What would you do if the world were ending tomorrow?

In Vulnerability and Peace, the final episode of the 2024 Advent Audio Retreat, Jenny Corcoran from St Augustine’s College of Theology explores how vulnerability and worship connect us to God’s promises, even amid life’s chaos.

This reflective episode invites you to find stillness and peace through God’s work during Advent. 

If you’re seeking hope and courage this season, don’t miss this final reflection to round off our 2024 Advent Audio Retreat series.

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Even if I knew the world would go to pieces tomorrow,

I would still plant my apple tree.

These words are apparently attributed to Martin Luther, although there is a

certain amount of healthy scepticism as to whether or not he ever actually said them.

Wherever these words originate, however, they present to us this seemingly almost

ridiculous idea of responding to the most awful moment imaginable by taking

time to plant a small new tree into the soil of the earth, something vulnerable

and peaceful in the face of destruction.

I wonder what you would do if you knew the world would go to pieces tomorrow.

Would you spend time with your loved ones?

Those most precious and dear to you?

Letting them know how you really feel, and being surrounded by each other's care?

Would you go out and find the nicest food?

The biggest chocolate cake?

The most expensive items on a menu that you've always wanted

but never felt able to choose?

Because after all, who would need to worry about calories or money?

On the odd moments when I've thought about this question before, I've

sometimes thought that I would want to go and find a place that is

usually kept private and locked, off limits for ordinary people like me.

And I would go and explore, see what it's really like over that

wall or behind that closed door.

The one thing I'm fairly sure that would not appear on my list of priorities

would be hunting around at the back of my garage for gardening equipment, and

then going and choosing a good place in the garden, making sure it's not too

shady and not too sunny, and then placing a sapling into the earth, filling the

rest of the hole with soil, pressing it down firmly and finally watering it.

What about you?

This little sapling, just starting out on life in the face of imminent

destruction, is in its very being a symbol of both vulnerability and peace,

which might be strange concepts for us to consider when facing a crisis.

But what if these actually end up being the strongest words that we can choose?

One of my favourite biblical verses about peace is Psalm 34, verse 14.

"Seek peace and pursue it."

The idea of peace represented in this verse may well challenge

what might usually come to mind when people think of peace.

In this verse, peace is not about the absence of something, or the

need to be very still and quiet, but rather peace here is an active

concept, the presence of something,

a positive choice to be made, a way of deciding that this is

how I want to orientate my life.

That I will work to find peace in every situation in which I find myself, and I

will keep walking in its wake each day, no matter how hard I might find that.

If we take a step back then, we see also that the wider context of Psalm

34 is beautiful and deeply moving.

The psalm frames the speaker as someone who has experienced pain and distress.

This is a person who has known what shame and trouble, hardship

and hunger really feel like.

This is someone who has been, and may very well still be vulnerable.

And it is from this position that they are then able to speak deeply about

the reality of God's attentiveness to people, and especially to

those who, like themselves, are poor, fearful, broken and crushed.

Because as the psalm puts it in verse 18, "the Lord is close

to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

These are not words spoken from a position of privilege, from a distance, from things

in life that are hard, but are words that have been carved out by struggle.

And out of their own experience, they encourage others who might also be

able to relate to ongoing challenges and struggles, to draw near to God.

"Glorify the Lord with me", the psalmist implores in verse 3.

"Let us exalt his name together".

And then later in verse 8, "taste and see that the Lord is good."

At that moment when life is at its most challenging, do we or others in that kind

of situation think about worshipping God?

Or even remember to acknowledge that he's always there?

This might be something that is immediate and natural for you.

Or it might be something that you find more difficult

when life is not going well.

And there are clearly those around us in society who will think that spending time

worshipping God when life is difficult, is as much a waste of time as planting a

tree before the destruction of the world.

What would be the point of using your time and energy in that way?

But as we worship God, we become vulnerable.

We acknowledge that He is God and I am not.

Through it we set aside time that could be used seemingly

in much more productive ways.

We could be hard at work instead.

We could be earning money.

We could be sending just one more email.

We could be updating social media again to show just how important

and influential we are, or at least to post a picture of our lunch.

Worship and prayer calls us away from these things, away from what might

give us status, power, authority or reward, and calls us to be attentive

to the things of God, to what God is doing around us and through us.

We see, once again, ourselves through God's eyes, in vulnerability, without the

things that might usually shield us, like status, or our own hard work and activity.

Worshipping God out of a place of vulnerability is also picked up in

Mary's own words, where she says that 'God has brought down rulers from their

thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.' In

our vulnerability, God meets our needs.

Advent is a time that calls us once again, out of our own self sufficiency,

to lay things aside and to remember both the coming of our Lord and to

look forward to his coming again.

As we move now towards the end of Advent, the temptation can become even

stronger to stay busy and fill every moment with activity and purpose.

After all, there are so many questions whirring around.

Have we bought enough?

Have we wrapped enough?

Have we decorated the house enough?

To stay is to stay in a place that is vulnerable.

Where we can lay down the activity and noise of life and face the question

that we try our hardest to hide away under wrapping paper and mince pies.

What if we are not enough?

But the psalmist seems to anticipate the things that we

hide away and hide away from.

In verse 4 they state, "I sought the Lord.

And he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears."

Whilst wrapping presents and baking Christmas treats and running around in

a flurry of constant activity may make us feel good about ourselves and our own

abilities, it is when we seek peace and pursue it that we are encountering God

who is at his work, and realise once again that he is the one who is enough for us.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph ever had doubts as they travelled to Bethlehem.

What if this task is too much for us?

What if we are not enough?

I wonder if they ever thought that God might have made a mistake.

A mistake in asking them to be involved in this way.

A mistake in choosing to send the saviour of the world as a baby.

The most vulnerable of all, born into a land under military occupation.

Soldiers, swords, brutal punishment and execution.

What, here, now, and us, really?

A vulnerable baby bringing the gift of peace.

And Mary, pregnant with the hopes of the whole earth.

And we have a tendency to think sometimes that back then was different.

It wasn't as complex as life today.

So it was all right for them to be vulnerable.

But it's not the same as it is for us now.

The reality of experiences of those living in the land that Jesus would be

born into was anything but peaceful.

Yes, the people had come back from exile hundreds of years before and

had been able to rebuild something of their lives and their temple.

But because of the shaping of our bibles and the gaps between the

testaments, we often miss the hundreds of years of war and oppression that

took place between the end of the old testament and the beginning of the new.

First from the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great and then after

the Maccabean revolt came the Romans,

who we are more familiar with, as this provides the setting for the

beginning of the Gospel stories.

Yes, the people of God were back in their land after years of exile, but this was

neither an easy nor a peaceful time.

The first coming of the Messiah was in the midst of pain, challenge and oppression.

Mary and Joseph's lives were lived under the reality and brutality of Roman

soldiers, Roman rule and Roman taxes.

And now they would need to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Not because they thought Bethlehem at that time of year would be the

perfect place to have a baby, but because that is what they had to do,

because that is what the Romans had ordered them to do.

And so the saviour of the world comes in the midst of all that is going on in

the world as a newborn baby, fragile, vulnerable, and needing to be nurtured.

In similar ways to those seedlings and saplings of the garden that are

planted and are in need of support and help in order to grow and thrive.

And some of them may not make it.

But we see a tree featuring at both the very start and very end of our scriptures.

The very beginning of Genesis depicts a tree that has come to

represent temptation and separation.

At the opposite end though, in Revelation 22, is a tree that brings

hope and restoration, as we are told that the leaves of this tree

are for the healing of the nations.

And we know that we and the world today are in need of much healing.

And so for us today, in all that we face as a world, trees can be both

a symbol of hope and vulnerability.

Hope, as trees can provide a way of responding to some of the concerns present

within our environment, and vulnerable, because at the same time trees are

being torn down for progress and profit.

But as I hinted at the beginning, I really am no gardener.

And so maybe you've been sat there listening and thinking, but winter might

not even be the right time to plant trees.

It may be, but I just don't know.

But as I look around, I see that the leaves have fallen away, the light

is brief and cool, and nature has withdrawn into itself, in order to

withstand the battering of winter.

Why spend time now thinking about planting new trees?

But one of my favourite things to do during winter, especially going on winter

walks, is to see those first signs of change and growth, when it appears that

everything has withdrawn and sleeps.

The first buds on the branches, the first snowdrops breaking the ground, the

signs of a quiet, vulnerable revolution.

Trees don't grow quickly.

They are wonderfully and deeply unhurried.

A sign of peace and stability in a frantic and frenetic world.

And so,

even if we don't know what tomorrow will bring, let us plant.

Let us plant trees of peace.

In doing so, let us join together and rebel against the hurry

and violence of the world.

Let us embrace vulnerability as we welcome and wait in this

Advent time, welcoming the Christ child, and waiting for His return.

You may find it helpful to read through Psalm 34 and look at the ways in

which the psalmist there encourages people to turn and respond to God

in worship, and how they remind us also of the promises of God, of his

presence with us and his rescue.

You may want to read through the words of Mary's song in Luke 1, where she describes

the ways in which God raises up the humble and feeds the hungry, thinking about what

it means for these words to be spoken by a young, vulnerable, pregnant woman in a

land that is occupied by a foreign army.

As we ask God to speak to us afresh through his word, see if there are

any particular words or phrases

that you especially notice in either of these passages.

You might also want to spend time dwelling with the reflection of this week's key

words, those of vulnerability and peace.

What do these words mean to you?

What do they make you think about?

And how do they make you feel?

Or if you feel like embracing the activist side,

you may want to go and spend some time outdoors, maybe in a garden or a park.

What do you notice?

What surprises you?

Where might you notice new colour or shapes?

Can you see any signs of the quiet revolution taking place deep within?

God is always at work.

Sometimes we don't notice, but we can trust and believe in his

promises and hold on to the peace that passes all understanding.

As now we move towards the end of Advent, and into a time of celebrating

the first coming of Christ, and looking once again to his returning in glory.