By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D. '13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Dec. 3, 2023)
The Christmas tree arrived at Spark's House yesterday. We haven't yet hung the ornaments on it, but we're in-process. And the stockings are hung by our chimney with care, and we're continuing to decorate the house and the yard. Keep awake, keep alert, there will be some inflatables coming in the front yard of Spark's House soon.
It is Advent. It is a time of preparation and expectation. But let's be honest, maybe not the kind that Jesus is talking about in the gospel lesson today. Jesus has all these words today, fearful ones, frightful ones about an apocalyptic end. The sun going out, the moon going out, the stars falling from the sky. Jesus descending upon clouds with armies of angels.
I was ordained in Advent 15 years ago this month, I just realized today. And it always surprised me once I started preaching in December, I thought I'd be preaching about all the fun, happy, Christmassy lessons. And Advent one always comes, and it's all about apocalypse. All about the end of the world. And just about every year before this year, those lessons shocked me and surprised me.
Most years when the first Sunday of Advent comes, I am unprepared for advent's apocalyptic tone. But not this year, if I'm honest. This is partly because the last few weeks, if you've been here with us at church or at another church, the gospel lessons from Matthew's Gospel have been very similar. In fact, a couple of weeks ago we heard these same lines, or very similar ones, about Jesus arriving on clouds with armies of angels.
So it's partly that, that makes this seem familiar. It's also the state of our world and the fearfulness of our future. It seems like there is a lot of apocalypse all around, that we are just kind of moving from one apocalypse to another.
If you were here last week you know I preached, Jesus was talking about the end of the world, and talking about this final judgment. And he also gave this image of a marshal Jesus who comes out of the skies on a cloud with chariots and heavenly armies alongside him. And I said that there was a little bit of a sleight of hand in that lesson, I thought.
Because in the story Jesus told about that judgment, he said, "You've been looking for me up in the clouds, but I've been right next to you. Anytime anyone was hungry or thirsty or naked or in prison, I was there and you missed me."
So there's a little bit of a flip, a twist in the story Jesus tells about these heavenly armies. And I think Mark is doing the same thing. In a different way and to different ends, he tells a similar story about these heavenly armies, and the sun going out. About this event of violent judgment. But I do think there's also a slight of hand here. There's more to this apocalyptic vision than we might recognize at first glance.
We've heard all this before. We heard it from Matthew, we hear it each year. The sun will be dark and the stars will fall, the clouds will come and Jesus on chariots with armies of angels. But there are a couple of things that are distinctive about the way Mark's Jesus tells this story. The way he gives this account.
First of all, right in the middle there's this business about the fig tree. A kind of agricultural metaphor right in the middle of this grand and kind of frightening, and not kind of frightening, very frightening and devastating vision.
He says, "Look for the signs. Just like you can tell when fruit's coming on a fig tree, you can look for certain signs. When this fig tree starts to show its leaves, then you know summer is coming, then you know the fruit will soon be there."
Now I'll up the ante on the kind of weirdness of him giving this parable in the middle of this apocalyptic vision. A couple of chapters before this, as Jesus is entering Jerusalem just before all these events, he's hungry and he sees a fig tree in the distance that has some leaves on it. And he goes up to it, and it doesn't have any fruit. And so he curses it, and it dies.
That's weird. I don't know why Jesus does this. But this is part of all the context of him talking about this fig tree.
And then the other thing that's distinctive about Mark, when Mark is talking about this final judgment, is he also says, he insists no one knows. Matthew doesn't talk about this. He says, "No one knows, and no one knows. You don't know. I don't know. No one knows."
So what's going on? This insistence upon our ignorance, even his ignorance. The weirdness of the fig tree, that parable arises right in the middle of this vision. But it also seems somehow connected to this weird event earlier when he curses a fully-leaved fig tree that does not bear fruit. It also says it's not the season for figs. So why would Jesus curse it for not having figs?
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So if you're part of our Faith in Life group that meets throughout the semester, we just finished reading the Gospel of Mark downstairs in the Undercroft before services. And there is all this apocalyptic imagery in the Gospel of Mark, but there's also an irony to the way he uses this apocalyptic imagery.
Jesus talks about all these things that are going to happen. He's speaking about the year 30, and he talks about how the temple will be destroyed, and Jerusalem will be destroyed. And all these things are going to happen, and they're going to happen, and they're going to happen. But actually, when this gospel was written, they had already happened.
The temple had already been destroyed. Jerusalem had already been burned to the ground and razed. As I've said before from this pulpit before, tens of thousands of Judeans had already been enslaved, already been killed, hundreds and hundreds crucified. And it's in the context not of an upcoming apocalyptic event, but an event that has already happened to the people who are reading this gospel, that Jesus is giving this news.
And what's startling and unsettling about the Gospel of Mark is that when telling the story, Mark's Jesus, the Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is uniquely absent. When Jesus is raised from the dead in the Gospel of Mark, the tomb is just empty. He doesn't appear, they don't see him. There's just emptiness. And the emptiness of that tomb echoes throughout the whole Gospel of Mark.
One of the tricks about reading these passages just broken up into little bits is we lose that context. But when you read the whole thing through, and then reflect back upon a teaching like this, we know that the emptiness of that tomb is part of what is resounding in this teaching of Jesus's. That the apocalyptic event has already happened, is crucial. And that this emptiness that all the readers of this text are feeling is part of what they're wrestling with.
And it also exposes to us this tension, this tension within Advent. We walked into this church singing, "Oh come, oh come Emmanuel." And we know from the Hebrew scriptures that that word Emmanuel means God is with us. God is with us.
But Mark reminds us that even if God is with us, it's important to remember that Jesus remains, in many significant ways, absent too.
Another way of saying this, perhaps more pointedly, is that God is with us, but we are not God. And I have to confess, as a Christian priest in this Christian Church, that historically Christianity has had a really hard time keeping those ideas separate. That God may be with us, but we are not God.
And in fact, as a Christian priest in this Christian Church, I have to confess that the greatest crimes of our Christian Church and churches have been when we have confused ourselves with God. When we have confused our holiness with God's. When we have confused our agendas with God's.
When we think we speak for God, or when we think we act for God. When we think that God is not only with us, but that our judgments are his. And that our justice is his. And that our violence and our vengeance is his. We end up sanctifying our own crimes and consecrating our shortcomings. And when we do that, we bring God's judgment on ourselves.
On this first Sunday of Advent, I think Mark's Jesus is very aware of this tendency in us, and that's his warning. That's why he says, "Keep awake." That's why he says, "You don't know."
Because what he's asking us to do, what he's commanding us is he's saying, "Do not confuse your judgments with mine." Jesus is aware how dangerous we humans become when we sanctify ourselves and our ideologies. And Jesus is saying, "Don't do that. Don't do that. I am not with you. Not yet."
The thrust of the Gospel of Mark is Jesus telling his readers, "You do not yet have me. You do not yet know me, so don't act like you do."
This is the problem with the fig tree he curses. Not that it doesn't have figs, because it's not the season for figs. But it's got all its leaves out, and it's showing off like it's the season, already the season. Now is not the time for figs, but it's acting like it is the time for figs. And this is what Jesus's caution is to us.
Now is not the time. Now is not the time for armies, and conquests, and vengeance. Now is not the time for retaliation, and devastation, and reprisals. Even if we suffer apocalyptic loss, now is not the time, Jesus says.
So when you think you want to raise armies, and seek conquests, and levy judgments, and wreak vengeance, when you think God is raising armies with you and for you, Jesus says, "Check for the signs."
Unless you have seen Jesus riding down on a cloud before, you don't do that. Unless you have seen the stars fall out of the sky in front of you, don't do that. Unless the sun and moon have darkened completely, and armies of angels lead you, do not do that. Now is not the time.
Instead, stop and pause and admit that you do not know, that no one knows what God aims to do, and when God aims to do it. Stop, and pause, and admit that you do not know. You do not know how God will possibly manage to reconcile all the broken and battered things of this world to God's self. That you do not know how God will make peace through the blood of the cross.
All you know is that however God chooses to do it, it will not be through the delusions of your swords.