Mark 13:24-37

Advent 1 - Year B

Take a lesson from the world around you. How goes it? How are the fig trees? How are the vines? How is your sense of the quality and quantity of milk and honey?

Instead of asking when the end will come - since no one knows it anyway - what happens if we begin asking "When did the next stage of heaven coming on earth begin?"

If we can't say, "Today," we are in poor shape and all the waiting and watching for some surprising end to the story won't make a whole lot of difference.

So, go ahead and do some watching, "Keep awake." But even more, do some changing - increase the number of "elect" scattered in every direction.

The process of increase needs a component beyond scaring folks to keep alert until they drop from alert fatigue. This component is an active awareness that G*D is with us in calling forth a new heaven, a new earth, a new you, a new me. Not only is G*D calling, but empowering. G*D is with us in the actual change from the old ways to new ways. Enjoy being a partner in calling and empowering the change toward wholeness.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/december2002.html

It sounds as if the last best war is well on its way.

It is understandable that our ancestors saw the angels array themselves in the upper heavenly realms and accepted that they would be automatically, magnetically dragged along in some cosmic game. Even today there is a sense of fatalism that we have been set up by larger forces to inevitably prepare for war.

How much choice do you see for yourself and your congregation in this matter? This issue of choice will have an effect on how you deal with Advent issues.

How are you going to wait during this Advent season? Will you wait resignedly for the angels to work things out for you? are you simply a pawn in that cosmology? Will you actively attempt to change things by going where the angels fear to tread? Will the fear and trembling caused by working out your faith scare you away from such work?
A thoughtful piece on war and peace issues can be found by going to the December 2002 issue of Connections.

Don't forget to speak out as you wrestle with what it means for you to wait. I encourage active waiting that is similar to active listening - being alert to whats going on and responsibly proactive.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/december2002.html

"Advent is a time for Christians, every year, to practice being part of the people of God in a damaged creation. Part of this practice includes faithful and sharp-eyed examination of the realities of life in this world. Part of this practice ought also to include meditation on the situation out of which Jesus spoke the words in this scene in Mark's story. Jesus lived late in the messy aftermath of the Maccabean rebellion, a complicated mix of victory and defeat, of freedom and bondage. Jesus lived in the shadow of the Roman Empire in a family and faith uneasy under foreign domination. Jesus embodied the tensions that lead to the first and second Jewish revolts against Rome.... That means, at the very least, that the Jesus we encounter in this scene is shaped both by the rich, insistent hope of Jewish faith and by the wise realism of Jewish faith.... Christians, as they prepare for Christmas, have a lot to learn about hopes that shatter the skies and about realism that remembers the deep pain of real loss...." [Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller's Commentary, Year B by Richard W. Swanson]

"And because it is this generation in which these things happen, it is also this generation which senses the arrival, the advent of the reign of justice and generosity and joy, the advent of the truly human. This is the generation bound in solidarity with all those, in whatever part of the earth or in whatever time, who have stood where we stand, on the brink of history.
This advent is not something that is realized in the inward moment of decisions as the existentialists (following John) supposed, Rather this advent is recognized in the public sphere of witness bearing, of martyrdom. For what is at stake here is not simply the fate of the individual, but the fate of God's creation." [The Insurrection of the Crucified: The "Gospel of Mark" as Theological Manifesto by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.]

Whether through story or manifesto there is the realism of loss in advent. We have lost. Now it is not time to strike back, it is not time to take over, it is not time to add to terror. It is time to watch for the bloom of a new shoot in the midst of destruction and to spent the inconsequential time of nurturing it through the surrounding blight. If we are stabbed in the back while bending over to tend to this new possibility, so be it. We are awake to this fragile shoot of hope more than to the all too real power of a principality.

May we be so awake.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/november2005.html

So we can see a fig tree and figure out the season. In some environs we can see the moss on a tree and tell directions. Those externals are relatively straight forward. If, however, when we look at moral values and connect them with darkened and falling stars, we can still be just as clear, even if any number of desires and philosophic, historic, economic, etc. overlays try to cloud otherwise straight forward moral judgments.

Try these tests of moral judgment from Peace March Speech by Dr. Robin Meyers (PDF).

How do these look? What morality is expressed through these actions?

>starting a war on false pretenses

>acting as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will

>breaking the very rules you set down for others

>claiming Jesus is the Lord of your life, and failing to acknowledge policies ignoring his teaching

>ignoring the gospel teaching that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test

>helping the rich get richer by tax breaks

>pushing the poor into ill health by insurance policies

>winking at the torture of prisoners while expecting not to be tortured

>claiming the world can be divided into the good guys and the evil doers

>seeing only the good we do and the evil someone else does

>creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children

>using hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out voters

>favoring the death penalty, and yet claiming to be a follower of Jesus

>dismantling countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth, God's gift to us all

>putting judges on the bench who reject people in favor of a constitutional/economic theory

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/november2005.html

Do you remember and yearn for the Age Of Awesome Deeds? Men were men, black was black and white was white and ne'er the twain shall meet - doing right was rewarded and transgression quickly punished. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.

But it has been long years since a favored few could so easily justify their separation from the unlucky, the poor, the unfavored, the sick, the sinner, the other.

With this hiatus we can wait with envy to be restored to what ought to be our rightful place, a place where nothing changes. We might also find the humility to move away from these kinds of false and make-believe separations to appeal, "Now consider, we are all your people."

It is this larger view of the particularity of circumstance not being unique that needs new light to be shined on it.

When such a shining saving arrives we note that there has been a shift from a single cause to a renewed appreciation of community of an earthly creation or paradise with which the heavenly "we" is well pleased and claims is good.

So thanks can be given, not just for creator(s) but creation(s). Our wait for revelation shows creation called into fellowship with creator, not constantly manipulated by same.

Having now come through Isaiah, Psalmist, and Paul we turn to Mark to solidify our keeping awake to new connections. Fig leaves are connected to summer, not as cause and effect but as a community of revelation. In one we can now see the other.

In like manner, in a generation we can mark a moment that more clearly reveals a shift that has moved us from whatever stage of immaturity we are in to a next step of maturity. We keep awake for such connections are life as we move from bated breath to next breath. To keep awake is to keep breathing.

- - -

Whew, I have every spiritual gift.
Oh, I am strengthened to use each in its time.
Ahh, fellowship shines in remembering, in anticipating, in medias res.

Whew, I am blessed.
Oh, I am blessing.
Ahh, simply Ahh.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html

Wasn't it just yesterday we tried to talk ourselves into celebrating "Christ the King"? Today we are looking beyond a king, looking forward to the arrival of a Star Child larger than the sky – like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

If you want to be reminded of that movie here are two places to look: http://www.kubrick2001.com and http://www.filmsite.org/twot3.html.

Look where you will, even at a lowly fig tree, and you will see intimations of a future generation contained within a present generation. Watch for three hours or three days or three years, you will catch a glimpse of this resurrectional transformation. Watch it come even as you go about your daily work.

As a bonus, here are two comments from a Girardian perspective that help us watch in a helpful direction, to avoid the power and wrath trip so easily seen on the surface of this pericope. What will be unveiled as you watch the death of one time and the birth of a next?

"Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, has a section entitled "Apocalypse" at the outset of his book, pp. 14-16. It has to do with the very title of his book:

"The word "apocalypse" means "unveiling." What, then, is veiled, the unveiling of which can have apocalyptic consequences? The answer is: violence. Veiled violence is violence whose religious or historical justifications still provide it with an aura of respectability and give it a moral and religious monopoly over any "unofficial" violence whose claim to "official" status it preempts. Unveiled violence is apocalyptic violence precisely because, once shorn of its religious and historical justifications, it cannot sufficiently distinguish itself from the counter-violence it opposes. Without benefit of religious and cultural privilege, violence simply does what unveiled violence always does: it incites more violence. In such situations, the scope of violence grows while the ability of its perpetrators to reclaim that religious and moral privilege diminishes. The reciprocities of violence and counter-violence threaten to spin completely out of control."

And . . .

"Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 35-40. (Hamerton-Kelly's commentary on Mark, written from the perspective of Girardian "mimetic theory" will be a constant over the next year.) H-K begins his commentary on Mark's gospel at chapter 11, the confrontation with the institutions of the Sacred centered around the Temple in Jerusalem. Ch. 13 brings Jesus' teachings regarding these institutions to a climax as he predicts their collapse. It is a mixture of general apocalyptic language about judgment day with more specific references to the fall of Jerusalem and the Jewish-Roman War. H-K lays this out nicely. Most notable, I think, is his closing paragraph (p. 40):

"It is remarkable that among all the apocalyptic imagery of this discourse there is not one claim, that the tribulations to befall humanity in the messianic apocalyptic history and the ultimate eschaton are expressions of the vengeance of God. Rather, the suffering is to be caused by wars, frauds, charlatans, natural catastrophes, misunderstandings and persecutions. These are the sadly predictable human failings that cause human misery without any divine intervention. In fact, the one clear reference to divine intervention has God shortening the tribulation for the sake of his elect. There is, therefore, a significant omission of the divine vengeance from a traditional apocalyptically styled passage, and that confirms our thesis that the generative energy of the Gospel is the opposite of the Sacred. Even though traditional imagery is used, the traditional content has been modified so as to remove the idea of the divine wrath and vengeance. The wrath is the suffering we inflict on ourselves and each other within the order of the GMSM. [Note: H-K's "GMSM" is an acronym he uses for: Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism.]"

- - - - - - -

So what are you watching for? You'll probably see it. This Advent season are you willing to watch for violence revealed and redeem it?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html

In Church Year 2011-2011, after suffering through 2010-2011,
places of meaning will be darkened,
sources of inspiration will not give light,
elected leaders will fall from their heights,
power bases will shake.

Rising from beneath will be the apocalyptic poor
redefining power and glory.
Messengers will be neighbors speaking to one another,
ways will be found to fruitfully gather together.

The relearning of lessons will continue:
fig trees in bloom do indicate summer's nearness.
a shift in consciousness edges closer
we experience it near
so near we expect it in our next breath.
This change does not change.

While not knowing its departure or arrival time,
we keep alert - bags packed for today
ready to be discarded tomorrow.
And so we go looking for a next home
leaving slavish habits to continue their routines,
expecting different results from same actions.
As alert as they may be,
warned to keep awake,
they are left behind,
but echoes of their beginning.

In this day
after that
before then
we wait
through journey.

[bonus: Journey Home]

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/11/mark-1324-37.html

Advent - practiced sharing

fig tree, fig tree
showing now
a far-off song

tea leaves
presently read
connect with tomorrow

and all we want
is to tear open heaven
to energize today

we'd settle for yesterday
restored to glory
projected forward

but our best gift
is waiting together
in the meantime

practiced sharing
strengthens all
into fellowship

mean times come
unbidden yearning
for better meaning

look for fig leaves
leave them on the tree
let your gift shine

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/11/advent-practiced-sharing.html