The Christian year turns on the axis of waiting and hoping in God. On this first Sunday of Advent, we as the church begin again by taking a posture of persistent waiting.
In Advent we insist that darkness is not a place of God’s absence but the damp soil where roots of holy hope grow.
As Advent candles flicker we remember that night is not to be feared, but that it is the mysterious hour when God’s wild visions arrive. In Advent we give our attention to God – even though we cannot know what the future holds.
The disciples want some answers about the future in the thirteenth chapter of the gospel of Mark.
Jesus has just finished a feisty tour through Jerusalem: he has entered the temple to turn over tables and call out the greedy, confronted religious and political authorities, and argued over the interpretation of scripture. And as Jesus is walking out of the temple with his disciples, one of them oohs and awes over the grandeur of the structure, “Hey Jesus, look, look, what large stones and what large buildings!”
Jesus retorts that not a stone of these great buildings will be left upon another; all will be thrown down. He foretells the destruction of the temple, a devastation that will happen a few decades later at the hands of the Roman empire.
At this bold claim – his disciples want answers: “Tell us, when will all this calamity happen? What signs should we look for?” they ask. Jesus answers his disciples while they’re all sitting on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, overlooking the temple down below, and Jesus is in an apocalyptic mood.
Jesus describes all sorts of horrible things that will happen on that day. There will be famines and earthquakes and wars between nations, persecution and the need to flee. This type of calamity will impact the most vulnerable, like pregnant women and young children. Jesus warns against people trying to claim they know where the Messiah is and leading others astray through signs and omens. It’s a scene of utter chaos.
This type of apocalyptic language is a little bit like what’s been going on around us for the last number of weeks – the leaves start to fall off of the trees and sometimes you can see things you’d forgotten were there covered by the thick greenery of summer. I didn’t realize my neighbors house was so close to me – but now I see right to it, there’s just a few wiry bare branches in between us.
Apocalyptic language pulls back the veil – showing the world and ourselves as we are in vivid terms. And sometimes hearing these fierce words and about the day of the Lord is like ripping off the bandages of our comfortable allusions of how we thought things were.
In our passage today from Mark, Jesus wakes us up by telling us that things are worse than we thought and Jesus also whispers to us that we can hope in God more than we thought.
Pay attention, be alert, stay awake is the instruction to us.
One way that we can await the coming of God is by paying attention to the natural world around us, of which we are a part.
Jesus is clear that we do not have to worry about trying to make end times predictions by analyzing world events and timetables. But Jesus speaks in the passage with the assumption that those who are listening are noticing the natural world around them.
“In those days,” Jesus says, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven.” We are called to be alert to the larger cosmic and creaturely world.
Most of the time my day is ordered by alarms and appointments on my iPhone. I often get dressed after looking at the weather app instead of first venturing outside to greet the day. I don’t watch and wait very often, noticing what the earth is up to.
Jesus in this passage is asking his disciples to pay attention to the disruptions around them, and the disruptions to come. Those things that seemed stable on earth , those fixed lights that stood in the sky by which humans navigated and knew their place are shifting. Even the powers in heaven will be shaken up.
Biblical scholar and activist Ched Myers notes how in the ancient world people thought of the stars, these divine beings as blessing and supporting the earthly rulers and kingdoms.1 But the coming of the Son of Man disrupts a divine sanction of earthly powers, and nature rebels against the normal order of things.
In this age of climate change, the earth is telling us something about our human destructiveness. And we are called not to despair but to pay attention, to repent, to listen and learn.
Just recently, because of climate change the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its “plant hardiness zone map” which helps gardeners and growers know what kind of plants can survive in different regions and when to plant. One plant ecologist from Boston University described how “half of the US shifted to a slightly warmer climatic zone than it was 10 years ago.”2 And this ecologist noticed changes even in his own backyard – his fig trees could survive without much help through the winter.
Jesus, like this scientist, saw a lesson in the fig tree – “as soon as its branches become tender, “Jesus says, “and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.” Jesus was not speaking about climate change, but about the coming of the Son of Man, about the possibilities of hoping in God amidst calamitous destruction. And this kind of hope and waiting for God – requires an attentiveness that is attuned to the small changes around us.
Waiting alongside of Jesus for this day requires us to know and observe alongside the fig trees and all the flora and fauna of the places where we live. Jesus says that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Two thousand years has passed and we have not had the coming of the Son of Man, at least not in the ways that the first generation of Jesus followers may have expected it.
And so we continue to wait, and pay attention to this heaven and earth. I am just starting to realize as a newcomer how hard this can be. I do not know this place well and am just learning what it means to live not just anywhere – but here, in the Piedmont region, in my neighborhood in Durham, as a pastor to you all here in the greater Chapel Hill area. Paying attention to “these things taking place” as Jesus calls us to, sometimes brings us to face uncomfortable truths.
The other day I was out for a run on the beautiful trails of Umstead State Park. I was in a reverie crunching on fallen leaves and winding on a narrow path alongside a creek. A sign next to the water jolted me out of my meditative flow: “Do not eat any fish you catch. High levels of PCBs.” Chemicals I couldn’t see lurked as a hidden reminder of human destructiveness.
What lessons are the stars and moon, the powers in the heavens, the four winds and the fig trees and the fish trying to teach us?
We can keep vigil for the day of the Lord alongside the wider human and natural communities. Yet we do not have to despair even though we cannot know in any cognitive, rational, or predictive sense how our lives will turn out or how and when God will make all things right.
Jesus joins us in this place of uncertainty and “not knowing” – “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” – Jesus says.
It’s so interesting that this text, this reminder from Jesus that we don’t know when the time will come, is the way the church chooses to begin its year.
Our calendar begins with the proclamation that we don’t know when it ends.
And for some not being able to know or control what the future holds is an unbearable nighttime experience.
As evening’s darkness deepens some may betray what they hold most dear and cling to what seems to be a short-term guarantee of security, siding with the powers that be.
In the dusk of midnight, some who are exhausted may be tempted to sleep and give up the struggle for a more just world, while others will lash out with violence, frustrated with how slowly things are moving.
At three A.M. cock’s crow some may run away in terror, afraid of what they’ve seen in the shadows of night, abandoning the most vulnerable to the cruel violence of Empire.
And right before the sun’s light warms the horizon, some may deny that they had even hoped in the first place.
And throughout the night time that is Advent what Jesus said to his disciples he also says to us, “Keep awake. Be faithful.”
What Jesus gives us is always enough, and the morsel of sustenance in this passage is to “keep awake.” Remain ready for God to surprise us, disrupting us out of the ways we might have always made sense of the world.
And when the things we once had been most sure about shift – the very moorings of the earth – the stars in the sky – the seasons of life that have come and gone with regularity in the past – when those things are disrupted – we do not have to fear – even unto death – because Jesus and his words and his love will not pass away.
And as we wait and keep awake through the watches of the night, we stand in the inbetween space of the doorway. At the doorway of our lives, we remain connected to the warmth of those communities that have nurtured us and shown us the way and we also keep a gardener’s eye on the fig tree and feel the breeze of the four winds on our cheeks, we look up and see the stars even if dimmed by city lights – and when we least expect it God will come, as God always has.
By God’s love, we remain awake, awaiting the day of the Christ’s coming.
- Ched Myers on The Green Lectionary Podcast, ep. 6 “Insomniac Discipleship” (Mark 13:24-37). Nov 24, 2023. ↩︎
- Richard Primack quoted in Christina Larson, “New hardiness zone map will help US gardeners keep pace with climate change,” AP News, Nov 18, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/garden-hardiness-climate-change-usda-zones-89d78178703e30bc3fd948ceaff61e7f ↩︎