Advent/Christmas-tide 2003 Letter
Saint John's Church

Advent/Christmas-tide 2003

Dear Members and Friends,

In my own Advent meditations I have been pondering the four traditional Advent themes: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. What I have been exploring is how Jesus relates to each of those for me. In other words, what does Jesus have to do with my death, with my judgement, with my heaven or my hell?

In thinking about my own death I keep coming back to my only hope: the promises of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John. There he speaks about life after death, about abundant life, about everlasting life. He promises us these things not as a reward for good deeds, but simply as the result of living toward God as he did, believing and with faith. They are the result of grafting ourselves into his vine, receiving the sap of life through him, his Spirit. That, of course, is the hard part. What is the Spirit of Jesus, how shall I live in him? I know I am not meant to live his life over again; I am meant to live my life in my time in his same Spirit. Jesus said that when anyone can do that, that person will live forever, live abundantly, everlastingly, that He, Jesus, will "dwell in him". I enjoy life; I love life. Trying to be and do love is all that makes sense to me. For me, all life's meaning comes from love, in all its manifestations, in all its joys and sorrows and hard choices and surprising delights. Love is the spirit I want and try to live in. I think that is the Spirit of Jesus. That is my hope; that is my trust in him.

Judgement is not something many find to be correct social behaviour. In our culture all values are relative, all things are conditional, there are no absolute standards for saying this is right and this is wrong, for what is 'right' now is at other times what is 'wrong', and vice versa. There is actually a great deal of truth in this, despite the knee-jerk reactions of many Christians to condemn relativism, except when it comes to their own aid. We make judgements all the time about all manner of things. On what standards do we base our decisions? Anyone who has contemplated the life of Jesus, who has asked "What would Jesus do?' knows that Jesus did different things in different times and circumstances. Using the Law as a context he variously, generously, may I say, 'liberally' interpreted it, while at other times being quite hard. The man who made a whip of cords and beat people out of the Temple with it made a judgement. He was the same man who drew figures in the sand and disdainfully reacted to those who would stone someone found flagrantly in adultery. In many ways my own life comes under judgement from how I respond to situations in light of how Jesus might have. His judgements were based on how love was best served. I wonder, are mine- or yours?

I have often said that if there isn't tea in Heaven then I don't want to go there. That's a fairly child-like way of viewing Heaven as a place of earthly delights, and isn't really in accord with the best theology. Why, even the Pope has declared that Heaven isn't a "place", but is rather a state of transformed being with God. Our faith, nevertheless, proclaims that the resurrected body, like Jesus's, is what lives in God. That body of his was able to eat breakfast and other meals with the disciples, if the Scriptural accounts are to be believed. This gives me great hope of at least another tea in the Kingdom.

If Heaven is not a place, but a wonder-filled new mode of being in God's creation, then Hell is not a place either. Dante was probably not far off in making the centre of Hell ice and not fire in his Inferno. Hell is eternal life coldly devoid of experiencing love. One can see love, one can understand it, but by choices made the person is now and forever incapable of experiencing either its giving or receiving. It is an eternal spiral into the icy void of cynicism, fear and anguished longing. By very nature God cannot withdraw the love, and by a life of choices the damned soul cannot accept it. The love of God surrounds the soul transforming unremitting life into a Hell which, like coldest ice, burns the soul who struggles forever to keep it at bay. Jesus's way of life, his love of God, is for me the way out of the choices that lead to Hell, either as a place or as a manner of being. By embracing the love of God and its demands, as revealed in Jesus, I do not earn Heaven and avoid Hell, rather I am slowly transformed into living in deeper and deeper awareness and acceptance of God's loving presence- heaven by any other name, and the antithesis of Hell.

And so I see that, at least for me, Jesus has everything to do with my death, my judgement, my heaven and my hell. It is through the life he lived and lives that I have any real understanding of them. Having considered these things, even if less than successfully, I can come to Christmas with so very much gratitude to Mary for her unbelievable faith and trust in God, her amazing 'Yes' to him, and for the gift she made to him of her son, to Joseph for his forgiving tolerance, his patience and deep faith, and above all and in all to Jesus, for the Way, the Truth, and, at last, the Life. It's enough to make a man positively merry!

Merry Christmas to you all, and every blessing of Heaven to come.

(The Rev'd) Jesse L. A. Parker
Rector of Saint John's Church, Huntingdon,
Waverly, Baltimore