On the Way, Again

We begin at the end.  And for that, I am grateful.

The two enormous oak trees on the west side of our house are just about at the end of their leaf-dropping season, much to the relief of not only Gregg and me but to the relief of our neighbors as well, with whom we share these leaves.  It is the end of their yearly cycle, and I am grateful that for the next six blessed months, there will be no acorns to trip over and no leaves to rake.  It appears to be a dormant time for the oaks, but I know that this is a time of rest and renewal, so that when spring comes (whenever it comes in Portland) the trees will burst forth and shade us once again.

It is interesting what one does and does not notice when buying a home: we did not notice the two grand oaks in our yard back in May when we found the house.  They are now our constant companions.  I imagine that over the years, they will mark time for me.  It is spring – the leaves are budding and soon the sun will return.  It is summer – the trees provide shade from that same sun that pounds in along the west side of the house.  It is late summer/early autumn – does anyone know a good recipe using acorns?  It is fall – time to rake, and rake, and rake.  It is early winter – when is that last leaf going to let go?

The liturgical calendar is a bit like our oak trees – it marks time for us, not a chronos, literal kind of time but a kairos, spiritual kind of time.  The liturgical calendar is the invention of human minds.  It is not biblical, and many churches do without it.  For those of us who do follow the liturgical calendar, we are reminded of the story of God’s saving acts in history.  It is a calendar of redemption, not marked by x’ing out days, but marked by remembrances of God’s plan to save the world.

So at the end of our calendar year, we find ourselves at the beginning of our spiritual year, the season of Advent, which commemorates both the Advent/arrival of the little baby Jesus, God incarnate, as well as the advent/arrival of the redeeming Son of Man who will come again, for the last time, to judge the world.

Mark says nothing about the first Advent, nothing about the birth, nothing about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.  His Jesus is wide awake, admonishing us to be wide-awake; his Jesus comes surfing in on the clouds, bringing judgment in his wake.

Scholars call this part of Mark’s gospel the Little Apocalypse, a brief descriptive narrative about the end.  At this point in the gospel, earlier in chapter thirteen, Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the last time; he has warned his disciples that the great stones of the temple will be torn down, and that those who follow him will be persecuted for their faith.  Then he speaks the words of today’s reading.  It is a lesson in three parts: the first, about the coming of the Son of Man; the second, about the lesson of the fig tree; and the third, a parable about the need to keep alert.

The second part is my favorite of this lesson, but before we turn to that, let’s look at the first and last parts of the lesson.  Jesus warns of the end time, when the sun and moon will go dark, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in heaven will be shaken.  It’s a reverse creation; God is taking us back to the primordial chaos of darkness and the void.  But into that void comes Jesus, riding on the clouds in power and glory.  We will not be abandoned to nothingness; instead, we will be included in the salvation of the whole of creation.

Mark borrows images from the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel and Joel and Amos for his Little Apocalypse, grounding it in the scriptural tradition.  Still, the whole thing does beg the question: why bother?  What use do you and I have for a warning about the end of the world as we know it?  Is the only purpose of these images to make us fear, to provoke us to predict the very day of the end of the world, to spawn a series of lucrative but theologically sketchy books?  Is that the purpose?

I think not.  The gospel writer, and Jesus, and God are interested in more than that.  I think the purpose of writing an apocalypse is to give hope, ultimately.  Happy, content, well-off people do not yearn to hear of God’s redemption of the world.  People who suffer, who are persecuted, who long for justice for all, especially for those who are marginalized – they crave the words of apocalypse; they ache for God’s righting all the wrongs.  They await a word of hope.  They hunger and thirst for God’s presence in the midst of suffering.

And that takes us to the third part of the lesson, the parable about the need to keep alert.  The point of keeping alert is not to prevent our being found doing something we aren’t supposed to be doing; it’s not to avoid getting into trouble with God.  It is much more about keeping alert to the reality of God’s presence in the moment and in the future.  The warning to keep alert is like a warning to stay mindful of the call and claim and coming of God; not to forget that God (and no other power) really is in charge; not to fall asleep but to notice and to be active in the business of godly things.

And that brings us to the second part of the lesson, what the fig tree has to teach.  As our oak trees mark the seasons for the Neel family, so the fig tree marks seasons.  If you watch the fig tree, you will know when it is summer (or fall or winter or spring.)  So if we watch what is going on around us, we will know about God’s activity in the world and in time.  We will be reminded about God’s activity in the world in past, present, and future.

Two thousand years ago, God chose to take on mortality, to limit the divine self by flesh and blood.  God became incarnate.  God became human in the person of Jesus.  While we might long this day for the wit and mystery of all those birth narratives, in the end what matters is not so much how God came into the world, but simply that God came into the world.  Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus walked the countryside near his birthplace; he traveled to the cities;  he ventured into foreign territory; he taught, and he healed, all for love.  For love of us.

And for that love, he received in return fear and hatred and execution.  God became incarnate, and that incarnation was torn apart, pierced and nailed, mocked, killed.  But two thousand years ago, God had the last word, and the people who loved that man who was God incarnate traveled from a hill of crosses to a garden with an empty tomb.  The end was really the beginning.  Life, and not death, was the last word.

And some day in the future, maybe tomorrow, maybe two thousand or twenty thousand years from now, all of this will come to an end.  Our lives will end.  This world will end.  And once again, God will have the last word.  Predictions of  when the world will end have come and gone.  We can all wait to see if the end will be some time next year, as a Mayan calendar may have predicted. 

But if you knew for certain that the world would end then, would you live differently?  If you knew your life would end tomorrow, would you live this day differently?  And if your answer to either of those questions is yes, what is stopping you from living differently right now?

How we are living our lives right now is affected by what has happened in the past and what we think might happen in the future.  I think that is also true in terms of what we believe about God.  Two thousand years ago God became flesh, was killed, and rose for us.  The scriptures promise that some day in the future God will come again to bring justice and redemption to the creation.  God was faithful; God will be faithful; God is faithful today.

The call and the challenge for us is to remain faithful to God today, even as we await God’s final advent among us.  We could simply wait, and let God take care of all the messes. Or we could be faithful to the love that has been showered on us, and show that love to others.  It is a conscious choice for each of us.  I wonder, then, what the purpose of Advent really is.

Is that the purpose of the Advent season, then, to keep alert, to watch for signs of God’s activity in the world right now?

I can think of worse ways to spend the next six weeks.  I could spend the next month and a half overindulging in food and drink and consumerism and children’s holiday cartoons; in obsessing about our Christmas card picture and where to put the tree; in missing my family and old friends, in waiting in line at the store and the post office  and heaven knows where else.  I could spend my time that way, although I’m pretty sure that’s not the most faithful way to spend my time.

I could spend my time watching for signs of God’s activity in the world.  We could spend our time that way.  We could scan the headlines and search our neighborhoods for those telltale hearts that say, God really is here.  We could look for simple kindnesses, or for loud protests against injustice.  We could pay attention to our own prayer and devotional life.

Even better than watching for signs of God’s activity in the world, we could be a part of that activity.   We could invite someone over.  We could read the Bible. We could divide our Christmas gift budget in half, and use half of it for donations to a food pantry, or the Angel Tree, or Habitat, or the Joy offering.  We could remember the people in Bethlehem today.

How will you begin the season of Advent this year?  How will you spend your time?  And if you knew for certain that the world would end tomorrow, would you spend that time differently?

Martin Luther was once asked what he would do if he knew that the world would end tomorrow.  To that question he replied, “I would plant a tree today.”  And so we end at the beginning.

The Reverend Beth Neel
Westminster Presbyterian Church
November 27, 2011
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