This Week: Advent 1B
Gospel: Mark 13:24-37
How we approach this first Sunday of Advent says a lot about our focus.
Many of us prefer to talk about the season ahead.
Or we tackle each of the four themes per week, patterning our preaching to match the character of our worship.
And some of us just stick to the lectionary. Which, this week, leaves us with a doozy.
The Little Apocalypse
As we begin Year B in the lectionary, we jump into the familiar text from Mark 13, the section described by scholars as The Little Apocalypse.
As I’ve described before, this is functionally the same material we’ve been dealing with over the last several week. Jesus is in Jerusalem. He’s on his path to the Crucifixion.
Much also has been written about this passage serving as a warning about participating in anti-Roman violence. Depending on when we assume it is written and to whom, how we receive these words today is colored by the fact that the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
So whether Jesus was warning those in the north not to join in the revolution because Rome will squash them or to say “See! This is what they do!” it probably doesn’t actually matter. The result is that there was devastation, destruction, and death. And it came at the hands of human occupiers.
A Human Apocalypse
This probably isn’t the centerpiece of any good sermon, but it is quite striking to me. There is a huge gap between what people think of an apocalypse and what religious texts actually say.
Our imaginations are of plagues and terrible destruction brought on us by the wrath of God. But that isn’t right. It’s people dividing people. It is a human apocalypse.
Humans wage war over borders, food, water, oil. We slaughter one another over perceived slights, opportunity, and animosity. Death doesn’t come from above unless we send the plains or rockets up.
The darkness in the story is human made. Which may be no less troubling. But it is certainly convicting. And reminds us of all the ways we wage unholy acts of violence against each other, tearing up our land, warming our seas, putting microscopic plastics into the atmosphere and oceans.
We are the source of each other’s pain. And devastation. It is still hard to face that fact.
Revelation
While there are tangible connections we ought to make in the text, it is probably more useful for us to regard what an apocalypse actually is. Not so much the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it.
An apocalypse is a revelation—which is really what makes it unsettling. That we associate it with the end times shows our own ignorance. But it is literally the only way we ever use the term.
Which actually does make it useful in that way. If our minds are already thinking of the end times, we can shift them to think about the end times for this—whatever this is.
And what is being revealed—something different—isn’t actually scary. At least not in itself. It’s scary in being new.
This, of course, is the point.
That something is being revealed. And we can take that in a thousand different directions. But for the patient preacher, we have the task of both seeing what is being revealed and helping people see it.
And that part—the helping others see it—can be, itself, revealing. Because some of us are willing to recognize the sacred arriving in a new way. And some of us aren’t. And so we will enact the very character of the apocalyptic in that very moment.
Think about it: your church this week is the site of the apocalyptic imagination. There will be division and frustration and fear. And also rejoicing and celebration and hope.
Because old things are going away. And new things are being revealed.
Recommended Reading
Probably the best book on the apocalyptic mindset—and what it means for us today—is David Dark’s Everyday Apocalypse. Since you won’t be able to read it before Sunday, you might want to check it out for next year.