Advent I
Isaiah, 64:1-9a
1 Corinthians, 1:1-9
Mark, 13:24-37
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Advent is a season for grown-ups. I know at this time of year people start talking about Christmas 'magic' and focus on children and get all sappy and sentimental. I suspect that more and more that describes me. But Christmas is still a month away, and the Church's month of Advent demands a more mature spirituality. In particular, I think of three very un-childlike qualities Advent nurtures in us.
First, Advent gives peace to our souls. It's about waiting. It's about patience. It's about the holiness of anticipation. It's about embracing silence without being bored, without worrying about not being productive and efficient with time. Advent is about learning how to slow down, how to make quiet and rest - while everything around us is going nuts and chasing shallow expectations. It's about discipline to refrain from indulgence and impulse and compulsion.
Second, Advent stretches us so that we can better live with ambiguity. In this season of waiting on our Lord, we are both looking forward and looking backward, awaiting his future coming and remembering his coming to us two thousand years ago. In the beginning of Advent, we focus more on Jesus' second coming, the end of time, the culmination of history - our judgment. As we near Christmas, we direct more of our attention to Jesus' coming to us through Mary. Advent sends mixed signals: one directing our focus on the past and another on the future, Jesus coming in obscure, meek humility and Jesus coming in astounding, majestic power. We have to learn to hold together this contradiction in unity. Our friend, Fr Gabriel Myers, who preached here earlier this year, says: "Religion that is worth anything should help us . . . to live with mixed messages and ambiguities."
Third, Advent balances life. The next month is full of hurry and rush, excitement and excess, anxiety and stress. We balance the pressures of the world with Advent. The Church wants this month to be for quiet and calm, for rest and relaxation, for preparation and reflection. Most of us will not achieve the Church's ideal, but thank God for some notes of restraint in our lives. Advent tempers the madness.
Today's gospel from S. Mark's so-called 'Little Apocalypse,' Mark's chapter on the end of the time, also inspires balance. A lot of people in our age, like every age, speculate about the end of the world, finding so-called signs and wonders supposedly indicating that the end is at hand. False prophets - all of them. It's a multi-billion dollar industry - stoking and pandering to fears, and I am ashamed that the Church also sinks to catering to them. You'll notice that every prediction of the Second Coming has been wrong, and every one will always be wrong.
Jesus says, "If anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it." (Mk 13:23) When Jesus comes again, it will be wholly unexpected. (Lk 12:40) He'll come like a thief. (2 Peter 3:10, Mt 24:43) Only the Father, not even the angels or the Son, only the Father knows when. The arrogance and presumption to predict when history will end is the same arrogance and presumption that claims to know how God judges in this world, the arrogance and presumption that declares God's judgments in worldly events as some of our televangelists are prone to do. False prophets. We don't sneer at them, but we don't follow them.
For the most part, worrying about the Second Coming is not a spiritual danger for our parish family. For most of us, the danger is to lose balance and to err on the other side - not to take the Second Coming seriously enough. While today's gospel denounces "apocalyptic enthusiasm," it also challenges our "jaded skepticism," our skepticism about the existence of any reality beyond what we perceive. (1) What we see in this world is not the full reality. We can't place our trust and confidence in the things of this world because it's all passing away. History will end. Jesus is coming in power and glory, and that is cause for hope; it's good news.
Coddled in worldly comfort, we largely ignore that Jesus preached that an apocalyptic end was near. Jesus expected God's dramatic intervention. He preached and warned us that God's return is imminent, that we need to be prepared for it. In the Lord's prayer, he taught us to pray for it. S. Paul and the other early disciples expected that the end would come any moment. It was an urgent and real possibility to them. Since they took it seriously, they watched for it. They prepared for it. Our gospel today ends with Jesus telling us with urgency: "Watch!"
What are we watching for? Why is it important to watch? Three reasons why we need to watch. (2) First, we can take a literalist approach to Jesus' return as did the early Christians. For the dispossessed, the oppressed, the outcast - as the early Christians were, the promise of Jesus coming again gave them hope of vindication. The early Christians had no worldly power, no status, no means, and they often suffered mightily for their faith. The promise of Jesus coming again fortified them to continue to be faithful to Jesus, to live in holiness, to be righteous. Jesus is going to come, and all worldly power and authority will cease to exist. There will be justice. That was a great comfort to the early Christians, and it's a great comfort to the excluded, to poor and oppressed Christians throughout the world today.
Second, since we know that Jesus will return, that time will end, that this world will pass away, we have hope, and hope tells us something about how to live now. G.K. Chesterton said, "Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate." (3) We can be cheerful in every situation. We have confidence that God loves us, that God takes care of us. What more do we need? Being grim, being sour, being self-pitying, being anxious - these are for those who have no hope. It's not living the gospel. It's not faithful.
Long ago in colonial New England, a solar eclipse caused the sky to darken. In one state legislature, some of the representatives panicked. They called for an adjournment. Whereupon a more even and hopeful representative stood up and said, "Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I should choose to be found doing my duty. I move you, sir, that candles be brought." (4)
Watching means getting on with life, living to do our duty, instead of fretting and fearing. In last week's gospel, we heard what that duty is: caring for other people - the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. Our duty is to honor and glorify God, whose image exists in every person. We can focus on God's call to us because we know that ultimately the future is alright. We don't need to worry about anything else. God is in charge. As Billy Graham says, "I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right." (5)
Third, watching means becoming aware of the presence of Christ in our own lives. Jesus came into the world in Palestine two thousand years ago, and he's going to come again in the future, but he comes into our lives with power and glory every day, all of the time. God comes to us now and cares for us now. God comes to us in the mass, in our prayers, in our friendships, in our care for one another.
One of the sad ironies of human existence is that we sometimes know God's presence best when life is a challenge, when we're facing the toughest trials and difficulties. People have often described the impact of Hurricane Katrina with apocalyptic imagery. It's fitting. The death and damage is staggering, and millions are still suffering. Most of the news articles and anecdotal stories that reach me suggest that the reconstruction efforts have been disappointing. The tribulations continue. But in almost all of the stories I read, Katrina's victims talk about their blessings. They talk about family, friends, and God - the things that really matter; they talk about how their suffering has brought them closer to people and strengthened their faith. Amid the debris and pain, God's kingdom is coming. Jesus is present wherever people are reaching out to one another, wherever people are helping others in need, wherever we recognize God's image in other people.
So what we're watching for is not an isolated moment in the distant past or in the distant future. The moment is here and now. We watch for God coming into our life - often in new, unexpected ways. We pray and ask him to come. We expect him to come. Jesus comes. In our ordinary routines, in our joys and triumphs, and perhaps especially in all the troubles of life - be they calamities on the scale of Katrina or the Pakistani earthquake or the tsunami, be they the horrors and sadness of our personal lives - an illness, a lost job, a lost friend or family member, in all the pains of life, in all things, Jesus comes. He's with us. He loves us. He's our only hope. Let's watch for him.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark, John Knox Press (1983), p. 241.
2. Williamson, p. 242.
3. Harold Myra and Marshall Shelly, The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham, Zondervan (2005), pp. 103.
4. Williamson, p. 242.
5. Myra and Shelly, p. 106.
© 2005 Lane John Davenport
