Advent 1 – 2020
Mark 13:24-37
Marian Free
May I speak in the name of God, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.
What is it that keeps you awake at night? Is it a fear that someone is going to break in? Or perhaps you are tossing and turning because you have so much to do? Maybe you are anxious about a future event and are lying awake going through a variety of possible scenarios. Pain or ill -health may be robbing you of sleep or was it just something you ate?
I once met someone who was afraid to sleep in case he died during the night. Jim had been raised by his very conservative, Evangelical grandmother who had literally put the fear of hell into him. Whether she had done this as a means to control him or because she was genuinely concerned for his salvation is irrelevant. The end result was that Jim, though he believed in God and was in church every week, lived in terror. This beautiful, faithful man felt that he had done something that was so unpardonable that God would condemn him for all eternity.[1]
Jim’s grandmother came from a particular tradition – one that emphasized condemnation over love, judgement over compassion and control over freedom.
To be fair, while I don’t hold that view of faith, I can see how the Bible can be used to support it. As we have seen over the past three weeks, the parables of the wise and foolish maidens, of the talents and of the sheep and the goats, could all be used to paint a picture of a harsh and exacting God – who will shut the door in our face, throw us into outer darkness or send us to eternal punishment if we don’t conform to God’s exacting standards or if we are simply inattentive. Those parables, today’s gospel and much of the Old Testament can be used to present God as a terrifying being whose high standards are impossible for us to reach.
The problem with this view is that it emphasizes the negative at the expense of the positive and views the Bible through a particular lens that allows the reader to ignore or to discount any other way of looking at scripture. It fails to take note of the fact that, despite the fact that God (through the prophets) expresses frustration and anger God invariably relents and God never, ever stops believing in God’s people. This is why Jonah sits and sulks under a tree – God didn’t destroy Nineveh. It is why God pleads with the people to return to God. It is why God persists with a recalcitrant people and it is why God, through Hosea says, “How can I give you up O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger. (Hos 11 1:9)
A God whose sole focus (and pleasure?) is to try to catch us out in wrong doing is not a God who would expose Godself to the malevolence of this world or who would risk everything to save us. God didn’t enter this world by tearing apart the heavens and creating cosmic and earthly disruption. God didn’t sit in judgement on the evil, the ignorance and complacency that characterized the first century. God in Jesus didn’t use punitive means to ensure our conformity or to command our respect. God in Jesus came in love in the hope that love would inspire love. God in Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate what love looked like.
Today’s gospel looks forward in time to Jesus’ return and uses Old Testament imagery to envisage upheaval and terror. The parable exhorts us to ‘keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’ and to ‘keep awake’. It could be used to feed our anxieties about judgement or but I suggest, especially in light of the the reflections of the last three weeks that we see it as a warning not to become complacent, not to take God (or salvation) for granted and as an encouragement to strengthen our relationship with God such that nothing could could come between us.
Advent is a time of contrast. We are called to prepare ourselves both to look back in awe that God should deign to become one of us and forward in expectation that God will come at the end of time and will call us to account. During Advent, we are reminded that, as Christians, we are called to live in creative tension – holding together the knowledge that God loves us unconditionally and the awareness that with that love comes responsibility to live up to that love. We are to be over awed by the might and power of God and filled with awe that God should lay all that aside to become one of, one with us. We are to strive to be one with God while remembering that God understands and forgives all our shortcomings.
‘Keep alert’, ‘be on the watch’, ‘keep awake’. It would be awful if Jesus were to return and we failed to notice, or if we had paid so little attention to our relationship God that we were uncomfortable in God’s presence or if by our indifference we had forgotten the importance of God’s presence in our lives.
Advent provides an opportunity for us to set things straight, to restore the balance in our lives and in our relationship with God and to learn once again what it is to live with the tension of a God who is utterly beyond comprehension and who, at the same time is completely familiar.
[1] Fortunately, I was able to dismantle his negative view of himself and God and for his last few years he was at peace.
Swallowsrest 