Chopped can correct me if I’ve got that wrong.
Likewise, I think that the calendar of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod designates the day as “The Last Sunday of Church Year or Christ the King.”
There are parallels with some Western emphases, some implicit rather than explicit. There's a study group in our parish working through the late Fr Thomas Hopko's The Winter Pascha which I'm finding fascinating and engrossing.
@Telford, I think you'll find that all churches preach Jesus and the cross. There may be differences in emphasis and interpretation but both will be there.
Sorry for stealing your thunder!
Christ the King was designated by Pope Pius XI in response to the increasing secularism and ultra-nationalism (Fascism) of 1925. It was later adopted by the mainline protestant churches who are members of the Council on Church Union (COCU) in the mid 1960s when they came out with the Revised Common Lectionary.
I don't think it assumes that at all. The sermons in Advent have traditionally been on the Four Last Things, probably because Advent doesn't just celebrate the first coming of Jesus, but also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent#Significance
It isn't for me to say, but I think there's something in the emphasis on the Second Coming in some Western traditions during Advent, provided ... and you'll have anticipated this ... it's done in a both/and way with due consideration of the First Advent of Christ.
You can't have one without the other. That may sound like an obvious point but it's one that needs making I think. Hopko is good on this.
He contends that Orthodox iconography makes this very point too, among other things. We have an icon of the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with the Christ-Child on one side of the 'Royal Doors' and Christ on the other- and that shows Christ in glory, as it were. The Risen and Glorified Christ. Sorry, but capital letters creep in when you are Orthodox ... 😉
Whichever Christian tradition we are part of, we have to strike a balance with whatever theme we may emphasise at whatever point we are in the calendar - if we follow one. So, for instance, in the Orthodox Easter cycle, I like the way that the theme of each successive service introduces or segues into the next - Holy Thursday to Good Friday to Holy Saturday to the Easter Vigil and to Easter/Pascha itself. It can be spine-tingling.
I am sure there are parallels and equivalents within Western traditions of course.
However we do these things it pays, I think, to follow some kind of pattern, an intentional blue-print which holds any particular theme or emphasis, be it the 'Four Last Things' or the Cross and Resurrection or whatever else in balance with the whole, as it were.
It was and is a fantastic church with the new altar in the very middle of the oval shaped building, made out of stones from all over the diocese, including some from the Berlin Wall.
The altar and ambo are not raised in any way. The altar has the shape of a porridge bowl and in ecclesiastical language it looks like a baptismal font. The actual baptismal font in the same shape is immediately under the main altar in the crypt of the church,
Today's feast of Christ the King was chosen for this celebration and the Archbishop made reference to the Lutheran Totensonntag (Day of Death) being celebrated today. After death we all find our completion in the realm of Christ the King.
Too many things happened during the service which lasted two and a half hours but both the Catholic archbishop and the Lutheran bishop made mention of the linguistic link in English between Advent and adventure. Our life is an adventure where we look to the future with Faith and HOPE.
* Whether it “works” to try and address multiple readings in one sermon depends heavily, in my experience, on the nature of the readings in question and the skill of the preacher.
Really, no different from any other Sunday. Find the Gospel--what good news the text is giving us that is always centered on Jesus. Sometimes you have to really dig, sometimes you have to take the text in connection with a text elsewhere (like we did with the beheading of poor John the Baptist). But that's how we do it, with this subject as with any other.
Amen.
Yes, Advent points us to the second coming, but we look forward to it positively, not negatively.
Like you comment about God throwing the switch too.
Outwith young children, and often now not even then, churches in the UK don't have Sunday school. The liturgy gives some grounding in doctrine, but for the vast bulk of the congregation the sermon is the only direct teaching they will get.