First Sunday of Advent 3 Dec 23 (Christ Church St. Lucia)
Readings: Isaiah 64: 1-9; Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1: 1-9; Mark 13: 24-37
Some of you may have read a book or two by the Brisbane born journalist and author, Hugh Lunn. Books like his nostalgic childhood memoir “Over the Top with Jim” in which he looks back on growing up in Annerley in the 1950’s. We used to have a couple of others at home as well and into which we would dip from time to time. The first was “Lost for Words” and he followed it up with “Words Fail Me.” They’re collections of what he described as Australia’s lost language. We gave a copy of one of them to my sister who has lived in England for over 30 years, and she told me afterwards “I can still hear Mum saying a lot of things in the book.” Like “I’ll tan your hide”, or even scarier for us “Wait till your father gets home.” This filled us with dread sometimes, like the time we thought we were helping by mud painting his freshly painted garage wall. I hasten to add my father was never violent or abusive or a shouter, but we were never left in any doubt when he was displeased. And another from the book that sticks in my mind and which I can also remember my mother saying: “hurry up and wait.” “Hurry up and wait” – I think it catches ideally the theme of Advent, particularly in this Liturgical Year when we follow the Gospel of Mark. One of the favourite words of the writer of St. Mark’s Gospel is “immediately”. Libbie said to me the other day that there’s a very real sense that the writer wanted to get the story down quickly. The story as Mark tells it begins with Jesus’ baptism and the start of his public ministry. If you want infancy stories, you’ll need to look in St. Matthew or St. Luke. Perhaps as part of your own Advent preparation, you might read St. Mark’s Gospel through in a single sitting in the next week or so. It doesn’t take long, and you might catch something of Marks immediacy.
The English priest and poet, Malcolm Guite, comments that Advent has for us a triple focus, not simply the double focus of the traditional Advent Collect with which I began the service. That collect speaks of Christ’s first coming “among us in great humility” then leaps across time to the fulfillment and finality of all things; Christ’s second coming “in his glorious majesty”. We need these two great advents to frame the in-between time in which we live; but surely between this beginning and this end there are many other advents…In our encounters with the poor and with the stranger, in the mystery of the sacraments, in those unexpected moments of transfiguration surely there is also an advent and Christ comes to us. In this season of waiting and anticipation, the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling.[1] Paula Gooder, an English theologian wrote an Advent study a few years ago now titled “The Meaning is in the Waiting”.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke have what is called “a little apocalypse”. We have St. Mark’s version this morning. “Apocalypse” means “revelation” – some editions of the Bible subtitle the Book of The Revelation to John as “Apocalypse” for this reason. Well, what is being revealed? Perhaps we need to enter another worldview for a short time. The purpose of apocalyptic language is to give encouragement to the faithful now suffering the evils of the present age. It does so by imparting sort of privileged information concerning Gods ultimate purposes whereby God or God’s agents will soon intervene in their distress. A moment of reckoning will come which will mean exposure and condemnation for the wicked and vindication and reward for the faithful who will share in the final triumph of God’s reign - that’s what’s meant by “The Kingdom of God”. The purpose of Apocalyptic language with all its vivid and unfamiliar imagery to us now was to uncover the people’s future with God – and we reflect today on the uncovering of our future with God.
The people to whom Isaiah spoke – the people of Israel in exile – thought they had no future. They were broken-hearted, languishing in captivity, at the end of their tether, without hope. Isaiah speaks from the depths of their anguish as they cry to God “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” Save us, Lord! Perhaps a cry that has resonated with us at some time in our lives as we wonder where God is in what might be happening to us at that particular stage. Isaiah speaks of a world beyond our present – our present pre-occupations, our present plans, our present concerns, our present arrangements. We might think we have things fairly well sown up – well, not so says Isaiah. Isaiah speaks of a world where there is good news, liberty for the captives, comfort for the oppressed, garlands instead of ashes, slaves and exiles freed. It’s poetic talk, daring talk, speech pushed to the boundaries in trying to describe what God’s future might be. It beckons us beyond the world of predictability and limited horizons to another world of unlimited and glorious horizons. Dare we hurry up and wait for such a revealing.
The tension of Advent is that it invites us to live in the present with an eye on this other world – to be in the world but not of the world. St. John often dwells on this tension in both his Gospel and his letters.[2] Jesus in the Gospel reading from Mark this morning addresses that tension – he tells two short parables about the fig tree and the landowner going on a journey who delegates care of his property to his slaves. Jesus is soon to go on a journey to God through death and resurrection. The servants are the faithful – they are not simply to lounge around waiting for the landowner’s return. Each has his or her tasks to do. In line with master-slave relationships of the time, the master has no scruple in expecting them to be ready at any time to receive him. They live in the present – doing all the things they normally do, but with an eye on the future. The parable ends with the exhortation to “Keep awake.” It applies to Mark’s original readers and all the subsequent readers of St. Mark’s Gospel – which includes us - as we wait for the revealing of the Lord. We hurry up and wait for the coming of God’s glorious kingdom. When that will be we don’t know – Jesus tells us that specifically several times, including in today’s Gospel. He tells us simply to be awake, alert, and to get on with playing our parts in God’s mission. Advent is about active waiting. God is faithful and has planted signs of the times in our daily lives and adventures. Stay alert! Don’t be confused by promises of a divine rescue operation or be side-tracked by the bling and tinsel of shopping centres. Irrespective of whether we believe that Jesus will one day literally, physically appear on the clouds of heaven as the Son of Man, or whether we believe that all the assertions about that are a way of describing God’s gathering up of all things in Christ as the Advent exhortation says, there are other profound themes on which to reflect. Wars and famines and natural disasters continue as we are all too tragically aware at this time. The faithful who work for justice and transformation of lives in the human community are often disappointed or, in some places, persecuted. Grounds for dismay and disillusionment and loss of faith in our own lives are always there, or maybe lurking around the corner. As we leave here this morning, we go out into that kind of world. Nothing much has changed. And yet we go out with our eyes on a different reality, no less real because we can’t see it, no less real because we’re still waiting for it, but awake and alert to God’s possibilities, a God who can and does transform things, a God who can and does make all things new, a God who is with us no matter what.
So that impacts on how we live our lives – expectant, waiting, living lives full of the values of the Kingdom – not so that we won’t be caught out, not because we’re frightened that we’ll be somehow “left behind” or classed among the goats of last week’s Gospel, or miss out on some kind of reward, but as a grateful response to a God who loves us, who trusts us, who gave all for us, knowing that in each deed we do or each response we make of compassion, integrity, love, trust, truthfulness, kindness, justice, peace we are showing signs of the kingdom, signs of God with us. We catch sight of it when we reject for example complacency, shallowness, envy, selfishness, self-indulgence, and fear of the other and allow ourselves to express what is best in us as individuals and communities. The American Presbyterian writer and theologian, Frederick Buechner has written this:
If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis, a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong” [3]
In the meantime we get on with all our ministries, and we hurry up and wait full of anticipation – knowing that God’s kingdom will come – actually if we take the time we can see signs of it all around, and knowing that God’s will, will be done. Sure as eggs!
[1] Malcolm Guite Waiting on the Word, A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Canterbury Press Norwich UK 2015 p.ix
[2] e.g. 1 John 4:4
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/558560-if-we-only-had-eyes-to-see-and-ears-to