by Charles Love
Mark 13:14-27
This morning, we celebrate the first Sunday in Advent. We begin our liturgical journey toward Christmas. It’s time to think about Christmas cards, gift lists, entertaining. We’re ready to let old familiar carols play, to get at some Christmas baking… Next Sunday is White Gift and, though it’s a bit of something extra to do, we do all feel good imagining little children opening what we’ll help put under the tree. The Christmas Hope book- the alternative gift catalogue that invites us to make gifts overseas augmenting the year round work facilitated by our generosity, is downstairs ready to use. The 3M’s decorating party, potluck and speaker are all set to happen this Saturday. The UCW Christmas dinner is a highlight to anticipate… So much good stuff: and, then, we come to church for day one of advent and what does the lectionary throw up at us as our focal reading, but a vision of all hell breaking forth. Terror! Fear! Head for the hills… Quick, hide! Run for your lives. Dare not even go back in the house to grab your hat or coat or food or water, RUN! How terrible it will be for anyone who’s pregnant, those with little children: but, alas, no one can escape the suffering that is about to come upon us. There will be confusion and panic. People will rise up pretending to be the Saviour, promising to look after you in return for money, loyalty, whatever they can extort from you: but, we wary of them, trust nobody who promises you a pass, a simple bypass via easy street, immunity and impunity. What’s going on, and about to get worse, Mark says is so big that it is and will effect not only people. It will be a time of cosmic upheaval. The moon will no longer give light. The stars will fall from heaven…There will be earthquakes, famine and fire: and, friends, Mark says, you think you got it bad now, it’s going to get a LOT worse before it gets better…And, all this is but the birth pangs of what is to come (Mark 14:8) Our only consolation, Mark continues, is that it can’t last forever. There’s only so far we can fall before our society, our church, international relations, hit rock bottom: but have faith, endure in hope remembering that “out of chaos” God made the world: and, again out of chaos, by that same power, he will redeem it.
It’s not a pretty picture: but, it may be very accurate. It may well capture the reality and fears of people in Mark’s day. It is the context for the life and ministry of Jesus. And, in fact, as modern hymn proclaims- Christ was born to help us face and survive and make the best of what can be, even in the midst of such context… “Christ was born for this…Christ was born for this.”
Tough stuff! …Perhaps, you might think, we can get around such thoughts, if, leaving Mark aside, we turn our attention to the to the other Gospels- zeroing in on Matthew and Luke that give us all the “gentle Mary meek and mild”, the silent night manger scene, the image of shepherds, angels singing, peace, good will among men… Maybe: but we’d have to be VERY selective about what parts of even those gospels we read…and, we’d need to be wearing rose coloured glasses to filter out what is really there- Matthew and Luke’s narrative expression of the very same bleak and terrifying realities that Mark, so boldly, flat out names…
A few weeks ago, a group of us attended First St. Andrews United Church, in London, to hear Dominic Crossan share reflections on the meaning of Christmas and Easter. I went away wanting to know more in order to understand some of the big ideas Dom presented: and, so, I bought and read a book he co-authored with Marcus Borg, titled “The First Christmas.” Some of the research from that book speaks to out topic today…
Crossan and Borg would have us take note of some very deliberate connections that the Gospel writers make linking Jesus- his life, his time and his ministry- to some very specific characters and historical epochs that both prefigure and, in some ways, parallel, the realities of Jesus’ era and Christmas.
The earliest such character is Adam. In his third chapter, Luke gives us his “record” of the genealogy of Jesus - more theological than factual, and we’ll say more of that next week, but, today, what we need to note is that Luke traces the ancestry of Jesus all the way back to Adam and then he develops the theme of Jesus as the new Adam- the idea of a new creation- a new epoch in the life of not just mankind, but the whole world….We know now that what was going on in the life of creation, in the days of Adam, was a huge transition as mankind evolved through hunter and gatherer to become a settled, domiciled (domesticated) people. Adam and Eve were not the first people ever to walk the face of the earth. There were others- among them Cain’s wife! But what, mythologically speaking, Adam and Eve were, were the first of a new age of humanity to experience settled residency status... and the huge social eruptions, change and challenges that occurred as that transition took place: linguistic development, farming, owning “things,” dwelling in houses, living in larger social units, having to work out social customs and ethics and mores, the stresses of people living in closer proximity than they ever had before, arguments, jealousy, crime and murder- the story of Cain and Abel… Something of THIS is part of the Jesus/Christmas story……..? Yup - so Luke says!
Moving along. The next character held up as prefiguring Jesus is Abraham. Matthew makes this link in his genealogy that traces the ancestry of Jesus back to Father Abraham. And, again, thumb nail sketch… another era of huge social challenge and chance as Abraham led his people away from everything safe and secure, away from Ur, in search of a new land where they would, eventually come to dwell as a people “called out” or, as we often speak of them, a people “chosen”- along the way, breaking with the past and having to define a whole new identity… THIS is part of the Jesus/Christmas story…? According to Matthew!
Matthew, next, develops the idea of Jesus as the new Moses… Moses was born in the era of a ruthless Pharaoh; Jesus was born under Herod. Both boys narrowly escape what we call the slaughter of the innocents. Both are born during periods of instability when the King or Pharaoh is caught up in fear of a Hebrew/Jewish uprising…Moses leads his people into the wilderness: Jesus begins his ministry as one with John the Baptist- a voice crying out in the wilderness. Moses eventually climbs up a high mountain and comes down with the Ten Commandments; Jesus’ core teachings are expressed in the Sermon on the Mount…We could go on, but, I’m sure you get the idea: and, again, why link to Moses but that he, like the others we’re mentioning, led God’s people through an era of cataclysmic change - including many years in the desert re-inventing themselves trying to figure out how to be God’s people in the new realities that life threw at them…
Just one more for today…and this one, perhaps the most extensively developed, shows up in all the gospels as each of the writers make sure that, among other images, we connect the Jesus image to David… Jesus Son of David, born in David’s city and so on and so on…Why is this connection so important? I think it was that, in the minds of the gospel writers, the realities that David’s people faced were a very close parallel to what the Jews in Jesus day faced- an oppressive and exploitive military and political power of unimaginable superiority. Secular historians speak of the Philistines as being the first of the ancients to enter the iron age. Richard T. Ritenbaugh explains-
- While the Israelites and Canaanites of the highlands still practiced Bronze Age skills, the Philistines had advanced to an Iron Age culture, making them nearly invincible on the battlefield. I Samuel 13:19-22 informs us: Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, "Lest the Hebrews make swords or spears." But all the Israelites would go down to the Philistines to sharpen each man's plowshare, his mattock, his ax, and his sickle; and the charge for sharpening was a pim [two-thirds of a shekel, an exorbitant price] for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to set the points of the goads. So it came about, on the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan. But they were found with Saul and Jonathan his son.
Saul could muster only two swords among six hundred men (see verse 15)! Evidently, most of his soldiers fought with axes, mattocks, ox goads, sickles, or sharpened sticks. Recall that Samson never used a normal weapon either, resorting to the jawbone of a donkey or his bare hands. The Philistine army, however, was fully outfitted with the advanced weaponry of the day: So the Lord was with Judah. And they drove out the inhabitants of the mountains, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland [the Philistines and Canaanites there], because they had chariots of iron. (Judges 1:19) [Goliath] had a bronze helmet on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail. . . . And he had bronze greaves on his legs and a bronze javelin was between his shoulders. Now the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his iron spearhead weighed six hundred shekels; and a shield-bearer went before him. (I Samuel 17:5-7)
Later, the account mentions that Goliath also carried a sword (verse 51). David, of course, having refused Saul's armor and sword because he was untrained in them, carried only "his staff in his hand; . . . five smooth stones from the brook, and . . . his sling" (verse 40). David's severe disadvantage in arms was typical for an Israelite before the might of the Philistines[1] and, WE might add, was comparable to the plight of the occupied Israelis under Roman domination.
The point of all these contextual comparisons? …All the gospel writers are framing their story of Jesus, the Christ in his age, as being God’s answer, to cataclysmic challenges on par with challenges and evolutionary epochs of change that had occurred many times in the past… In every such era, the gospels writers are proclaiming, God, the spirit of life and good overcoming evil, has found heroes and leaders capable of calling forth, managing the convergence of and directing the potential of, what we, using churchy language, would call, saving redeeming, creative energy that, at such times, must be offered “at measureless cost” for the good of others, community, life and creation in its entirety… This is exceedingly Good News for us in our age because, already, and as yet without the benefit of hindsight and post facto analysis, in the midst of where we are now, it is more than evident that we are, once again, caught up in, yet another era of cataclysmic change- of proportion equal to if not exceeding the significance of every preceding transition.
A few weeks ago, in my report from the annual meeting of Kairos, I introduced you to Chris Turner, the author of “The Geography of Hope” and Chris introduced us to an analysis that suggests that we have now entered the anthroprocene era - the first era in the life of the cosmos in which the impact of human activity outweighs the determinative causality of nature, making us, in ecological terms, the author of our own fate- an enormous power and responsibility that humankind may or may not be ready or even capable of managing in sustainable ways… The challenge may, ultimately, dwarf the scale of the transition to settled society that Adam faced, the troubles of emerging from the bronze age into the iron age under David, and, I dare say, the liberation from the Rome Empire that was the dominant hope, dream and agenda in the days of Jesus…. But that’s just the start of the mega-transformations we’re caught up in right now. Weigh in the challenges posed by what this year’s Atkinson Foundation scholar, Judy Steed, identifies as the “demographic tsunami” that will, for example, soon have us, in Canada, populated by more seniors than children and very few working, contributing members of society trying to carry the sum weight of people at both ends of the life’s journey…Tag in, with all that the effects of globalism- the intricate and no longer subtle connections that reverberate around the world when crisis or challenge hits any significant demographic anywhere in the world….Consider the power of the new Empires, almost invisible, transnational corporations and financial interest groups that exceed in wealth, power and influence many, if not most, nations and economic alliances of the world- without any accountability beyond their own profit and greed…. And, as if all that isn’t enough, as church folk, weigh in our reluctantly admitted awareness that the institutional church as we know it is for the most part dead and what remains is at the end stage of palliative care as new spiritual disciplines and thinking, interfaith and transcending faith groups and movements redefine the very essence of spirituality…. Fact is- on many fronts, we can relate with the emotional and spiritual trauma that rocked the early church as the temple was destroyed and faith was trampled and life looked bleak at home, at church, and in the world.
The example of our ancestors, the example held up in the Christmas/Jesus story, calls out to us that, if we are to survive at all, we must cling to faith, tested and proven over time, that, even through the most critical and dramatic eras of trial and transition, life has always managed to morph and change and adapt to emerge refreshed in being and expansive expression of love and goodness incarnated in both social and personal reality. The clock never turns back. Those, in every era of crisis who look BACK, like people in Jesus’ day wishing Elijah would come again, will not survive: but we can do better than that if we are sure it clicks forward: and, that’s the oft repeated message, proclaimed anew in the Christmas story- reassurance and hope and compassion in the meantime, can and eventually will bring us through to life as its never been before, ever better, ever sure. For this we live. For this we love…. And so, we persevere as have the saints of today’s stories before us- which brings us to one final reality that furthers our identification with them and their faith in God and which just might help relieve the anxiety and stress we feel in the face of SO many things undone and, to our mind, all desperately urgent at once.…. We need to take careful note of the reality that NONE of the ‘faithful leaders through times of change’ that we’ve talked about today, ever lived to see the fruition of their hopes and dreams… Adam and Eve, never lived to see the age of Methuselah and others who eventually found ways to prosper as settled people: instead, we can imagine them dying broken hearted carrying the eternal grief of fratricide’s wounds… Abraham faces family troubles, has to live with what he thought he’d done to Hagar and Ishmael, runs into trouble with Lot, almost sacrifices Isaac, survives his beloved Sarah and remarries, has children and has to banish them for fear that family squabbles over inheritance after he dies might get nasty… Moses, for his sins, was denied permission to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 20)… David wasn’t allowed to build the temple…. And Jesus never saw or even imagined the church that God was inaugurating through him… Mark has Jesus appearing in the wilderness and departing leaving the women who came to the tomb, terrified… All of these, our great heroes and examples of faith through hard times and eras cosmic transition and evolving epochs were people who can be, for us, as we live in the midst of a new day dawning, fine examples of doing one’s best even when as far as one can see, the effect of our efforts may only be harvested by future generations in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine today…. It’s NOT all up to us.. We don’t have to fix everything… All God’s heroes, coupled their finest efforts with patience and trust that God would complete what he started in them and it would be good, eventually: and, that confidence was more than enough to bring comfort and joy…
This Christmas, as we with creation groan in travail, the cosmos birthing new eras of life, may we find comfort and joy in the track record of God who has consistently made of his servants best efforts more than they could ever ask or imagine… Like them, may we, being blessed in the midst of trials and adversities, be blessing- God in us and through us working miracles, in and beyond our day, without end. Amen.
- http://cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PW/k/1183/Who-Were-Philistines.htm
St. Andrew’s United Church, Bayfield