Homily: Yr B
Advent 1, November 30, 2014, St. Albans
Readings: Is
64:1-9;Ps 80:1-7,16-18; 1Cor 1:3-9; Mk 13:24-37
Come Again?
Have you noticed that
it’s getting darker these days?
I have friends,
newlyweds in their first year of marriage. He goes to work early in the morning; she gets
home from work late in the afternoon. Last
week he said to her, “I never get to see you in the daylight anymore.”
We can all relate to
the darkness these days. For some, it’s
an inconvenience, but for many it’s more serious. It affects our mood, it curtails our
activities, it increases our isolation.
The gospel reading is
set as the sun is going down. Jesus has
gathered his disciples on the Mount of Olives just outside the city of
Jerusalem, and they are worried. They
can see the gathering darkness. They’ve
witnessed first-hand the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities, a
confrontation which will result in Jesus arrest the following night. They’re worried, and so they ask about the
future, about the end times spoken of by the prophets. And Jesus answers them, using the apocalyptic language
and images of the times:
“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”
Yes, he tells them,
you’re right, it’s dark and it’s getting darker. Then he makes them a promise:
“Then they will see
the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
What do you make of
the promise that the “Son of Man will come with great power and glory?”
It’s not the first time
we’ve heard it. We say it whenever we recite
the creed, “he will come again to judge the living and the dead”. We proclaim it every time we celebrate the
Eucharist together: “Christ has died,
Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
What do you make of
it? Is Christ coming again?
I think for many of
us, this talk of a future coming of Christ is all a bit unsettling.
“But in those days,
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.”
These are words that were
spoken as promise and they were heard by those gathered around Jesus as words
of great hope. So why is it that many of
us hear them and feel so unsettled?
I think it is in part
because we live in an affluent society. 21st Century Canadians as a whole
are wealthy by historical and global standards. Most of us do not know oppression. We live,
for the most part in peace. Many of us
are satisfied with the status quo. And
so our hope for the future is, often, what might be called a negative hope. We hope that nothing will change. That we keep our jobs and homes. That violence will not come to our land. That our kids will stay in school. That the university will not go on strike. That our children’s lives will be as good as
ours have been. No need to call on God to shake things up. That would be unsettling.
But in Isaiah’s day,
at the time of our first reading, there was no such satisfaction with the
present times. At one time, Israel had been a mighty kingdom under the Kings
David and Solomon. But in the 6th
century BC, the southern kingdom of Judah had been defeated by the Babylonian
empire, and the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and taken the people into
exile. It was a time of desolation, and
a time of questioning. Why has this
happened? Are we still God’s people? It
was a time of uncomfortable darkness.
Finally, when the
people were allowed to return to Jerusalem, they found their homes in ruins and
the Temple destroyed. They were still
oppressed. They still felt
abandoned. And so the prophet and people
turn to their God and cry out “O that you would tear open the heavens and come
down so that the mountains would quake in your presence”.
In Jesus’ day too,
there was a dis-ease with the present times. The people of Israel lived under military
occupation, and we know only too well from the images that come to us from
parts of Syria and Iraq what that can look like. The people gathered around Jesus had known war
in their lifetime, and they knew what it was like to be poor and to worry about
whether this day would bring enough food to feed their family.
And so when Jesus
talks about the future and the coming of the Son of Man in power and glory, his
words are heard not as a threat to a comfortable status quo, but as words of
comfort and hope. God sees your desperate situation, God hears your cries for
help and God will act to make things right.
So stay awake and be
ready, cause when Christ comes, you don’t want to miss it. There is a sense, an expectation that God has
something great in store for us and for all of creation. Wait for it.
Last Sunday, the
Sunday we call the Reign of Christ, we talked about what things would look like
if Christ was King, if our lives and our communities and our world were the way
that Jesus wanted them to be. And it
didn’t take long to discover that a lot of things would have to change. Because, despite our affluence and our
comfort, as soon as we start to dig a little deeper, any sense of satisfaction
we have with the status quo begins to erode. We realize that our relative affluence depends
on the consumption of a disproportionate and unsustainable amount of the earth’s
resources. We realize that in the midst
of plenty there are those who are in need.
We scratch below the surface of our daily interactions and discover the
world of hunger, illness, violence and desperation that underlies our status
quo. We too live in a world that needs
to be put right.
So what do you make
of the promise that Christ will come again?
For me, the first
thing it does is remind me of the truth that the way things are right now is
not good enough, is not the way that we want them to be and not the way that
God wants them to be. We need to acknowledge this, it’s good to talk about it, we
can lament, and our lament will be heard. In our present reality, we may get
glimpses of the divine, but the fullness of God and of God’s hope for this
world has yet to be fully realized.
But, the promise that
Christ will come again also reminds me that God has a dream for us, a dream
that has yet to be realized That dream
is a dream of peace and justice, of joy and belonging where we will become,
individually and collectively, the people that God created us to be. Where every human will be honoured as a child
of God. That is our future, that is where we are heading, and God will act to
make this great vision a reality.
How will we get from
here to there? That I don’t know. I don’t get too fussed about whether there
will be clouds or not. The timing is
certainly not mine to know. I don’t know
whether this will all take place on this earth or in some spiritual recreation
of the world we know or in some place we can’t yet imagine that we might want
to call heaven. I don’t know if it will
take place all at once, or day by day. But I can wait for it, I can watch for
it and I can work for it.
I believe that Christ
will come again, and that God will set things right, and that the pain and
suffering that is part of our present reality will one day be no more, and that
God is calling us to get on board and to be part of the solution, to
participate in the in-breaking of God’s reign in our world.
Sometimes I wonder
why it is that every year we begin the season of Advent with these apocalyptic
readings about the end times and the return of the Son of Man. I mean, isn’t Advent all about getting ready
for Christmas? Well, sort of. But if Advent was only about getting ready to
celebrate something that happened 2000 years ago, that would be kind of
backward-looking. Advent is meant to be
forward looking. Advent is a time of
waiting in expectation, a time of preparation, a time to renew our hope in the wonderful
future that God has promised us and is getting ready for us.
That’s important
because the future has the potential to shape our present. We are a people who
have hope. We know where this train is heading.
It’s time to get on board.
Amen.
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