Mark 13:24-37
Start with an earthquake, then build to a climax… Cecil B. DeMille
When the shrill alarm of Advent Sunday texts sounds each year, drop-kicking us through Advent dread along the long road to Advent expectation, I think of stories like this one:
It seemed like a good idea at the time: to turn out the friendly lights that shine from the peak of our cabin into the night, to go out through the darkness of our woods, to stand in the meadow and look, unfettered by light, at the beauty of the stars. And so we went, the girl and I hand in hand, down the path from our door into the great open space…and when the memory of light had faded from our eyes, there they were: Stars, so many more than we had imagined, so piercing in their beauty, so vast. We stood for a moment thus: awed, rejoicing. And then it seemed we heard breathing in the night. Not our own, we understood at once, but something larger, more menacing, invisible in the night yet closer than nightmare, waiting with sharp teeth and curved claws in the hungering dark. As one, we turned: the stars faded, our feet hammered like drumbeats in the dark as we fled, hand in hand, back up the path and home into the Light.
I told this story once, years ago, and when I tell it again I can still feel the terror, the absolute shattering knowledge that Something was there, behind me, ready to kill us in the dark. What I cannot remember—with the knowledge of my heart—is the beauty of the stars in the crisp, clear night, the feel of my daughter’s hand in mine, the peace of knowing I was safe, and loved, and Home. Why? Warren calls this penchant of mine to experience disaster without the filter of hope as “catastrophizing” My dad calls it “going into the Locks.” And when I start feeling a little abashed that there is a category for an entire genre of my life-cycle stories, I remember that there is also a theological word for this kind of literature: apocalyptic.
Apocalyptic, which can be roughly translated from the Greek as “uncovering” or “revelation,” is a kind of literature found in the bible that commonly is understood to be dealing with what is to be revealed at the end of human history. The book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, and a chapter or so each in the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark, take the context of present-day suffering and use it as a lens to point to the revealing of God’s reign at the end of time. Its wisdom is secretive, its context, catastrophic. What is revealed about God in the end is nearly always learned at the point of the sword, in great peril. And each new year, (as Advent Sunday is New Year’s Day for the Christian calendar) texts that come from the apocalyptic tradition issue a sharp rebuke to the happy holidays! I heard from the clerk at Home Depot on Saturday, reminding me that for the faithful, it is a long way until Christmas.
My friend Eddie Goldberg, the rabbi at Temple Judea up the road, was needling me on Thanksgiving Eve before the community interfaith service—you Christians have it wrong, he said, you wait until the world is turning toward Light again before you celebrate Christmas…we Jews light candles, and make our festival during the season of greatest darkness. You’re right, I said…because we borrowed Christmas from the pagans—though they seem to have taken it back, and given it to the gods of consumerism—but Advent is all ours….and it, like Chanukah, is a festival of light in the season of darkness.
It is Advent again. Longing for the comfort of the womb where the Christ has been born to save the world, we read the bible and are future-shocked by its grim assertion that Christ’s coming has not trumped the powers and principalities of evil, abroad in the world. The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light… we are still afraid of the Dark, and for good reason, for each day’s headline and every night’s anxieties add the burden of years to our souls.
For things have not much changed in the world since the author of the gospel of Mark recorded how Jesus’ disciples sat him down in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple a few days before his arrest and death and asked him, what are the signs for when all this shall be accomplished? Jesus, anticipating his own impending death, described for his closest friends a world in which even the established flow of times and seasons would be catastrophically shaken. Mark, writing some thirty years later, told that story through the eyes of one who saw an occupied Palestine besieged into exile by a punishing and powerful Roman army. And we tell it now, as we keep praying for families who mourn their children and sift through the mud and wreckage of a school in Haiti, for the roller coaster stock market and economic and jobs indicators that worsen practically day by day. All week long, we have watched and worried as young men armed with almonds and guns, brought the city of Mumbai to its knees, killing hundreds and terrorizing the world. Friday, a Walmart worker on Long Island was trampled to death when the doors opened to holiday shoppers desperate for hope and settling for a cheap bargain.
Start with an earthquake and build to a climax? This is great theater, and better apocalyptic, but in the end, it is bad Advent Theology.
In Preaching Mark in Two Voices, Brian Blount, who teaches NT at Princeton Theological Seminary, draws our attention to the two different words used by the author of the gospel for the phrase we translate keep awake!
The first word, blepo, is used throughout the early part of chapter thirteen. Jesus tells his followers—pay attention! Watch carefully! He asks us to use spiritual perception, to engage our prayerful discernment, to understand what is happening around us, and to see where God is in it. And that is good advice for Advent, as it is for everyday.
If we use that kind of perception when we read the stories in Mark 13 or tell the stories of our lives, we might understand that there is more going on than meets the eye, a denoument, if you will, that tells a different tale than earthquake and climax.
The thing is, Jesus changes the ending of the apocalypse, which by tradition concludes with judgment and woe. Apocalypse blames destruction on a cosmic battle between God and Evil. Jesus tells them no, it is human hands that wreak havoc, not God’s: pay attention. From the fig tree learn its lesson, he says, and, of course, the disciples immediately remember the fig tree he cursed, so that it withered and died…but he goes on: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So when these things take place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Pay attention! Keep awake! You thought you knew the meaning and the ending of this story, but you don’t. In the midst of catastrophe, when we believe we hear breathing in the dark and know we are about to be destroyed, the dead tree comes back to life, the cosmic battle is reduced to the actions of frightened but mortal men. And what has been built once, can be built again. Every sad story has a “nevertheless,” and God is just around the corner, a householder finding her way home from a journey.
In the middle of his discourse, Jesus suddenly switches words for “seeing” and “watching out.” The new word, gregoreo, means more than developing correct spiritual discernment so that we will not be misled by external appearances. Gregoreo tells us: don’t just stand there, do something. It is not just correct discernment we are called to practice; we are called to practice. That is, the correct stance for Advent is not watchful waiting, but watchful action while we wait.
There is a way in which we are tempted to see Advent as practice time for hunkering down, barricading the doors, and surviving until things change for the better, Someday. But: throughout the siege of Mumbai, many hundreds of people barricaded their doors, and listened in the darkness, chaos and smoke to see when their salvation might come. And, understandably, they did nothing, because they were afraid. And that can be seen as blepo, to stay awake and watch with spiritual discernment. But on Thanksgiving Day, in Mumbai, a boy named Moshe was heard crying in the small orthodox synagogue run by his parents, killed in the attack. A woman, hearing, unbolted the door behind which she had been cowering for twelve hours, made a basket for little Moses with her arms, and carried him through the waters of chaos to safety. That is gregoreo: keeping awake and using spiritual discernment to practice faithfulness in anticipation of the coming of salvation.
When I was a little girl, watching the cat move through the shadowed yard after the house was dark and quiet,, I wondered what it would be like to have night vision; to roam as I wished, fearless and free in the darkness that sent every else in the world behind locked doors to wait for the dawn. We have been taught to fear the darkness; not to find our way in it. To use our eyes alone, and to wait, watchful, until dawn comes. But this is not enough for Advent people, who must do more than wait and hope. Our work is begun in darkness, and grown there. A seed takes root, and grows. A child grows in the womb, sheltered in shadows, safe and warm. Candles are lit, week by week: as the night grows longer, our careful attention to the works of the day and the bearing of light grows greater. Keep awake, said Jesus. The world’s not changing, but you can change the way you live in it. Every circumstance is an opportunity for redemption.
The dark is not going anywhere soon. And neither are we. And that is why it must be Advent again: because we can’t just go at the kindom once in a while, bumping in the backfield and praying for better days, if we ever hope to be proficient at being Christ’s light in the world. We need to practice, to be wary of the worry and the yielding to whatever catastrophizing entices us. We need to get out into the dark and watch and be involved, if Christ is to be born among us now and again.
And he will be. Lift up your hearts, lift up your heads, tell the story a different way, practice Advent, see in the dark. You are a city set on a hill, whose light cannot be hid. said Jesus, and he believed it. It is the breath of God surrounding you in the dark, breathing a blessing of life over our fear: be not afraid. From the fig tree learn its lesson, said Jesus. When you see these things taking place, you know he is near, at the very gates.
