26th Sunday after Pentecost
Vivian Lewin, Spiritual Director in the Diocese of Montreal
“When you hear of wars, and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed.”
This morning’s Gospel passage, in Mark 13, is the beginning of what’s sometimes referred to as the Little Apocalypse. [This sermon was preached at 8 a.m. on November 18, and you can watch it here.] Our church year is drawing to a close, and so is Jesus’ earthly life as we have been receiving it in the Good News as delivered by Mark. Next Sunday (and also over a potluck lunch today at noon) we will celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and after that we begin a new year, with the season of Advent. The season when we wait in the dark.
Hannah, in the first book of Samuel, has been waiting and longing for a child. Her prayer to God will be echoed by Mary… a woman so much younger, with no idea she might conceive… in the words Mary exclaims after the Angel’s visitation, the famous praise song we know as the Magnificat. Both these canticles describe the revolutionary hope that God offers.
Hannah sings “He raises up the poor from the dust,” and Mary exclaims ” He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.”
In Mark, Jesus says… the centre of Jewish worship in his time… and of Jerusalem itself, will be destroyed by the Roman imperial powers. His disciples are astounded and confused. One of the gifts of Mark’s gospel is to tell us that Jesus’ first followers, who had the astounding experience of being with him in person, didn’t understand what he was telling them. This happens again and again in Mark. And Jesus himself, when they ask him later when all this will take place, tells them only to stay alert: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father,” (Mark 13:32).
Yet there is hope, too, in this Little Apocalypse… Good News to be found if we turn our attention to what it reveals… As I understand it, the root word for apocalypse means revelation in Greek… so I turned my mind to the Book of Revelation this week, to the Apocalypse. The end times.
When I was a relatively new Christian, and newly married, I remember we spent all of one Advent reading the book of Revelation every morning before work. Friends had given us a big volume with colour reproductions and translations of a gorgeous medieval illuminated manuscript, as a wedding present! Yes, a rather peculiar wedding present but remember, we had all come to age in the 60s and it didn’t seem weird at the time.
And it wasn’t bad preparation for the days we are living now.
I don’t mean that the symbols in Daniel and in the Book of Revelation are ones we should understand literally. The angels, the beast, the trumpets. These are cataclysmic images, and they work to convey the powerful forces involved. It’s good to know that when Jesus spoke about the end times, he was drawing on a traditional understanding that many in his own day were keenly aware of, as their own society and religion were falling apart. Their lives were precarious. We might remember that Hannah’s life and Mary’s life were pretty precarious, too. They were not just hungry, but starving for Good News.
And aren’t we, today. Just this week … more news about global warming, a leadership crisis in the Anglican communion, chaotic and I would say malevolent mismanagement in our neighbour to the South…against a background of economic disfunction, war, a migration crisis… these and more are facets of our modern lives in what the canon theologian of our diocese, Jesse Zink, calls the “polycrisis” that our world faces today.
His new book, which I have yet to get my hands on, is titled Faithful, Creative, Hopeful–Fifteen theses for Christians in a Crisis-Shaped World. The introduction and first chapters are available in Canada on the internet. That’s where I discovered that his first thesis is
A crisis-shaped world requires apocalyptic clarity
and seeing that, I decided to give you a taste of what he’s saying. First,
“Apocalyptic works have an audience in mind. Revelation was not written for the comfortable and well-off. It was not written for social justice types whose hearts stir when they hear “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” In a word, it was not written for people like me, the economically and socially privileged. Apocalyptic literature [is] “a literature of the oppressed” …those who find themselves marginalised in society… who would find explanations of what was really happening and visions of God’s future action to be entirely meaningful.” He continues:
“At a time when the Roman empire trumpeted the Pax Romana, the stability it brought to the world, Revelation’s depiction confronts Rome head-on. It is not peaceful; it is murderous. It is not stable; it is chaotic. It is not prosperous; it only succeeds by force. ”
“After recognizing the truth of the powers of this world” … and Christians need apocalyptic clarity to achieve this recognition… “and the reality of God’s continued action, we are led to a new place: hope. … But Christian hope is not a warm and fuzzy feeling about the bending of a moral arc toward justice. Christian hope is a countervailing power to the powers of this world that sees the world clearly for what it is – beset by inequality and injustice, or, in a word, beset by crises. Seeing this clearly, hope leads Christians to live now as [we, come the day] will one day be: In mutuality, in peace, in forgiveness. For Christians, hope is based not in the thought that they will be whisked away to some other-worldly heaven. Hope comes from the promise that in God’s final fulfillment God’s city comes down to earth and renews our world. ”
In a way we cannot understand now. So much more can be said. This isn’t an easy answer. Eli, representing the whole religious establishment, tries to send Hannah away. “He thought she was drunk.” Mary and Joseph will be ostracized by their families when they learn she is pregnant. New life, with all its promise, is not always welcome.
Perhaps that can be part of what we ponder in Advent 2024, as we say “Maranatha. Come, Lord.”
Amen.
NOTES:
Today’s scriptures are 1 Samuel 1:4-20, Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25, and Mark 13:1-8
The image is “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, made available on wikimedia commons.
The book from which I quote at such length (perhaps beyond the exerpts permitted by “fair-use”) is by Jesse A Zink who is the Principal of Dio: Faithful, Creative, Hopeful: Fifteen Theses for Christians in a Crisis-Shaped World. He has organized an on-line book launch and panel discussion for which you need to sign up (it’s free) on November 20, information here. He’ll also be our preacher on December 8 at the Cathedral and there’s a book talk in person after, copies will be available for purchase at a special bargain price.