As we transition into the season of Advent, Mark is the primary gospel we use for the Liturgical calendar for Year B. Mark’s gospel is the first and most important of the four gospels. With Mark we are presented with the bare-bones and most authentic words of Jesus. Mark wrote his gospel during the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. For the Jewish people it did seem like the end of their world. The Bible uses many metaphors to predict the end of the world. Stars falling from the skies are not literal stars, but symbols that point to earthly rulers being removed from power by God.
But a lot of traumatic things did happen in the late 1st century AD. Jesus predicted upcoming wars and 40 years after the Resurrection, the Parthians waged war against the Romans on the Roman frontier. Jesus predicted earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and so it happened by the eruption of Vesuvius which buried Pompeii under lava in 79 AD. Jesus predicted famine in the Roman world and it happened during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD). Even the Roman historian Tacitus wrote the gods were turning against Rome.
Advent is the season when churches do their best to hold off culture’s rush to commercialize Christmas to death. Advent should be recognized and remembered as not only the birth of the Christ Child, but also the ignored Second Coming of Christ. But the birth of Jesus is celebrated during one of the darkest nights of the year when light is most absent.
Albert Einstein once said, if there was something he would have studied more, it is the concept of light. Light is the heart of reality. Science tells us some 14 billion years ago, all that existed was something smaller than a zygote. Then for some strange reason, an explosion of cosmic expansion happened, that still continues to happen throughout the universe today. Let there be Light! God is still creating today. Universes in other dimensions, stars and planets still are being created by God.
Light turning into solid matter has been evolving for 14 billion years. This “Light” is the Divinity our ancient ancestors called many names. The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who lived a few decades before Moses called this one god “Aten” and was killed as a heretic because he condemned the worship of multiple gods. Eventually this Light was called the Christ and the predicted Messiah. Jesus knew this Light and lived and breathed it. Jesus proclaimed he and the Light were One. Unfortunately, many have forsaken the Light in favor of a more subdued Christmas story. Advertisers on TV and elsewhere have convinced too many to exchange the awesome power of that Light for commercial products and systems of power which try to challenge that Divine Light.
Human recorded history is very short around 6,000 years but the human species has been around for more than 100,000 years. That is why we are unaware of most of the full history of planet earth and our very ancient ancestors. Earth has been a dangerous world. Around 65 million years ago, most dinosaurs became extinct because of an asteroid colliding with earth. However, that gave rise to the little furry mammals who became our ancestors. Even if our human descendents do make it through a similar natural disaster, life on earth as it now will not go on forever. A nuclear war would out most of humankind. One day, far in the future, the sun will have burned up all of its hydrogen fuel and turn into a swollen red sun engulfing Mercury, Venus and planet Earth.
When death-dealing forces seem to have the upperhand, one ancient response was to envision an immediate future in which God comes to the rescue bringing in a new era of justice and compassion. It was written as apocalyptic literature, which means the “unveiling” of what is to happen very soon, and not 2,000 years in the future. The book of Daniel is an example of that from the Hebrew Bible written during the oppression of the Jewish people by Greek rulers. And of course the book of Revelation in the New Testament written for Christians in the 1st century who were being persecuted by the Roman Empire. The language of both books are similar, using symbolism and metaphors like falling stars and natural disasters.
Our faith has to take these gloomy predictions as important, but not literal. Science cannot tell us the entire story, because it does not know the eternal faithfulness of the Ultimate Reality we call “God.” We will eventually die and so will the present universe. But the final word does not close with death, but with God. Only God has the ultimate word of hope and that is the reason to embrace the Advent season.
Jesus dealt with this very point in his debate with the Sadducees who did not believe in an afterlife. He reminded them that God is, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” And Jesus also said, “God is not of the dead, but of the living.” If these men mattered to God once they still matter to God throughout eternity.
Is it possible to know when the Second Coming is supposed to happen? It is clear from this reading from Mark, we must be prepared. It could happen today or 10,000 years from now. The image of the Human One coming on the clouds should not be taken literally, but instead a symbol of the glory when the Christ returns. As we are reminded during this Advent season, this time of being prepared is not just a pre-Christmas period, but a time of recentering, looking forward to the return of the King of Kings. We are not merely planning for a cute baby to be born in a manger, but also for the recreation of the world when the Christ Child returns in an entirely different form.
It is easier to think of Advent as a time to replay the birth of Jesus than to think of the sky opening and a form of Christ returning on the clouds. We have a certain embedded tradition of the Christmas season with songs, hymns and Christmas trees. But preparing for Christ’s return is less obvious. If we function as a Christian community, we can figure out how to live out that tension between the secular and spiritual during the Christmas season through this time of hope and expectation.
AMEN
