Happy Advent! It is so good to be starting a new church year. I have heard many say over the past few months that they can’t wait for this year to be over. So I say, why wait for the solar year? Let’s go ahead. It’s a new church year, so let’s go ahead and say that this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year is over. That does not mean that the pandemic is over, of course, but it does seem that things will start looking up at some point this year. So let’s just go ahead and start in on that.
While we are starting a new church year, we would be hard pressed to realize that anything new was going on in looking at the lessons that have been appointed for today. It’s one of the wonderful ironies, the delightful paradoxes of our faith tradition as a liturgical church year lectionary based tradition, in which at the beginning we are given endings. Not just any ending, THE end, the great end, the apocalyptic end. Shouldn’t we talk about endings at the end of the church year? Yes, we should, and we actually do, which makes this so much stranger. There is nothing in these readings that we have not already heard in the past three weeks. Our reading today is basically Mark’s version of our Gospel readings since November 8th. For the last three weeks we have been hearing these grand parables from Matthew that scholars often call “The Little Apocalypse.” Jesus told these parables on the Mount of Olives right outside of Jerusalem in the last few days of his life, just a couple of days before his arrest, his death, and his burial. In the Biblical story, the Passion is what immediately follows The Little Apocalypse. It’s the same thing in Mark. Today’s reading is the final teaching of Jesus before the Passion begins. As you know, or you will soon learn because this year the lectionary gives us a whole lot of Mark, Mark is very sparse. He nearly always has the shortest version of every story. As an aside, have you ever noticed when Mark has a longer version than the other Gospels? Take a look at that. It happens occasionally, and it is important when he decides to be wordier than the others. Typically, what takes Matthew a dozen verses, Mark can get it across in three or four. Or what takes Matthew three weeks of lectionary readings, Mark can get across in one. So in Mark’s version of The Little Apocalpyse you do not get the great big, grand, fleshed out parables that we have been hearing the last three weeks, but you can see elements of it in these readings, can’t you? We have that classical apocalyptic language of the Son of Man coming in his glory, just like we heard last week. You do get a parable in our Gospel today, which is a pared down version of the parable we heard two weeks ago, and you get that language in Jesus’s saying of “keep awake”, and “you do not know the day or the hour”. They are very much the same apocalyptic language we had three weeks ago.
Apocalypse might also be the language you have been hearing a lot in the past 8½ months. Many people have been wondering, sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously, whether we are living in the apocalypse right now, with the pandemic, wildfires, murder hornets and so much more. There are so many internet jokes about how apocalyptic this year is. Try googling “2020 the apocalypse memes” and you will see what I mean.
Are we living through the apocalypse? Yes, I think so. Now before you go and turn off your computer, or before you get too concerned, hear me out for a moment. I’m not thinking about the apocalypse in the same way our popular culture thinks about it. The word apocalypse means revealing. Apocalyptic literature isn’t about how the world will end in the future. Notice what Jesus said: “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” He isn’t talking about a one-time, end of the world scenario. The apocalypse is happening. It has happened, it is happening, and it will happen. It happens in every generation in every life. Yes, there is this eschatalogical sense out there, but ultimately Jesus is trying to point us toward the present moment: keep awake, you do not know the day or the hour. Jesus is talking about the future with the express intention of focusing us in on the present. Apocalyptic moments are those dramatic moments that reveal something about the present situation we find ourselves in.
Is this the apocalypse? Yes. This year is revealing so much about us individually, and as a people. I cannot speak about what it reveals about you. That is a task for you to engage in personally. For me, it has revealed my underlying values, and laid bare what is most important. It has also revealed my limitations, my ignorance, my fears, and my failures. I do not know what the post-pandemic future will look like for me personally, but I do know that I will be changed by this moment. I am being changed by this moment. Whether it will be a radical transformation or new, more subtle integrations in my life, I do not know. But something about the way I lived my life has ended, and something new will be born. This moment we find ourselves in, this in between space, is Advent, the Advent moment, the expectant waiting, and preparation for a birth.
Along with all that is being revealed about us individually, this year is also revealing a lot about us collectively, about us as a people. This year, for instance, has revealed serious problems in our health care system, disparities between access and outcomes, fragility of infrastructure, particularly in rural areas from which we are getting reports is now on the brink of collapse. This year has also profoundly revealed the racial injustices in our society, the enduring legacy and present reality of white supremacy that takes lives. Even if it falls short of that, it causes great damage by trying to prevent the flourishing of black lives, of indigenous lives, of lives of the other people of color, denying the existence of God’s very image within them. This year has revealed the challenges we have working together. How much we have been undervaluing the common good, and how much our cherished value of individualism, which as a 6th generation Oregonian, I have to say I dearly loved. But I have also seen that this year has revealed that there are problems, serious problems with it that we must address. There is so much more that this year has revealed, like the reality of climate change, the dangers of our political divisions, and the limitations of our social safety net, including a system that relies far too heavily on teachers and schools for childcare. God bless our teachers and all they do for us.
This year has revealed so many problems, and it has also revealed so much good that brings hope. It has revealed the character of medical professionals and other essential workers, their commitment, their courage, their compassion. From doctors and nurses to cleaners and cooks, along with other essential workers who are working in jobs to help keep the lights on, and the water running, and getting us food to nourish our bodies. It has revealed the brilliance of medical researchers who figured out ways to protect us from the virus, treatments to care for us if we get it, and have created multiple highly effective vaccines that will likely start rolling out in a few weeks. This year has also revealed the creativity, the dedication of so many in their daily life and work, including so many of you in your work, in your school, here in your church, to adapt to this moment. This year has also revealed a concerted desire to make our world a better place, from individuals reaching out to support their neighbors, to large group actions like the protest for Black Lives. This apocalyptic moment has dramatically revealed so much about us. It has laid bare our problems, but also our resilience, our ingenuity, and our hopes.
When this pandemic started we were in Lent. It felt like the most lenty Lent we could have. For months I kept talking about how even though we were not in Lent anymore, it sure felt like we were. And we are still in Lent, for this pandemic is a continued Lenten journey. That is all true. And yet, as this pandemic has continued on, and we have had other challenges that have come up this year, I think it is better that this time be understood as Advent, with its apocalyptic revealing and expectant hope of a birth. Not just any birth, but one that surprises us in its simplicity in a manger. It is a dramatic in-breaking of God that can transform this world.
AMEN
