SETTING THE CONTEXT
The passage we are about to read is part of a larger lament. The Israelites that Isaiah was speaking to had just returned to Israel following the Babylonian exile, the return was not as glorious as they had hoped. Life was very harsh.^[i] The Temple, the center of Jewish worship was not rebuilt yet. They cried out to a God who seemed hidden in their time of distress. They cried out fully aware of their own sin in rejecting God’s ways. It is interesting to me that they try to blame God for their own rebellion yet they return to trust in God’s steadfast love and grace.

Read Isaiah 64:1-9

Scholars are not sure of the date the Gospel of Mark was written but many think it was around the late 60’s or early 70’s C.E. Mark’s audience lived in a desperate time. Nero was viciously persecuting Christians until about 64 C.E. Then there was a Jewish revolt against Rome from 67-73 C.E. Jerusalem and the 2^nd Temple were destroyed in 70 C.E. In today’s passage Jesus and his disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives where you can look straight across to the Temple Mount and see the walls of Jerusalem. They were talking and the disciples asked him a question about his prophecy of when the Temple will be destroyed. He warned them to beware of false teachers and about the calamity coming. I will never forget his teaching about how to tell false prophets from true ones, he said, “By there fruits you will know them.”

Read Mark 13:24-37

THE SERMON
We live in a scary time. It seems like every day we are descending deeper into chaos. First we heard about investment firms and lenders going bankrupt, now the American auto industry is tottering. Every night on the news the economy is spoken of in terms of crisis, recession, depression. This is not to mention the threat of terrorism which is still very real as we saw in India. There are threats from global warming, energy dependency, high food prices and an unstable global economy. There are other more personal crises that descend us into chaos: a sudden illness, the death of a loved one, a job loss, a divorce. It would be easy to lose hope in this chaotic time.

Isaiah in today’s passage spoke to people in another scary time. They had just returned from their captivity in Babylon. They were free, but life was hard. There was economic oppression and a resurgence of the pagan rituals practiced by other peoples in the area. These rituals lured the Jews to worship other gods. The Temple had been torn down by the Babylonians some years before so the center of their worship was still in ruins. As one writer explained Isaiah’s lament was pain seeking understanding.^[ii]

Many generations later in the time of the Gospel of Mark’s audience, Christians had been or were being ruthlessly persecuted by the Roman emperor. There was a revolt (it probably felt like a world war to them) between the Jews and the Romans Empire. The Roman army crushed the revolt and destroyed the Temple again. It was a time of great chaos and calamity. It was a scary time.

In times of such chaos, people of faith join their voices with the lament of those who went through such times in the past, “Where are you, God? When are you coming? Come now!”^[iii] Isaiah’s image of God described in chapter 64 “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence … From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides, you, who works for those who wait for him” that sounds pretty good. By the way, Paul paraphrases this verse in 1 Corinthians 2:9, we used it on our wedding bulletin, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.” In the midst of the chaos, our ancient forebears clung to their faith in God’s loving kindness. These apocalyptic passages use scary imagery and sometimes I think that we can focus so much on the imagery that we miss the message. The scary images describe the chaos that exists in this fallen world. They give voice to our lament, to our longing for things to be put right, for our grasping at hope in the God who seems hidden sometimes, but “does awesome deeds that we do not expect.”

Today we begin a new church year and start celebrating the season of Advent. The word Advent literally means coming. During this season, we celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world, that unexpected awesome deed, and we anticipate his coming again at the end of history as we know it. As I have been praying about and preparing for this sermon, the chorus of a REM song keeps rolling around my head. It goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”^[iv] Advent is a time of waiting, waiting for Jesus to be born anew in our hearts and lives and waiting for Jesus to come again and set all things right in history. As scholar Joan Delaplane said, “How we wait and for what we wait make a difference in our experience of time.” We can wait experiencing eternal dread or we can wait with excitement and anticipation. We can wait passively or we can wait actively. “Often” she says “the difference lies in a sense of hope.”^[v]

Mark in his gospel quotes the apocalypse from Daniel. The writer lifted the story from the Hebrew Scripture and applied it to the situation his community was facing. He sounds like a good preacher to me. The basic message of apocalyptic visions is as one writer put it, “The rebellion against the reign of God is strong, as the wicked oppress the righteous. Things will get worse before they get better. But hang on just a little longer, because just when you are sure you cannot endure, God will intervene to turn the world right side up.”^[vi] This is the locus of our hope. God is with us, God is for us, God will not allow us to wallow in the consequences of our sin forever but will deliver us. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” In times of chaos, people of faith for generations have drawn on their collective memory of God’s saving actions as a source of hope for the immediate future and for the cosmic end.

Jesus calls us to active waiting. Six times in the last 4 verses of the passage in Mark, Jesus admonishes his disciples to stay awake, be alert, to keep watch. Our waiting is to be expectant, active, fruitful. We are not to get distracted by trying to guess which day its going to happen, we are to act as if it will come any day now. Country singer, Tim McGraw sings a song entitled, “Live like you were dying.” The Advent version would be “Live like Jesus is coming – today!” And this coming is a time of fulfillment of our cry to God, “Where are you? When are you coming? Come now!” This end time is to be awed and maybe even a little feared for everything will change, but folks this is the work of the Father who loved us so much that he sent Jesus into the world as a vulnerable baby to be one of us and one with us. This is the work of the Divine Potter who created us and who recreates us when we let him. “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”

In our times of chaos, we are called to the same radical hope that people of faith have had for generations. We are called to gather together to remember our story, our salvation story. We are called to remember the unexpected awesome deeds of the loving Father as we live in the dash between Jesus’ first coming and his second coming. As we await the Advent or coming, will we make this a time of active waiting letting ourselves be pliable in the hands of the Divine Potter? Will we be the watchful servants ready for the Master? God calls us to a fruitful life, a life of hope. Keep awake, keep alert, be ready. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on November 30, 2008.