Sermon November 29, 2009

Advent 1, Year C

Isaiah 64: 1-9, Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18; 1 Corinthians 1: 3-9, Mark 13: 24-37

Well, does this sound like "Deja vu all over again"?!! Only two weeks ago we heard the first part of Chapter 13 - remember? That we heard that passage two weeks ago is a hold-over from when there were "Sundays next before Advent" - a kind of "taster" for what was coming; a preparation for a preparation - because that's what Advent is: a preparation for the coming we will celebrate in just over three weeks (can you believe that? Only three weeks or so?!!!)

To get a handle on what's going on in today's gospel, therefore, we need to put it together with the one two weeks ago because it's all "of a piece" - here's how that one went: One of Jesus' disciples commented, as they left the Temple, "Wow! That's a BIG building!!" Imagine (if you haven't actually done this) being at the top of the Space Needle looking down at all of Seattle. It's a BIG city!

In response to the disciples's comment Jesus said this: "Pretty soon it's all gonna be destroyed...." And then he led them across the Kidron Valley - down through the cemetery and up the other side to the mount of Olives, where even today the Temple Mount fills the horizon - so that they could see the magnitude of what he was saying.

If someone said, from the top of the Space Needle, "pretty soon all this will be totally destroyed" it would certainly get my attention - not the least because the implications would go way beyond any localized destruction.

I suspect we'd all have a whole host of questions, with the one at the forefront most likely being the one the disciples asked: "When?" When is this all going to happen?

Jesus' answer runs the whole of chapter 13 - what we have here today is most of the rest of that answer. Does it get your attention?!!

This is what's called Apocalyptic language - "the language of the end times" is how that phrase is translated. No matter the liturgical year we're in Advent always begins like this.

As Rachel reminded us two weeks ago, we tend, in the West, to think in a linear way, terminally. There's only one beginning, and only one end. Therefore, if it's the end it must be THE END!!! Which is when we often feel like putting our fingers in our ears and humming, La! La! La! La! La! La!

And we don't hear the rest - not knowing the context we stop listening, and we miss the cyclical, rather than the linear thinking that an end is also a new beginning - a point made most clearly in Jesus' language about these 'tribulations' being simply birth pangs.

So here's some context. From at least the 8th Century B.C.E. the prophets - and especially Jeremiah and Isaiah - talked about the fall of the First Temple - Solomon's Temple. So Jesus certainly wasn't the first to talk about the Temple being destroyed. That 8th Century B.C.E. language was in response to the very obvious consequences of the way Israel was living...."inviting disaster" would be the best way to described it. Some sort of destruction was almost inevitable, the prophets said (with no joy about being right).

The thing is, though, that their language and imagery reflected a deeper awareness that the destruction of the Temple was really a metaphor for something much more comprehensive - it marked not just the destruction of a building but also the end of a particular way of life, of a culture. Israel would never be the same again. Not in the time of the 8th Century Prophets. Not in the time of Jesus.

The disciples could see the deeper message in Jesus' words - you can almost hear the cogs turning in their heads: "If this huge, seemingly unchanging thing can be so radically destroyed then nothing is safe and secure." Kinda like what we'd feel like if Seattle was destroyed. Or, perhaps, how we felt when the World Trade Center towers went down.

But the thing is this: the Prophets - and Jesus - weren't thinking terminally. Israel would never cease to be. Something new was coming into being even as the stones were being torn down - a new identity, a new culture, new ways of living. That the change was inevitable did not make it bad, just different.

Looking back on that time we can now see that, starting in the 8th Century B.C.E., and peaking around the 1st Century A.D., there was a huge change.....a great cultural shift was taking place in the ancient world.

Putting that broad cultural shift in local terms, in Palestine, the destruction of the First and Second Temple's are bookends. The 2nd, in 70 A. D., represented the end of the Jewish sacrificial system, with its metered, costly access to God, the end of worship located only in one place, and the end of Jewish institutional religion we hear so much about in the New Testament.

Something new came into being. Something new always comes into being - nature abhors a vacuum.

The sort of cultural shift I'm describing - this "big picture" - is not at all unlike the one world culture is experiencing today. Our world is changing in far-reaching ways - ways that are already impacting all of us - have been for a long time. This makes what Jesus has to say very contemporary, as much as it helps explain why some folk are responding in the way they are, with a sort of cultural survivalist mentality. Here's what Jesus said. Firstly, "Don't ask "When?", it's the wrong question - if you do you make yourselves vulnerable to those who would lead you astray."

A better question or questions, Jesus implied, go like this: "What will the new age look like, and how can we prepare?" Jesus' response elsewhere (actually the very first think Mark quotes him as saying in Chapter 1) is: "You need to change the way you are living" (where "repent" means "take a new direction"). The question is not "when", as in "when will the reign of God begin?" It has already begun. That's when we get to the lists: "Wars..rumor of wars, earthquakes, famines, the sun being darkened..." and so on. All of these things were contemporary realities for Jesus' hearers, they had happened in their living memory. In other words, "the change has already begun".

So part of the Christian message in all of this is this: none of this is new.....don't be alarmed...don't be anxious about all this....hope is not lost, Good Friday is not the final word, the recession is not the end, Boeing leaving town is not the last word, the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship is not the final response of God to humanity. Rather, it is at times like these that we often re-evaluate, re-examine our lives, ask ourselves if we're living the way we want to, if we're willing to embrace the journey, look for the love amid the loss, if we're living with integrity.

It's an open invitation to consider our direction and to choose intentionally to re-orient our lives as a result - which is one of the more profound meanings of the word translated as "repentance". In the end, there is a new beginning. We are invited, as we begin this new Sacred Cycle, to ask, "how can we prepare?" and then to embrace the new possibilities that are waiting for us in this new world that's coming upon us. For after all, we have little choice about what's coming - our choice lies in how we respond. Is it to be that we see only the endings and get hung up in depressive mourning, the retreat into some cultural or religious castle where we fend off all those others "not like us" and look back with envy at the supposed "halcyon days of yore", or will we see the new possibilities, the new beginnings present in these 'birth pangs'; will we embrace them with joy as part of God's continuing gifts to us?

That is our contemporary challenge as human beings and as people of faith. Amen.