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My guess this morning is that there are two elephants in the room, two significant elephants.  Or perhaps two significant elephants in this nave, to be more exact. And they are very different kinds of elephants.

Actually the first elephant isn’t an elephant at all. It’s the delightful and friendly feminine rider who rides on the back of an elephant. The elephant rejoices in the name of Winchester Cathedral. The elegant rider is called Catherine, Dean Catherine to be precise.  She’s been riding this unpredictable and sometimes unruly cathedral elephant through thick and thin for nearly eight years, and, as most will know, she has announced her decision to dismount and retire next May.  More will undoubtedly be said nearer the time of her and Robin’s departure. But, for the moment, I’m sure all present and all joining us on line will want to wish her last six months with us to be happy and fulfilling for us all and particularly so for her.

Now I said there were probably two elephants in the room.  The other one I’ll turn to in a minute, I promise.

Meanwhile, I think you’ll agree that the state of the world is looking pretty bleak.  The Russian incursion into Ukraine, with the suffering that has caused, along with the disruption to general international relations. Then there’s the appalling situation in Israel-Palestine, the Holy Land as we more optimistically call it, again with terrible suffering. And now we have the uncertainty for the world from the extraordinary election of Donald Trump to the American presidency, with his somewhat bizarre, and potentially dangerous, selection of immediate colleagues and all that might follow.

Today’s gospel reading has Jesus forecasting a period of international war, of earthquakes and famines, together with the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.  The setting for this is important. About thirty years after Jesus’s utterances, the Jewish nation would actually be at war with the Romans, and some of the things described would be realities, with the Romans even destroying the sacred Jewish temple in AD70.  This was around the time that the gospels would have begun to be written down.  They would have been largely based on stories told and passed on, the oral tradition as it is called. But the story telling may well have been influenced by actual contemporary events.

Not only that, but there was already a Jewish tradition of what is called apocalyptic writing, the word ‘apocalypse’ referring to divine revelation of what was to come, particularly dreadful happenings. The extract from Jesus’s discourse in today’s gospel reading, after forecasting wars, earthquakes and famines, ends ominously with:

This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

Indeed, later in the discourse, Jesus foretells dire persecution for his followers, with children betraying their parents, rather like what happened during the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s and 1970s. Children betraying their parents was a sign of dreadful family disruption, which brings us to the second elephant in the room.

Today is being marked as Safeguarding Sunday, with attention on safeguarding measures to prevent abuse of children and vulnerable adults. Abuse of children is a terrible perversion of family life, whether it occurs within the family or beyond, and it’s the subject of the second elephant in the nave.  Abuse of this kind is an even worse perversion when it occurs within the Church or is claimed as being carried out for Christian purposes.  The Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation a few days ago is desperately sad, but is a tribute to his honour and his sensitivity to public opinion. We cannot be sure what psychological and spiritual perversions propelled John Smyth into his systematic abuse of boys at his summer camps. His persistent behaviour associated with Winchester and in southern Africa seems to indicate a highly damaged personality, but of course does not excuse his conduct. The revelations have emphasised the importance of safeguarding measures to protect the vulnerable within the Church and in society at large. The Church of England already has in place thorough safeguarding training for all clergy and others working in paid and voluntary capacities, and that includes all of us who function here at the Cathedral.  But the Church of England has been shamed by what has occurred, and not least by failures in reporting what was known, and much heart-searching and possible reform of systems will no doubt be following the publication of the independent Makin report.

For the Church of England, these are dark days.   And Jesus’s own discourse takes a dreadful cosmic turn towards darkness.  He goes on to say:

The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

We just can’t be sure how far these forecasts were actually uttered by Jesus as recorded, and how far they were influenced and extended as part of the apocalyptic tradition that I referred to earlier. But they are still timely, for the world and for the Church of England.  But they are succeeded later by a more hopeful note.

Then [Jesus says] they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

A few years ago, there was a delightful lady in this cathedral community, who has since died I think, who was clearly and hugely affected by Jesus’s apocalyptic message.  She was not unduly worried, but she did wonder if we were living in the time of fulfilment of this prophecy.  There may not have been the war in Ukraine at the time, or war in Israel.   But there was certainly war and rumour of war at the time, along with earthquakes and famines.  So she was half-expecting, and indeed looking forward to, the return of Jesus, the Son of Man. Indeed, later on again in the gospel, these things were stated as being imminent – as indeed historically they sometimes proved to be, and as I have, I hope, explained.

We’ve got to be ready, we’ve got to remain alert and prepared, Jesus tells us. But he also warns several times against false dawns and false interpretations, and says:

But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Here’s a little true story.  John Edgar Hoover was the first and long-serving director of the American FBI. He was an effective but demanding task-master. One day, his staff sent up to him a memo about an issue of internal security. He returned it with, scrawled on it in his handwriting, the instruction ‘Watch the borders’. The staff panicked: which border was under threat and needed watching, the border with Canada or the border with Mexico?  They felt they should know, so didn’t dare ask him. Frantic phone calls were made with contacts at the borders, and with the Customs Department and the Immigration Service. There was puzzlement all round: nothing had been reported.  What and where could the threat be? Then someone in the office looked again at the memo, and noticed that Hoover had written his response in the narrow margin of the paper in what were untidy margins. There wasn’t an international incident at all, but just bad formatting of the memo that he was complaining about: ‘Watch the borders’.

And what’s the connection with Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse? The answer is that it’s possible to see the obvious and miss the less obvious, which is sometimes, though not in the Hoover case, more important.  Getting carried away with the significance of international events might cause us to miss the importance of quietly readying ourselves for the unexpected, tidying our borders we could say.  For each of us individually, there may not be much difference in practice between the total end of the world and our individual departures from it.  Jesus seems to step out of his apocalypse as his discourse ends, and finishes with this for his disciples and for us:

. . . keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.

Perhaps you remember the story of Pandora’s Box – or jar as it was originally in Greek mythology. By coincidence, President Zelensky mentioned it a couple of days ago, but he hadn’t consulted me, or I him! Zeus, the chief god, gave it to Pandora’s husband, but Pandora herself decided to have a surreptitious look inside.  When she opened it, all manner of evils were released into the world, a realistic explanation of how the world comes to be as it is. However, and this is important, one thing was left in the box, and what was left in the box was Hope.  Even among the horrors emanating from Pandora’s Box there was hope. Amidst the horrors of all kinds, within the Church and across the world, our hope is for the return of Jesus, the Son of Man.

The physical details of what happened at the Resurrection of Jesus, we don’t know. But what is clear and definite is that his followers had a deep sense of his renewed presence with them. And that is the basis of the hope that we can all keep in our hearts, to keep us afloat when we feel ourselves sinking.  ‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end’, said John Lennon in one of his more philosophical moments. The positive end for us is and will be the continuing presence of God among us in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

So let’s not lose heart, but stay faithful. God bless the world – it needs it.  God bless the Christian Church – it needs it.  God bless the Church of England in its need. God bless us all.