Towards a Creator (and Creation) centred behaviour (2 Peter 3) /Matins, Wednesday after Second Sunday of Trinity, BCP/

‘But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements melt with fervent heat… Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless.’
 
The knowledge of the second coming of God at the end of times – is the core of what makes us Christians. We have an ultimate reference point of our life: the coming judgement of Divine Love. The fullness of Life will come to judge.
 
This sense of the end-times, is more significant than one would think. Pointing to, and anchoring our present life in something ‘outside’ our present is like a vital organ. Following our model of the ‘brain’ from yesterday, this awareness of God’s coming, is like a crucial brain-function. This ‘centre of history’ is responsible to keep rational arguing alive in the community, in our culture. This function needs to be activated and functioning as the centre of ‘inhibitions’, moral reflections, which corrects our behaviour.
 
Saint Peter’s letter raises the question: is the Second Coming something that you worry about today? He is addressing Christians: are they, we, waiting for the Lord? If this sense is lost, there is no way out of moral inertia, nay, inevitable corruption. Without this desire and waiting, Christians are deeply lost to the extent of forgetting themselves.
 
But without the sense of that our truer self always need to measured by the Coming Judgement (of our genuine life), a culture cannot exist either. Without the sense of Revelation, without the sense of the Second Coming, our culture forgets the question of questions: to whom does history belong? To whom does my life belong? That is why ‘revitalising the Christian centres’ of social consciousness is vital. This is the only way to prevent the falling back into an unreferenced collective narcissism, the hells of consumption. The sense of the Second Coming is a vital stimulus in the direction of correcting our self-centred behaviour.
 
13.06.2018