First Sunday of Advent

 It seems like I keep hearing the book of Revelation read lately.  I heard devotions at two different meetings I attended last week on the book of Revelation and the preacher at Presbytery a week ago Thursday attempted to preach on the Book of Revelation.  I say attempted to preach, because he really did try to cover the whole book. Because the docket of Presbytery had run over, he was forced to throw out huge chunks of his sermon that must have made connections between the lengthy readings. Everyone before beginning their reading from the book of Revelation usually says something like: “I never get this…does anyone ever get this?” Usually groups respond “Yeah, I have no idea whatsoever…”  You get a few folks like Tim LaHay that try to squeeze the apocalyptic literature into some kind of end times frame work, but those dots really cannot be connected in any kind of scholarly way.

This reading from the Gospel of Mark is also apocalyptic literature. Kathleen Norris reminds us that the word apocalypse simply means to reveal, to uncover…kind of like a cosmic wake up call.  Think about the last time you experienced a “wake up call.”  You had an experience that helped you to see the world and your life in a different light.  What happened? What did you learn?

As a culture, we prefer to be asleep. We prefer to keep our eyes closed.  The signs are all around us, and yet we carry on with business as usual. I was driving home from a meeting at the Presbytery Office thinking about the demise of my denomination as it has up to10 churches leaving the local Presbytery and a huge lack of funding at the national level.  While I drove, I was listening to a report of the demise of the US Postal Service.  Postmaster General Donahoe told the National Press Club that the US Postal Service has to cut its spending by 20 Billion by 2015.  It must have something to do with email an everyone paying their bills electronically. He is not any more able to act as the nimble CEO of the business of the US Postal service since it is run by congress, than the Presbyterian Church USA is able to adjust to changing times as it is run by committee. In both cases, congress and committee, members seem to be blind to changing times and the desperate need for action.

If we need further illustration on this point, let me just say two words: Super Committee. We are ten trillion dollars in debt. 78 million Baby Boomers are about to retire. Economists agree that we have to cut four trillion dollars in the next ten years just to maintain, and yet the super committee could not come to agreement on even 1.2 trillion dollars. How bad does it have to get before we answer the wake up call?

Perhaps some of you woke up at 3:00 AM on Friday or never went to bed so that you could do a little Black Friday shopping.  Black Friday where the shopping hours start earlier every year as merchants try desperately to end their bottom line in the black.  During this advent season, advertisers shift the consumerism-as-therapy machine into high gear. Malls play merry music yet our Advent readings force us to think about the world falling apart.

The season of Advent, Matthew Skinner reminds us, traditionally begins not with backward-looking remembrances of circumstances surrounding Jesus birth, but with eerie images of cosmic mutations and grand promises of a future in which Jesus plays, to put it mildly, a noticeable role.  He suggests that instead of breaking out our somewhat tacky Christmas sweaters, we need to put on running shoes and a hazmat suit.

In this reading from Mark, Jesus’ instruction is part of a much longer speech. Notice the words “after that suffering”: Jesus has just described a situation of awful destruction, persecution, and sacrilege. The themes and imagery make this speech similar to other literature of the time, literature meant to interpret current events and political circumstances.

What great devastation is Jesus talking about? He’s not predicting the Greek economic mess or the collapse of the Euro, his words must have resonated with those who knew (firsthand or from reports) of the siege of Jerusalem, which effectively ended the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 C.E. The first readers of the Gospel according to Mark likely read it as the fumes of ruin — and failed promises — still hovered in the air. The war had been a time when many Jews (including some who were Christian) expected divine intervention, believing God was ushering in a new order.

Jesus deliberately separates his description of the war from his statements about his future reappearance. His point? The war — and perhaps every other war to be waged in the future — will not be the occasion by which God’s intentions come to fullness.  Why was the war a false sign of God’s activity? Perhaps the war’s end, another decisive Roman victory, indicated as much. But I think it’s the means of the war that’s the problem. Jesus will not exercise power like the world’s rulers and would-be rulers do. He won’t be changing the world with conventional tools and tactics.

False signs remain everywhere; they are events and trends we rely upon to inform our ultimate hopes or fears. Consider Iran joining “the nuclear club,” the death of Osama Bin Laden, the recommendations of the congressional “supercommittee,” or the outcomes of the “Arab Spring.” Important stuff,  those things. But we Christians are still waiting and watching. We suspect God has other ways.

It’s not that we don’t find hope (or worry) in certain large-scale political developments. We do. Still, if we expect our pet political and social causes get to be identified (exclusively) as God’s causes, we’re mistaken. If the change we seek for the world embraces new forms of dominance over others, then we’ve missed the point. Those revolutions will not be theologized. Jesus’ speech instructs us to direct our vision elsewhere to find signs of God’s presence.

The outcome is not just about waiting for another coming of Jesus in the future, although some Christians put great stock in that hope. I think it’s also about patiently and watchfully paying attention to where we see Christ today. Where do we see the activity of Christ today?

Advent expresses the insistence that all is not right in our societies. That’s a dangerous expression. Stoking hopes for a new world order, for justice really to be for all, usually implies that old systems, governments, and loyalties aren’t what they should be.

Waiting and watching for Jesus in our midst is not about passivity. His words in this passage commend readiness and alertness, not patient inactivity.

Remember when you were a kid and you were waiting for something? When you were waiting for someone?  I can remember once waiting for my dad to pick me up from drill team practice. I always seemed to be the last to be picked up.  I couldn’t cal him on a cell phone or text him. I would look up the street and down the street as the sun set, straining to recognize the lights of our car among other lights.

That’s the kind of waiting this passage has in mind, an active waiting that has come to know full well that the one who is coming is recognizable, even before fully arriving.  Jesus’ message about his appearance encourages advocacy, not idleness. Expectancy means looking alertly for opportunities to come alongside Christ and embody Christ’s purposes in the present, as well as in the future. We expect he’s all around us. Advent coincides with winter’s dimmest and longest nights. We light candles, whose tiny, pathetic flames stand defiantly against the night. They say: No matter how much waiting — and working — lies between now and the dawn, we are not giving up hope.