Advent 1 – 2023
Mark 13:24-37
(Is 64:1-9, Ps 80:1-7, 17-19, 1 Cor 1:1-9)
In the name of God, whose coming we celebrate with joy and whose return we anticipate with trepidation. Amen.
Though it is hard to avoid the fact that the rest of the world is already celebrating Christmas, I continue to love the season of Advent. For me it represents a time of quiet anticipation – a time to focus on the real meaning of Christmas – the gentle in-breaking into our world of God’s chosen one, the vulnerability of God in the infant Jesus, and the courage of Mary and Joseph. It is, for me, a time of wonder and joy, as I ponder the gradual unfolding of the story.
So it is that I am often taken aback by the violence and threat that lie in the gospel set for today, the first Sunday of Advent. We find no quiet waiting in Mark 13. There is no sense of hopeful expectancy. Instead, we are presented with a picture of God’s sudden and terrible explosion into the world. An eruption that is accompanied by the destruction not only of the earth, but of the cosmos. The sun will be darkened, and the stars will fall from heaven. Without any warning all of the powers of heaven will be shaken. Keep awake, we are warned – for you do not know when the time will come: “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow or at dawn.” There is no room here for peaceful contemplation on the birth of Christ. Instead, we are placed on edge, forced in a state of constant alertness in which we worry about what it means to keep awake. We are left wondering if we have to live in a state of constant vigilance (never truly living in the present) – always looking over our shoulder for God to surprise us, always straining ahead, always worrying about our every action just in case God should burst in and find us wanting?
Of course, it would be utterly exhausting live in a state of constant anxiety, to be always on the lookout for something negative to happen, always terrified that we would be caught out. So – what to do? What are we to make of the warnings in Mark’s gospel and how do they inform our observation of the season of Advent?
The answer lies, I believe exactly in the tension – the tension between the unobtrusiveness of Jesus’ first coming and the unmistakable disruption of his coming again; the tension between Christ’s coming as an infant and Christ’s coming again as judge of all; the tension between the powerlessness of the baby and the ultimate power of the Creator of the Universe. Advent – with its focus on beginnings and endings – highlights the tension between the God who loved us enough to become one of us and the God who will one day ask us to give an account for our lives, the tension between trusting in God’s mercy and not taking it for granted, the tension between knowing God’s love and not taking advantage of that love and the tension between knowing that though our salvation has been won, we still have a responsibility for our salvation..
Advent provides us with a time to look back and to look forward, a time to remember all that God has done for us and a time to ask ourselves what our response to God’s love has been and whether or not we would be pleased to see God now.
The warning to ‘keep awake’ is not so much to keep us in a state of hypervigilance, but rather a timely reminder that we should not get too comfortable, not to fall into complacency. It is a warning against the assumption that a happy ending awaits us all, just because God has entered into history.
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Learning to live in this in between time, coping with the tension between God’s breaking into the world, and God’s breaking the world apart, teaches us to live with uncertainty, with the “not-knowing” – not knowing the mind of God, not knowing when Christ will return, not knowing exactly how we measure up. Living with the tension between the times keeps us open to what God has to say to us in the present and what God might be doing in our lives right now. In this in-between time, expecting God to appear at any moment, keeps us alert and expectant, enabling us to see the ways in which God is always breaking into the present. Keeping awake ensures that we do not miss any opportunity and ensures that we are prepared for anything that God might reveal or that God might do.
In two thousand years, the sky hasn’t fallen in, the cosmos hasn’t been dramatically. It is difficult to believe in the second coming, to maintain the sense of urgency that pervades this morning’s gospel and yet, we need the message of Mark 13 even more than the church for whom it was written.
At this time of year, it is easy to get caught up in the sentimentality of Christmas – the stars and angels, the shepherds and wise ones, the hope, joy, comfort and promise of the visible signs of God’s love. The evangelist knew only too well how easy it is to get comfortable, to see the return of Christ as a distant, even unlikely possibility. He knew too, that his own generation had been caught by surprise, had failed to see in the infant in a manger and in itinerant preacher, the one sent by God to save the world. So, with words of dire warning, Mark urges his readers not to get too comfortable, not to assume that because Jesus had not returned that they could start to relax, but to so order their lives that Christ could come at any time and we would be ready.
In this season as we prepare for both our Christian and our secular Christmas, let us be filled with joyful anticipation as we await the birth of Christ and some trepidation, as we expect his coming again.
Swallowsrest 