A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between the end of Year A and the beginning of B
The text: Mark 1:1-13:23
There are reasons people have been looking at following the seven-week Advent: because the themes really are the same from over the last three weeks. Ones that might, perhaps, make us think of Advent as something more than Pre-Christmas.
In a narrative sense, the gap between last week and this is almost insignificant, even though it amounts to the last three chapters of Matthew and the first twelve of Mark. Because it is the same basic material.
Technically, this moment we’re going to deal with this week, from the Little Apocalypse in Mark, mirrors one that took place within the gap a few weeks ago. The prophetic apocalyptic talk then helped inform the arc of the last three weeks. Our receiving it now should be less than daunting. At least if we were holding it all delicately.
The gap we aren’t covering
Those twelve chapters of Mark are definitely different from Matthew. Without question. And perhaps the most significant piece for the preacher is that Mark doesn’t do dark parables. In fact, he hardly does parables at all in Mark.
This only matters in terms of tone. Because we’ve just come from Matthew, with its dark streak. Mark, in comparison, is relatively direct; often encouraging.
In this way, the Little Apocalypse hits the reader as strange because it is so unlike the material of the gospel. This is far different from Matthew, where the whole experience in Jerusalem feels heavy and sinister.
The season of Advent is upon us
Preparing for the first (or fourth) Sunday of Advent is less about establishing the context, I suppose.
While I usually scoff at this approach to the lectionary in general, here it is probably true enough. If for no other reason than we are beginning with the abstraction, rather than the particular.
If we started with a parable, we’d want to know why Jesus told that parable.
Or, if we started with a miracle, we’d need to know why Jesus performed that miracle then.
These have a particularity to them. And pretty much any part of the gospel has an intense particularity to it.
The Little Apocalypse, however, other than being in Jerusalem, and near the end of Jesus’s journey, is itself about the only context that matters.
And placing that at the beginning of our next journey around the sun provides the gravitas of the ending at the beginning.
A New Advent
The traditional themes of Advent remind us of the dual nature of the eschaton—that we have received Jesus and yet will receive him again.
This offers us an opportunity to renew our vision, not just of Jesus and salvation, but also of our sense of purpose in the now. And to do so by remembering that we aren’t simply waiting to hear about the incarnation that happened then.
Our job isn’t waiting for the baby.
It is doing stuff knowing that baby came to us long ago.
And yet, is also coming to us in a different way.
This foundational character of Advent, and particularly in our celebration of it, lets us explore the newness within the season, our beginning again of a liturgical year, and the new revelation that can occur each year.