Göttinger Predigten
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FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT, 11/30/2008
Sermon on Mark 13:24-37, by Luke Bouman
Mark13:24"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27Then 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.
28"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, 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, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."
Stay Awake
I tried very hard to stay awake. I pinched myself every couple of minutes. I recalled every multiplication table that I had memorized. I recited Bible verses that we had memorized for a play in class. It was imperative that I keep my little body awake that night.
We were expecting company, but it was company in the middle of the night. My uncle of legend, my father's brother who was in the Air Force, stationed in Japan, was coming in the middle of the night. He was only a face in pictures, a voice on the phone to me. He was always in exotic places, flying in real airplanes! I wanted to be Uncle Bob.
So when I heard that he was coming in the middle of the night, and not staying, but just stopping over, I knew I had to stay awake to meet him. It was not only him, but also my new aunt, Kayoko, whom he had met and married in Japan. She was going to meet the family for the first time. It was almost more than I could stand, to have an aunt whom I had not yet met and an uncle whom I dreamed about. I just HAD to stay awake, just HAD to...
The next morning I was mad. Uncle Bob and Aunt Kay had come and gone. My parents claim they tried to wake me, and I don't doubt they did. But I couldn't be roused. I had missed the midnight visitors. I fumed for the better part of a day. It wasn't my fault for falling asleep. They should have woken me up. Ah, but they couldn't. Sleep as deep as a young boy can muster doesn't wake easily, and often yields a crabby boy in the process. So they let me sleep. And I missed the visit. A kind note and a toy Air Force jet were the reminders of a squandered opportunity.
We are such fragile creatures, are we not? Our minds wander, our bodies weary, our attention lags. How then, does Jesus expect us to stay awake? And what do we stay awake for? Cryptic signs and whispered words that echo over thousands of years and still we do not know what in the world Jesus was talking about. Is the world coming to an end? Did the last age end and we are in a new age? Just what is going on in Mark's Gospel? Attempts to answer these questions definitively have littered the pages of history with failed "apocalyptic" cults that never seem to get it right. Even Jesus, in our passage for today, warns us about trying to figure out the timing of such things. "No one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Is Jesus talking about something that will happen in the lifetimes of his disciples? ("This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.") Is he talking about things that will happen in their future but our past? Is he talking about things that will happen in our future? Wouldn't knowing the answer help us to know how seriously we want to work at staying awake, keeping watch, being prepared?
Traditionally, the church has interpreted this text and others from the Newer Testament as talking about the "second coming" of Jesus. Other voices, especially in the last 50 years, have openly asked whether Jesus might have been referring to his own death and resurrection. There are some who have suggested that Jesus was describing an ongoing process. I'm not sure we should rule out any one of these views in favor of the others. Perhaps it could be all at once, and maybe this is the key to understanding them.
God Came, God Comes, God is Coming
Advent, the season that begins today, is about God's coming. The very word has roots that suggest that someone is at the door, about to arrive. Often we have taken this season as a time to check our eternal preparedness kits. We talk about how we are to be prepared at all times for God's arrival. We are advised to sweep clean the dusty corners of our souls and thus prepare for God's indwelling. Today's text does not suggest that we abandon those plans, but reminds us that God has already been up to some mighty big preparing.
The signals that God is up to something big, evident in the cataclysmic cosmic events of a darkened sun and moon, are certainly things that would be impossible to miss. The signs, suggests our text, should be as easy as reading the seasons in the changing leaves of the fig tree. In fact, those signs were there for the generation of Jesus' disciples to read. The sky did darken, that day on Calvary. Jesus hung on a cross and darkness covered the face of the earth, just as it did at creation. Perhaps more pointedly, the darkness was like the darkness that covered Egypt when God rescued his people from bondage. The actions are similar for a reason. Creation and rescue are symbolic and epic actions from Israel's past. In Jesus, God evokes memories of those actions because God is up to both of those things again.
The new age, the Messianic age, signals an end to one age and the new creation of another. In addition, N. T. Wright suggests that we should be reading the events of Jesus' preaching in light of this pattern of exile and return, of exodus and rescue. It is this very reading that takes our minds beyond the interpretation of judgment to one of God's love and mercy. These events are interpreted in light of Israel's past in order that the people, in order that we, see God doing it again. It is important to know how God has acted in the past in order to see God's action appropriately in the present and to correctly anticipate how God will act in the future.
God has indeed come in Jesus Christ. That is the first "coming" that we remember during Advent. God came not to judge or condemn the world, but to redeem it. Just as God once chose to suffer with his people in Egypt, in Jesus God chooses to suffer with us, through birth, through life, even through the excruciating death of the cross. God does not merely visit the destruction talked about in this passage on us. God walks through it with us. Since we know that this is how God has come before, then we know how to see God coming now.
Here is where the wakefulness comes in. We need not live, like the disciples, anticipating a different way for God to come. Thus they were taken by surprise and fled at the garden of Gethsemane. We are now free to see God active in our world, suffering when we suffer, and bringing new life in the midst of death and destruction. We are able to align ourselves, as Jesus did, with the poor and dispossessed, since we know that the powers of this world are no match for the power and intensity of God's love. We are free to welcome God in the person of the stranger in our midst rather than walling ourselves off from those who are foreign to us. We are free to see God, not in the extraordinary and supernatural, but in ordinary places: in bread and wine blessed and broken, in water that washes both body and soul, in the community that gathers the imperfect people of God and watches the miracle of God's recreation week after week. We are free to see that God comes now in the same simple ways that God has always come.
And we now know how to read the signs. God ever prepares the world for this coming, and someday will bring the coming, begun in Jesus, to fulfillment. But I don't think that God will change how that "coming" happens. Will there be destruction and cataclysm on earth? If so, God will be suffering in the midst of it with us. Will we be weary and have a hard time watching and staying awake? If so, God will be praying and preparing us to rise from our slumber. This is no excuse, of course, for purposefully ignoring what God is up to. Watchfulness will not, however, help us to avoid the trouble, so much as it helps us to trust and not fear when it comes. And come it will. Death will finally take us all, and that is the point; when, we don't know, how, we don't know, but it will come.
Be prepared
But God has already prepared us for this through his son's death and resurrection. God has prepared a place for us in the new creation. This is the true preparation of Advent, not the things we do. But let us sweep and make ready for God's arrival none-the-less. But let us take care, lest we sweep out all the dust of our shame and our pain without understanding that God has been there with us in that pain all along. For that is God's way, and has been since the world began.
Surely God was with my uncle Bob. Shortly after his midnight visit to our home, Bob was disabled and discharged from the Air Force. Perhaps it was the images of the effects of the bombs that were dropped from his plane that did it. We will never know. But the gentle soul that he was, son of a humble pastor from Minnesota, spent the rest of his life only partly living in our world, his body crippled from an inner pain that only he could feel. And God was there, with him, suffering with him, until that day when God called him home. Was uncle Bob ready? Was he prepared for Jesus to come? Not by the things Bob did. He was prepared, forgiven, and restored by God. His long exile is over. Bob's time of Advent has given way to rebirth in God's kingdom.
The rest of us still stay awake and watch. But we do not watch alone. God is preparing us too, and will someday take us home.