Mark
13:24-37
24
"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and
the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see "the
Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27 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. 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. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know
that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will
not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31 Heaven 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.
33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It 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. 35
Therefore, 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, 36 or else he
may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to
all: Keep awake."
It
has been over three decades since it happened. For thirty-one years thousands
(maybe millions) of people have been waiting: some of them have not been
waiting patiently. When it happened, those three decades ago, the world seemed
as if it would never be the same. In the meantime, there were rumors, lots of
rumors, rumors about what happened before and what would happen afterward.
There were stories conjured up by those with incredible imaginations, stories
that helped some cope with what happened, while only enraging others and
confusing countless more. With the advent of the internet, those rumors and
stories took on lives of their own, and it seemed as if the unrest would simply
continue on indefinitely into the future.
But
then, about fifteen years ago, there seemed to be a new hope. Rumors and speculation were put to rest as facts came
forward about the events that led up to what had happened. Some of the facts
were predictable. Some of them were detestable. Some of them didn’t make any
sense at all, and some of the things that came out caused many to give up on
the whole thing altogether. These new developments rolled out for about five
years, ending just about ten years ago. Still, there were unanswered questions,
so the masses continued to conjure up theories and create their own sort of
myths to fill in the gaps. It seemed as if they’d never find closure, as if
their only hope was to be found in the theories and crackpot prophecies of
those who hid behind scree names and aliases. They were left to just
guess…until just a few days ago. That’s when it happened.
It
only lasted 91 seconds, but in those precious few seconds millions of people
were once again filled with anticipation. For three decades they’ve been
waiting. For three decades there have been rumors. For three decades there have
been conjured myths. But no more, because this past Friday, the new trailer for
Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens
was released! That’s right, in just over a year the world will get to see what
actually happened after Return of the
Jedi (which came out thirty-one years ago), and hopefully we can all move
past the prequels and Jar-Jar Binx (they were released fifteen years ago, with
the final instalment released in 2005). All of the rumors swirling around the
world on the internet will finally be put to rest, and fans will get what
they’ve been waiting for long to see…though it may not be exactly how they’ve
imagined it.
Of
course, that’s how things are when we have to wait for so long: the mystery,
the uncertainty surrounding them birth speculation, rumors, and myth. Often, if
the wait is long, those speculations take on a life of their own, becoming in
some cases more important to people than what it is they are actually waiting
for. In other words, sometimes, when we have to wait for something, those
things which occupy our time in the interim becomes our obsession. It becomes
what matters the most to us, and when the very thing we’ve been waiting for
finally arrives, we miss it, or refuse to acknowledge it because it isn’t the
way we imagined it, because it isn’t exactly how we wanted it to be.
I
have a feeling that was one of the reasons folks rejected Jesus early on: he
didn’t exactly live up to their expectations, the expectations they had for the
Messiah. If they had glorious visions of a conquering warrior, Jesus was
definitely a disappointment when he said, “Blessed are the peacemakers…”[1]
If they had grand hopes of a prosperous life under the reign of God’s Messiah,
they were surely upset when Jesus called them to “Sell all that [they] own and
distribute the money to the poor…”[2]
If they had been looking forward to the day when God’s anointed would
drive out the Roman occupiers at the end of a sword, then surely they were at a
loss when those same Romans nailed him to a cross to execute him. If they had
been looking for the Son of God to descend from the clouds riding a fiery
chariot with a host of angels at his disposal, you can bet they completely
missed him when he arrived naked and crying, born to a teenager and laid in a manger.
Of
course, we’re not without such faults. We presently live in a time of waiting,
a time of anticipation. We are looking forward not only the celebration of
Christ’s first Advent, his first arrival, but we are also looking forward to
his second Advent, that day when Christ will return and the fullness of God’s
kingdom will be realized on earth as it is in heaven. And in this interim
period (nearly two thousand years) we have read passages like the one we’ve
heard this morning and allowed our imaginations (often aided by the
imaginations of others) to create wonderfully vivid pictures of what Christ’s
return will look like. Some with greater imaginations and the ability to find a
so-called “prophecy” hiding even in the most obscure places in Scripture have
made millions of dollars with their own depictions of what Christ’s return will
be like.
We
can read words like those in verses
24-31 and find ourselves imagining a dark, dystopian future that can only
be fixed by even darker, drastic, cosmic events. We read those words and then
when we are inundated by the 24-hour cable news cycles with stories of violence
and terror from around the world with their obviously biased finger-pointing,
when we see the reports of anger and unrest like those from Ferguson, Missouri,
when we log onto to Facebook and Twitter accounts and see the way people treat
other one another, when there’s yet another school shooting and no one wants to
really talk about why, some of us find these kinds of stories perversely comforting.
We say things like, “It just means the end is near…it’s a sign of the ‘end of
days’…it means Jesus is coming soon and all of ‘them’ will find out just what
all of ‘us’ have been talking about…”
We
read those words and the various passages like those found in Christ’s
Revelation to John and our imaginations run wild, dreaming up what it might be
like when Christ makes his Second Advent known. In the midst of that sort of
speculation, however, I’m afraid we too often overlook other words from
Scripture, the rest of the words from Jesus in the gospels. We can get so
caught up in the guesswork of unraveling what the future holds and untangling
the mysterious words of Scripture, that we overlook those things that are right
in front of us, those words from God that are not so cryptic. It seems to me
that we are likely to repeat the mistakes of those who, in the time prior to
Christ’s birth, allowed their predictions and assumptions to blind them to the
actual arrival of Christ.
That
is why I think on this first Sunday of Advent, a season of hope-filled waiting,
that we focus our attention—not on the ominous words of apocalyptic mystery,
but—on the words of Jesus in verses
32-37: "But about that day or hour
no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It 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. Therefore, 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."
Whatever that coming day may look
like, whenever it may happen, the most important thing for us as followers of
Jesus to remember is this: we are called to “keep awake,” and that means that
we are to be about the work to which Christ has called us. We are to be about
helping, healing, serving, and loving others right here, right now. We are to
be awake, not daydreaming about a day when we won’t have to be burdened with
all this responsibility. We are to be about bringing God’s kingdom to reality
here on earth, not simply shrugging our shoulders and chalking up bad news to a
premillennial, dispensationalist understanding of the world.
On
this first Sunday of Advent, a Sunday when we reflect on the hope that we have
in Christ, may we choose to be heralds of that hope to the world and not
callers of cataclysmic doom. May we be vessels of Christ’s hope, proclaimers of
the gospel, doers of the word. May we be people who claim during this wonderful
season that Christ has come, Christ is here, and Christ will come again. May we
be people who hope, people who in such hope, keep awake and do the will of our
Lord. Amen.
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