In-between

Mark 13, 24-37
“Then …” — The Kairos of God
27 November 2011, first Sunday in Advent
Uniting Church Klemzig

1.

A few weeks ago, I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, and my wife as well. Still half-sleeping, but alarmed, Liz asked me, “What is this?” There was this sound outside, barely audible, like a huge zipper being moved, and a slight vibration. “An earthquake,” I said, cool as if this was the most natural thing for me to experience. In actual fact, I got up to have a look outside what was happening, but indeed all was quiet.

Most of you will recall this night, and the day after I read in the news that this “baby quake”[1] happened at 2.22am, 24 km underneath Belair National Park. I also learned that South Australia had experienced other tremors in the past, like under Mount Barker in April last year, and more severely on 1^st March 1954 that some of you may still remember.

The unknown author of an article on the “Great Adelaide Earthquake” in the Internet dictionary Wikipedia explained:

As Australia lies in the middle of a tectonic plate, South Australia is relatively stable geologically, yet it is the most earthquake prone of the Australian states with around 20 tremors every year. Most are, however, of a magnitude below 3.5, noteworthy only to seismologists, and since they are dispersed fairly evenly across the state, most take place well away from centres of human population.[2]

This is comforting, isn’t it?

However, I don’t know what my sub-conscious is thinking about this assurance. The other night I woke up to find myself thinking, what I would do, and what would happen, if there were a really serious earthquake? Would Liz and I have time enough to get out of our house? Could I still catch at least the external hard drive of my computer, which contains as electronic files all of what I have done in the past 20 years or so. Should I just grab my passport? Or would I hide underneath the doorway, and how would we get out through our funny sliding-windows if the doors were blocked?

I wondered how fast was I able to decide what was really essential for me and for the future of our lives. In this time of crisis, I would have to make a snap-second decision.

This would be the moment of truth, God’s own time, or what the Greek New Testament calls the “Kairos”.—

 

2.

Well, today is the first Sunday in Advent. In the Western Christian tradition this is the beginning of a new year in the life of the church. The name of this day, as many of you may well know, refers to the times of joyful expectations for the arrival of Jesus. In Germany, and in the wider Northern Europe, where this tradition is strongest, it is celebrated with the light of candles in winter-darkness, and for the children the “Advent Calender” keeps heightening their expectations for Christmas.

 

Many people put an Advent’s wreath on their dining table, artfully designed from evergreen branches and with four red candles, one of each to be lit for every Sunday in Advent: “Erst eins, dann zwei, dann drei, dann vier — dann steht das Christkind vor der Tür!” I don’t know of an equivalent for this children’s nursery rhyme that we learned from the earliest childhood:

One candle, then two, then three and four —
when the Christ child will be standing at the door.

Still today, when I am at home over Christmas, my sister tends to hide her self-made Christmas cookies from me, well knowing that I am not a patient person and would sneak into the pantry to … well, let’s talk about something else!

 

3.

Ok, let us look at where we are with our Bible text today.

According to the beginning of this section in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus had been at the temple in Jerusalem. His triumphant entry into the city had happened just a short time earlier. At the temple Jesus stirred quite some rumour amongst the market traders and the money changers, and he had a series of arguments with the Pharisees, scribes and the High Priest who tried to trap him with some tricky questions.

Yet, to the confusion of all his listeners, Jesus prophesised the destruction of mighty Jerusalem and its temple, with no stone to remain on top of each other — an event to happen some seventy years later. Nobody should then go back into their house, he warned, to fetch anything essential; and woe to the women who breastfeed their babies; and be aware of the false messiahs and false prophets who pretend to work miracles and signs, but only fool God’s chosen ones (Mk 13,22).

Indeed, Jesus paints a gruesome picture of destruction, as it has never happened before since God created the earth (Mk 13,19).

And the author of the Gospel of Mark even invokes the sun and the moon that will not shine any longer, nor the stars to remain at the skies. At this time, when the world will end,

“the Son of Man will be seen coming in the clouds
with great power and glory.
He will send his angels to gather his chosen ones
from all over the earth.”
(Mk 13:26-27 CEV).

 

This is the day and the hour of Christ, the Kairos, God’s own time. Nobody will know when it is to happen, not the angels, not even Jesus — only God the Father. For the Gospel of Mark, this hour of God is a key issue that has already been introduced in its first chapter:

After John was arrested,
Jesus went to Galilee
and told the good news that comes from God
(and he said):
The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God draws near.
Repent, and believe the gospel.
(Mk 1:14-15 MKJV).

 

However, as gloomy as all our Bible quotes today seem to be, they also contain a twisted sense of humour and the vision for a bright future: This last quote, for instance, is followed by — well, no less than Jesus calling Simon and his brother Andrew from their work as fishermen to become the “fishers of men” (Mk 1,16).

And our Bible text today quotes Jesus with the consoling statement that

“the sky and the earth will not last forever, but my words will.” (Mk 13,31).

4.

The earthquake a few weeks ago was a side issue for most of us, in the history of Adelaide, and for the world at large.

However, if we look at the so-called “financial markets” that claim to guarantee our wellbeing today, it is like watching the “New Gods”, that is the false prophets of whom Jesus warned us. They seem to be more whimsical than any glamorous “Film Diva”. In actual fact, they pretend to have assumed the role of worldly Gods: Money, it appears today, and its “Market”, are the Gods who determine our fate. Their “freedom” and their discretion appear to decide about the future of the world.

The Capitalist Markets appear to convert into profit even the tiniest particle of nature, if only it can make some pennies of revenue. It is now consuming even its children, and not least turning against itself.

All looks like bend to gloom, geared to the major destructions that we seem to be awaiting since those early words of Jesus.

But the sun is shining, the moon has its cycle of changes, there is the blue sky and there are clouds. In the same time, our hearts, and possibly for quite a number of people in big business in the depth of their conscience, are full of gloom, the fear of competition, destruction, even self-destruction, if only it pays.

We can see the virtual schizophrenia of those who desire to be like the Gods, i.e. the glamorous, and the powerful. They have climbed up high on the ladder, way into thin air, into the unknown. They are challenging the very fabric of their own existence, down to the last core, if only to gain control. And they pretend to be in the known — that it is their sophisticated analysis, which we are to follow.

But constantly, there is this underlying fear, barely discernible — “What if … ?”.

 

5.

Our text plays with this element, “What if … ?”. It almost makes fun of it. It turns it upside down in its simplicity, and it can’t be more mundane, almost absurd:

Learn a lesson from a fig tree.
When its branches sprout and start putting out leaves,
you know summer is near. (13, 28)

We don’t have a fig tree in our garden, but other fruit trees. It is so obvious that I can hear the people around Jesus laugh — the fig tree was their every-day life, and is a most popular plant in Palestine even today.

While the audience around Jesus may have had no concept of the distant stars in cosmos, and the earth just being one amongst these stars in the endlessness of the universe, they may have been well aware that there will be a new morning and an evening, the sun and the moon, as surely as the Word of God.

I am aware that there are different interpretations of this text. But in the ears of the audience around Jesus, the “lesson of the fig tree” may have triggered another memory as well, one of the prophets of old, the Prophet Micah. In his famous prophecy of the day of the Lord he evokes the place of rest of His people under their own fig tree:

In the last days it shall come to pass,
that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established
in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills;

and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come,
and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
and to the house of the God of Jacob;

and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths:
for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

But they shall sit,
every man under his vine and under his fig tree;
and none shall make them afraid:
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.

For all people will walk — every one in the name of their god,
and WE will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.
(Micah 4:1-7 CEV)

Maybe, this is why Advent is such a festive season in the year of the church …

I wish you all a blessed time in your preparations for your celebrations of the coming of Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

 

Footnotes

[1] http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8362112/adelaide-shaken-by-small-earthquake

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Adelaide_Earthquake