Abstract
CASCaid
www.christmasgiving.net, promoting 50/50 charitable giving
These days, it is hard not to feel overwhelmed. For most of the past two years, the headlines have been dominated by statistics relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to the successes or failures of a whole series of sometimes confusing policies attempting to control its spread. These have often curbed our personal freedoms into the bargain.
And if that hasn’t been bad enough, the environmental crisis—of which Covid-19 may well be one component—has also been much in the news. If doctors, scientists, and politicians have been continually disagreeing about the best response to the pandemic, this pales into insignificance by comparison with the disagreements between environmentalists on the one hand and the aspirations of governments on the other to achieve that magic ‘zero carbon emissions’ target in less than thirty years’ time in order to save the planet: a possibly unattainable goal for this country, let alone for others.
Whoever is right in all this (if anyone is), many of us are left with the feeling not only that we are no longer in control of our own lives, but that merely continuing to live may mean increasing restrictions on our liberty and potentially unaffordable expense to make our future lifestyles sustainable. What a bleak prospect this could be.
But the message of the coming season of Advent is one of hope. And it is a hope that actually starts today, and is reflected in our readings for this Sunday. Christ The King Sunday should not be seen as the end of the church year, but its culmination. The year has gone full cycle. The return of our Lord in all His glory is surely the fulfilment of our faith as Christians. And the way in which we prepare for His coming into our lives at Christmas might be very similar to the way in which we could prepare for that return.
The three readings for today put our worldly concerns in the much-needed perspective of the Kingship of Christ and the nature of His Kingdom. Every verse of Psalm 93 reminds us that ‘the Lord is King’ and that nothing, including environmental catastrophe, can undermine that Kingship. The Lord is mightier than the floods and ‘the violent raging of the seas.... Your reign, O Lord, is holy forever and ever’. At a time when the climate crisis threatens the destruction of the world as we know it, this is a comforting thought.
But it is not one that should lead to fatalism, or to a false sense of security through inaction on our part. In John 18, Jesus reminds us that His Kingship is not what Pilate, or even His own disciples, were expecting (v. 36). Elsewhere in the Gospels, He elaborates on the fact that the Kingdom of God actually begins in this world, not through violence and wars but through modifying our own behaviour toward one another, through loving our enemies, through the sharing of our possessions with those who have none, and through caring for each other’s needs in difficult times (Matthew 25: 31–40).
And while this theme occurs throughout Jesus’ teachings, it occurs even before His own ministry begins. It is found in the Old Testament prophecies and in John the Baptist’s advice to his own followers as to how to prepare for the coming of Christ in the first place (Luke 3:11–14).
Our preparation for this occasion, which we now call Christmas, could thus be the model for our preparation for Christ’s return, which we are marking today (Revelation 1:4b–8). That return will be manifest to all humankind, not only to Christians. But it is for us as Christians to begin to reveal Christ’s Kingdom to others through our own actions in our own lifetimes.
Of course, we can only do so much ourselves. And we do not know how much time may remain for us to do it, another fact of which Jesus repeatedly reminds us in His teachings. Yet He tells us we should not worry about the future (Matthew 6:27–34). How can we get the balance right? Our modern lifestyles, with our first world assumptions about longevity and good health, are geared toward advance planning, from education to jobs, housing, family planning, pensions, and insurance. How can we possibly learn to live one day at a time?
Perhaps the words of the seventeenth century Puritan leader and hymn writer Richard Baxter may help us here: Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I die or live: to love and serve thee is my share, and this thy grace must give (1681).
Baxter, a Puritan leader, was living in turbulent and dangerous times. Freedom, indeed life itself, could be cut short at any moment. Quite apart from the persecution he endured for his religious convictions, he had also lived through a pandemic, the bubonic plague, of 1665 and the localised environmental catastrophe of the Great Fire of London a year later. Living in the UK today, most of us are in little danger of dying for our faith, but we have no more certainty of living to see another day than he had. Covid has shown us how vulnerable we are, if we did not know it already. Can this knowledge help us meet the challenge of climate change too?
Baxter’s solution was to make every day count, one at a time. This is normally a time of excited preparation for the Christmas festivities that lie ahead. What better place for us ourselves to start? We tend to spend a great deal on ourselves and our own celebrations at this time of year. Nationally, this has amounted to tens of billions annually since the turn of the 21st century. Households with two adults and with children may spend £800 or more on gifts, food, and drink.
Reallocating our budgets to prioritise charitable giving to the homeless and the hungry, giving as much to them as we spend on ourselves, is one possibility. It could make a huge difference to many lives without diminishing our own enjoyment. In fact, knowing that we are demonstrating God’s love by literally ‘bringing good news to the poor’ (Luke 4:18), it could enhance it. And the sharing of our resources is surely one of the most important elements in reducing the impact of climate change. It may already be too late to combat such change in the long term. But we can certainly attempt to make life more bearable for others as well as ourselves while we seek to do so.
In Richard Baxter’s words, ‘to love and serve [the Lord]’ needs to be the focus of our lives, be they long or short. We will all find different ways of doing this, but it is how the Kingdom of God begins: right here, right now, within each of us. Thus we can anticipate the coming of Christ The King with eagerness, and not with dread. Such eagerness is expressed in the penultimate sentence of the New Testament (Revelation 22:20) and makes a fitting conclusion to the message of Christ The King Sunday: ‘Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.’