Not knowing

“…for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33)

READINGS (COI & paired as between the Gospel and the Old Testament readings)

Isaiah 64:1-9

Psalm 80:1-20

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

 (Year B: Advent 29^th November 2020)

This past year has been marked by two things: waiting and not knowing. Waiting for the virus to break. Waiting for the virus to subside. Waiting for good news of a vaccine. Waiting to go back to work or regain lost hours due to business closure. Waiting to meet up with loved ones, family, friends and others. Waiting to meet again with other Christians to give thanks and break the Word and the Bread of Life.  Not knowing when or who or how. Only knowing the now and here. Trust – that is all we can do. Trust and pray. Pray and love moment by moment.

Someone – almost with tongue on cheek – suggested recently that Christmas be postponed until late January.  ‘Christmas’ as we know it in the world of retail, gatherings and celebrations is an important economic, social and personal event in the calendar. Yet, the very root meaning of Christmas is Christ Mass. How ironic that this year for the first time most Christians may very well be unable to participate fully in the celebration of the Christ Mass on the 25^th December. We do not know what exactly will be possible on Christmas day and in the days leading up to it and immediately afterwards. I suspect that local adaptations will apply and attendance may be staggered over the surrounding week (giving a whole new practical significance to the notion of an Octave or, indeed, Christmastide). However, January looms, the virus is still lurking in homes and on the streets and the promised land of vaccines is far off yet and looking a little blurred but promising. That’s all.

In our little Western and Northern bubble, we should remind ourselves that there are millions of Christians who go to the Christ Mass on the 25^th December at their peril in parts of the world where to profess Christian faith is a dangerous and courageous thing to do.

In all of this uncertainty and challenge, the significance of Advent comes into sharper focus. We can still light candles at home or in public churches when they are open for private prayer. We can still tune in via zoom or youtube to any service or liturgy you like – high, low, Eastern, Latin, informal or Cathedral setting worship. The choice is yours. Yes, this is a bit like reaching out to your family members in Australia. Lovely to talk, listen and see someone on a two-dimensional screen but not even 10% of real corporeal presence which, as humans, we crave and need.  So, how do we navigate Advent this year?  What is the significance of Advent – the anticipation of coming or waiting that leads up to the special day marking the birth of Jesus? Advent is like a short Lent: it is designed to prepare us through prayer and self-denial and the practice of love to create a welcoming place in the crib of our own souls for the Christ child.  There is plenty to pray about this year and there is much by way of privation because of the trauma that many continue to experience as a result of the pandemic.

The theme running through the appointed readings from the Revised Common Lectionary is one of great change and great expectancy. Far from inviting us to go around with long faces and a gloomy religiosity, we are invited to ‘read the signs of the times’ about us. We are invited to look beyond the chaos, the fear and the uncertainty to what is positive, wholesome, beautiful, empowering and life-giving. We are invited to welcome the Kingdom that has already come and has not come yet.  As the people of God, we are bid to be a people of hope in a world that is often lost and confused.  We do not know what lies ahead but we know and trust that God is in charge somehow of the destiny of this universe and that he is deeply concerned about our lives because he loves us as we are and as we could be and as we are becoming.

In this way, we can afford to take risks and to do so in the knowledge that we do not know what lies ahead and how things will turn out.  We don’t know what the future holds, when we will die, who will be with us and how.  We must live fully in the only reality that we know – the now and the here.

This we can do while keeping our sights on the goal of our lives. We must be, at all times, ready, alert and active because we do not know the day nor the hour.

Vigilance, care, foresight stand to us on the journey of life.  When faced with difficulties or trials of one sort or another we can hold fast to God in silence and stillness while being fully alert and mindful of what is happening around us and within us. Attentiveness to the person next to us in the present moment of life is liberating.

Perhaps it will be a ‘meaningful Christmas’ for us after all this year but not in the casual way that this terms has been used in recent times.

 

(words above = 866)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

Saint Augustine once wrote:

‘The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.’ Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 20.

24-27:  We will see the Son of Man coming in great glory and power

‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 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’.

These are the end times and the community gathered around Mark and other evangelists sense that God will act and will act soon. This sets the scene for what is to follow by way of an overwhelming need to watch and to be ready. But, are we ready for what is next? A reading of this passage in Hiroshima in 1945 or at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 might trigger a sense of foreboding and even dreadful reality matching some of the cosmic descriptions in this passage. But, this is less an occasion for gloom and foreboding as a call to each of us to be ready, to be hopeful and to on guard.

The emphasis in the gospel of Mark is not on catastrophe so much as on a glorious coming and reuniting of those open to the message of the Gospel. They will be gathered from the four winds or the four corners of the earth, from times past to the present and what lies ahead.

See Daniel 7:13-14:

‘As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.’

See, also Act 7:56:

 ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’

And Acts 14:14:

Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand! zch

28-31:  A lesson from the fig tree

‘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.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.'

In nature we see the signs of a mysterious power and love. If we are attentive we see signs of a new world breaking out, constantly, from the old. God is near us; very near. The Kingdom is already here and is emerging around us. Though we do not know when or how we know that it will happen in God’s own time and way. In that we trust. We are, truly, part of ‘this generation’ because every generation is called to wait and to hope and God comes to each of us in a special way when we pass from this life to the next.

32-33:  Watch and pray

‘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. 

Luke 21:36: ‘Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

The reference to the Son not knowing the ‘day or hour’ may present a theological difficulty for some. However, being fully human and fully divine does not preclude the Son who is addressing his disciples before his death and resurrection not knowing everything. After all, Jesus ‘increased in wisdom and in years’ (Luke 2:52).

34-37:  Keep awake

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.

To be awake is to be aware of life within us and around us. To be awake and ready is to be entirely centred on God’s will for us in the here and now. that is the only certainty.