FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT B

[cappie]

Advent—that season of longing, penitence, and expectation—is upon us. The Advent candles and the purple  altar linens and vestments are taken.  

In the coming weeks, the Advent readings will walk us through the story of John the Baptist and continue on to the angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary. But before that the lectionary point us to the apocalyptic. Traditionally, Advent is a period when the church reenacts the great yearning and expectation for the Messiah articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures while simultaneously looking to the second coming of Jesus.

 The weight of anticipation for divine deliverance is perhaps even more keenly pronounced in the passage from Isaiah 64: “ Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!” The desperation of the prophet is almost palpable God, when will you return? When will the second coming of Jesus take place? When will you rend the heavens and come to liberate us all?

The gospel reading for today from Mark addresses just this question. Initially,  The instruction is not to spend time and energy trying to make predictions of the future, but instead, the injunction is to keep watch.

But what does this keeping watch mean, if not to interpret the signs? Jesus, as he so often does, offers a parable. He describes a landowner going away on a journey and commanding the doorkeeper to keep watch. The doorkeeper is instructed to stay awake, but there is no indication of when the landowner might return. Jesus concludes this parable by instructing the disciples, “ So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”

But this is an impossible task. One cannot keep constant vigilance without fatigue. And yet, three times in this passage, Jesus instructs his disciples: Keep watch.

 This injunction in Mark 13 to keep watch is literarily connected to the events that unfold in the Garden of Gethsemane one chapter later.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus thrice tells his close disciples to keep watch with him. And thrice they fail. They fail to stay awake with him in his final hours.

So, what’s Mark doing here?   Mark is setting up this literary to let the reader know that the apocalypse is wrapped up in something bigger than knowing when the End will come.

Keeping watch does not mean paying attention so one can be “in the know” about what is happening or what will happen next. The call to be watchful, alert, and aware is an invitation into the unfolding divine mystery. This mystery is somehow personal yet universal, offering glimpses of a boundless God amongst a groaning creation.

 St Mark makes it clear that it is impossible to fix our eyes on the moment of the Messianic return. And in that uncertainty, we fix our eyes on the one thing we can: The person and promise of Jesus Christ. The mystery of the Incarnation is impossible  to disentangle from the mysteries of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Fixing our eyes on Jesus means embracing these mysteries in all their fullness and in their incomprehensibility.

This Advent, let us heed this call to keep watch both spiritually and also within the physical world. Jesus directs us to keep watch in Gethsemane. He directs our gaze to the anguish around us: to the destruction of the temple; to the horrors of war; to the anxieties borne from all threats to human life. In this holy uncertainty, Christians are called to be attentive to the suffering of the present. The failure of the apostles in Gethsemane becomes our failure when we turn our gaze away from those in anguish.

 The church is called both to wait and to bear witness bearing witness is an active stance; waiting is a passive stance. Both are part of the message of the herald of the age to come.

In keeping watch, we will find ourselves waiting in the depths crying out, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”  That suffering, death, and agony will not have the final say. And for that promise, we also keep watch.  There will be suffering around us. There will be pain. There will be anxiety. And in those moments of feeling like the world is crumbling around us, there comes a whisper of Messianic hope: Keep watch.