First Sunday of Advent, Proper 1B, December 3, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Mark 13:24-37 In those days.
O God of grace, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.
As you may have already gathered, today is the first Sunday of Advent. In much of the Western church, Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical year, and focuses on the second coming. (Not so in the Eastern church, where the focus of Advent is on fasting in preparation for the Christmas feast without reference to “The Last Day.”) It’s odd and charming that each year, in the Western church, we prepare for the Second Coming for four weeks, and then we get a celebration of the first coming, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. It can feel to me a little bit like the football gag in the Peanuts cartoon series, in which Charlie Brown is ever anticipating that this time, Lucy will not move the football that he is preparing to kick. But our Divine sovereign is not like Lucy Van Pelt. Our Holy One is Love.
I also want to insist that, in spite of popular imagination, our Advent Gospel lesson today is not evidence of the longest ending of the world ever. I want to wrestle apocalyptic visions away from the narrow and frightening concept of a final Doomsday. We are not living in some overwrought, over-stretched two-millennia-long denouement in which all things are getting clarified and all the loose ends are eventually getting tied up. The Jesus story in the Gospels has an open ending and we are called to participate fully in writing it.
Not all of us are Episcopalians, I know. But all of us are here in an Episcopal worship service, and I want to tell you, I need to warn you, that Episcopalians, as a group, are very bad at observing Advent. I mean, beyond our decorating with Sarum blue and our principled refrain from premature celebrations of the Feast of the Nativity (like caroling), we are generally quiet and buttoned up when we should be shouting and making a ruckus. Episcopalians do not like ruckuses, but our scripture lessons are wild and untamable. The prophet Isaiah is shouting to the Holy One, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil.” Isaiah is hopping mad and yelling at the top of his lungs because there is no one who calls on God’s name or attempts to take hold of God’s holiness. In other words, “These days,” Isaiah is saying, “people in power just don’t seem to care about doing what’s right.” We’ll hear the story of John the Baptist taking up that rant in next Sunday’s Gospel. Either of them could be responding to this last week’s news.
As your preacher, perhaps I should be yelling and jumping up and down in this pulpit, but I can’t quite overcome my conditioning and training! Nevertheless, somehow I need to get your attention that we are called to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light because these days, people in power just don’t seem to care about doing what’s right. We are called to reckon with the powers and principalities of this world, which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. We must awaken more and more so that we can respond to the greed and violence that conspire to undermine Love.
So, if I’m not going to yell, how might I move you to receive the grace offered by God to cast away the works of darkness? I have an early memory of being in a large Chicagoland department store – probably Carson Pirie Scott. I was with my mother. Surely it was not her preferred way to shop with a preschooler in tow. I imagine that we were both weary. Her arms were full of packages and we were heading out of the store by way of an escalator. We walked to the top of the moving stairway and my mom stepped off the top of the platform, but the treads were going by too fast for me and I watched and waited. Startled, I picked my head up when I heard my mom yelling my name. She was already halfway down and pretty frustrated that I was still at the top. I think there was probably more yelling when she got all the way to the bottom. I felt ashamed and afraid, and neither of those powerful feelings were sufficient to motivate my forward progress. It took what felt like an eternity, but my mother put her packages down, rode back up the other escalator, took my hand and we stepped off together. So when I think about it, maybe yelling isn’t the best thing to learn to do from the pulpit. Maybe the best thing is to offer you my hand so that we can move forward together.
Last week, we heard the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the judgment of the nations, and nations were judged as righteous if they had offered food, drink, clothing, shelter, comfort and companionship to those in need. The Gospel of Mark as a different approach. For Mark, it’s not about whole peoples, or nations, but rather the “elect” from every nation. Yet, election in Mark is not at all about predestination. That idea didn’t pop up in Christian writing until the 5th century with Augustine of Hippo, and it wasn’t until the 16th century that John Calvin expanded the notion into a doctrine that’s difficult for us to forget. But put it aside for now, because according to the Gospel of Mark, the people aren’t elected by God at all. The people are elected by their own behavior. People’s actions reveal who and Whose they really are. God’s people are revealed by their faithful response to the Word. [1] What is the faithful response to the Word? That answer is the same as in the Gospel of Matthew: feeding hunger, slaking thirst, providing dignified accommodations and garments, healing, comforting, and visiting those who are suffering and in prison. For Mark, as in Matthew, the expected response is still collective, not individual.
There’s a striking contrast in Jesus’ teaching about the experience of tribulation – of suffering, deprivation, misery, persecution. In one breath, Jesus is quoting Isaiah about the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling stars, shaking heaven and earth. And in the next breath, he’s talking about a plain old fig tree. Biblical scholars can’t agree on what this means – why this reference to a fig tree is there in the middle of this story. Maybe Mark made a mistake – maybe he missed part of the story, or the connection, once obvious, is now obscure. But I think that Jesus was inviting his distraught listeners to focus on was going on right in front of them. The lesson of the fig tree is that as soon as its branch becomes tender, vulnerable, yielding to pressure, splitting open and putting forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see terrible sufferings, vulnerabilities, splitting openings, intense pressure, you know that the Son of Man, your Redeemer, is near, at the very gates. The Gospel of Mark’s emphasis is on keeping awake. The Greek is probably better translated: keep watch, be alert, be alive – watch for signs in what is right in front of you – be alert for God’s saving action in the world – be alive to the possibilities of grace happening when the stars begin to fall. Heaven and earth pass away, but Jesus’ words remain. That’s true, isn’t it? We are still listening to them spoken and set to music.
It occurs to me that we don’t know a thing about the End of the World, capital E, capital W. But we do know something about endings of worlds, endings that have darkened the sun and the moon, made the stars fall from heaven, shaken all we know of heaven right out of us. We know something about endings due to death, and other losses not quite so devastating, but still worthy of enormous grief. We know about new beginnings that have been born out of those endings. I can remember and point to folks who were like angels, messengers, sent from God to gather up the pieces of my broken heart. I imagine that Jesus is saying, while you are waiting that considerable length of time for the world to be made right again, pay attention what’s going on right in front of you. Watch for Love at the gates – especially the gates to your hearts – and let it in.
Pay attention. Keeping watch or staying awake. This is not a final lesson from Jesus about tossing and turning and worrying all night long. It’s about being attentive and being alive to the possibilities of new beginnings even in the midst of the chaos of grief, not succumbing to the deadening numbness that might get us through the day, but doesn’t make us more available to the Divine. For Jesus, the only right response to the powers of darkness – the powers of greed and violence is generosity and compassion. The response to greed is generosity. The response to violence is compassion. Take my hand and we can show each other how what feels like and looks like scarcity, with a change of perspective, when we pool our resources, is an embarrassment of riches. Take my hand and we can ask one another, “what would Love do in response to this mess that we’re in?” Take my hand and we can help each other see, as we’ll hear Krista River sing in a little while, that “The goodness of the Highest is renewed from day to day, but ingratitude continually commits sin against grace.” [2] Take my hand. We will practice gratitude with generosity and compassion.
The Jesus story has an open ending and we are urged to help write it. I’ve had a Paul Simon song stuck in my head this week called “Rewrite” from his album So Beautiful or So What. I’d love to assign you to listen to it this week. It’s a ballad about rewriting a life story with more generosity and compassion and a happier ending. The refrain is a description of the singer’s prayer, “and I say, ‘help me help me help me help me Thank you! I had no idea you were there. When I said help me help me help me help me Whoa! Thank you for listening to my prayer.”
So as we begin this new Advent, I want to remind you that the Holy One is near – the indications are all around, in things as ordinary as trees. In the words of author, L. R. Knost, “Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go, love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world awaits in darkness for the light that is you.” [3]