We reach the end of some things because end they must, not because we are finished, not because things have been satisfactorily completed.

The year draws to a close now and we have to let it be the year that it has been rather than the year it could have been. We have not achieved everything we hoped, as individuals, as a congregation, and as a nation, though hopefully we got some of the big things right, getting on with loving those that it is our sacred task to love. But it may not have been at all good for some, with major setbacks, or bad news, or loss.

And we are painfully aware that each of us will, one day, leave a year incomplete. Will we have finished when we go?

We reach the end of some things because end they must, not because we are finished.

It is horrid reaching the end of an examination with things still to write. And then there are the unfinished masterpieces (books, paintings, symphonies, etc.) left incomplete through death or injury. But what, other than death, might finished properly look like? What is satisfactory, complete, leaves no loose ends? Can life be contained like in a novel, with the interesting part of a life captured between two covers and everything else lumped under: ‘and they lived happily ever after’? Can everything really be balanced up like equations or accounts, or tidied, or categorised? Our forebears had a belief in divine judgement but maybe that belief had its roots in some oversimplification of life’s complexities. And we know life and happiness are not tidy like that. But still something in us yearns for that tidiness, that finitude, just as another part pushes us for openness, untidiness, an incompleteness that connects us to a future that we end up believing we must have if only because of those loose ends.

It is the best I can manage to do, to hold the thought that my life could be cut short at any moment in perfect tension with the incorrect, but useful, idea that, because I feel I have more to do, I will inevitably do it.

It is not an unchallenging existence that we seek (just as Sydney Knight’s lovely hymn sings that ‘we do not seek a shallow faith’!) but rather it is the right amount of challenge to call out of us who we really are, or dream we can be, without that breaking us.

So with this all in mind I’d like to consider humanity’s big problem – how to live in peace, justice, joy, contentment each with the other. And here we run into ideas like that of the ‘kingdom of God’ that Jesus is reported to have taught. In particular this is part of that idea that is not about individual ‘enlightenment’, though that would undoubtedly help (and is arguably another kingdom aspect). It takes the seed of Christmas, arguably primarily symbolic of the individual’s rebirth, and makes a garden. It is about the Beloved Community.

There is an important idea that we religious liberals, we who believe in this life (regardless as to what we may think about any life that follows), need to be clear about. An idea that does have practical implications, even if it might take more space than available here to lay them out. And that is that the kingdom of God, to the extent that it is a this world idea (these days I tend to think that it is completely), is not a Utopia. The kingdom of God, as per Jesus’ teaching, is of this life yet it is not a Utopia.

A Utopia is a perfect place, perfect existence, one without problems. But this is not the kingdom of God. In a perfect state there is no need to do anything at all and indeed any change could well take one away from the perfect state. So a Utopia might almost be a kind of death, a blessed release perhaps, but, mostly, we do not strive for death while blood yet courses through our veins.

Being able to be still, while our natural processes (like breathing, like blood circulating) continue, or being able to engage in a specific task well suited to our abilities and energy, can feel wonderful. Meditation and mindfulness perhaps. Stuff is going on – we are doing it (kind of) – but overall we are in a good way and what we are still doing is not troubling us. There’s still effort and change. And yet, overall, we’ve clearly got it covered.

I believe a society, a nation, humanity, the world can get to be like this, as a collective entity of separate parts. As indeed can a family and a chapel. But it won’t be a Utopia. Perhaps it can be very much like what the Gospel writers report Jesus as saying the kingdom is like. Certainly the kingdom will not be like sitting on my backside while nice stuff magically happens to me! But also don’t let that trick you into thinking that it is so difficult as to be impossible. At certain points Jesus seemed to suggest that it was breaking through, that it was close…

Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980, wrote that ‘The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.’ and also that ‘Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.’ The kingdom is a sufficiently slippery topic that in some ways that can be true, even as we reach for it, even as it is near. In some ways it reminds me of the moving target in Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise – every time the faster moving Achilles reaches where the tortoise was it has moved just a little further forward. Can Achilles can catch it? The paradox would have the tortoise remain out of reach but we know it can be caught. The kingdom is out of reach. And yet it is not.

The obtainability of the kingdom is something I am going to come back to a lot in the future, from various angles and also considering other properties it might have that I have only hinted at here.

It should be noticed, however, that we can short circuit much of the ‘kingdom’ considerations above if we simply say that, whatever the achievable state/process that is most desirable for humanity (or subsections thereof) in this life, it is not a Utopia. Ultimately I address the ‘kingdom’ because of the still considerable weight of this idea, and Christianity generally, within our movement and within Western culture. And I of course recognise that for many the term is problematic on multiple fronts but I still use it due to its resonances for many folk with a Christian cultural background.

But these ideas, whatever the terminology used, are so important that they must bear repetition. Some other parts of life repeat with the year: the seasons of course; the church, each of our chapels, have their repeating events and pattern; and my former career, academia, has its pattern too. In each case how we experience one year informs how we go about the following one. Maybe we even get multiple lives as some Eastern traditions suggest. I do not know, but, even if we individuals do not, with Christmas still fresh in our hearts we are reminded that humanity gets another shot at it with every baby born.

We reach the end of some things because end they must, not because we are finished. And this most definitely applies not only to 2017 but to this address!

Amen

[An address given at Upper Chapel, Sheffield, on 31st December, 2017. The title is partly inspired by Richard Gilbert’s wonderful reflection ‘Life is Always Unfinished Business’.]

Copyright A J Phillips 2017