Anticipation
Commentary
Object:
A well-rounded biblical "Screw your courage to the sticking-place," says Lady Macbeth to her doomed husband in Shakespeare's tragedy, "and we'll not fail." But fail they do and no amount of courage in the world can save them or turn them into heroes.
Courage is a funny thing. It's a bit like happiness: the more you seek it, the more you demand it, the more you try to call it up, the less it shows its face.
Words can stir us to courage, but only when they are grounded in confident expectation and hitched to unshakable values or realities. Who would not rally around the "I have a dream..." speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., in which he paints the colors of freedom? Who would not feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940: "Let us... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "
Courage, as faith's activator, is the call in Jesus' words to us today. He sits with his shell-shocked disciples in the temple precincts, sensing the profound disturbance at his words that this marvelous place of holiness and beauty will soon lie in rubble, but pointing them to a larger cataclysm that will shake the whole earth as eternity finally sears into time.
We've been there with the disciples, haven't we? Famed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembered a terrible day during WWII. He was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous Dachau death camp. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living" if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past; only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted "yes!" against the "no" of defeat and the gray "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
Advent often reminds us of our similar need. The grayness of our bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms us. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
With David (Psalm 43:3), we shout, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave me alone. Give me some sign. Light a candle in the window and take me home.
Advent reminds us of the power in Jesus' words to his disciples. God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
Because we know the many pressures of life, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength and peace and confidence that are part of our return to Advent anticipations. We need to remember again the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty and pain and spite and injury and death. We need to learn anew that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows the miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace and joy and harmony.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Isaiah was overwhelmed by a divine commissioning (Isaiah 6) that took place in the temple during the year that King Uzziah died. He was guided by the theology of the Sinai covenant (Isaiah 2-5), which mandated that Israel was supposed to have a unique lifestyle among the nations, a set of behaviors that would serve as a missional call for others to join this holy community in a global return to the ways of their Creator. He was confident that Yahweh could resolve all political problems (Isaiah 7-11), no matter how daunting they might seem. He believed Israel/Judah needed to repent (Isaiah 12) and recover their original identity and purpose as Yahweh's covenant partners and witnesses. He was certain that Yahweh was sovereign over all nations (Isaiah 13-35), even if Yahweh's primary focus was attached to Israel/Judah. He heard the heartbeat of divine love and compassion, wrestling for the soul and destiny of Israel/Judah as a loved companion and partner (Isaiah 36-41). He saw Yahweh transforming Israel's/Judah's identity and fortunes through a "Suffering Servant" leader (Isaiah 42-53). He envisioned a future age in which all the world and every society and even the universe itself would be restored to harmony with its Creator and would resonate with magnificent glory (Isaiah 56-66).
These things must be understood in order to fully appreciate today's lectionary reading. Yahweh's holiness separated God from God's people, as King Uzziah learned when he tried to serve as high priest and instead became a leper under divine judgment. This was still the big story when Isaiah crashed into God's glory the day he received his calling as a prophet.
But the problem of Yahweh's transcendence and otherness was connected to Israel's own waywardness. Precisely because these people could not see God's daily presence or know God's ongoing intimate leadership, they were constantly getting into trouble and doing things in inappropriate ways. This triggered the curses of the Sinai covenant (Exodus 20-24), bringing invading armies, like those of the troubling Assyrians.
For fifty years Isaiah wrote, counseled, pleaded, and wrestled for the soul of Israel. Now, as he peered into the future, he begged Yahweh for closer ties and deeper bonds. Tear apart the veil that separates heaven from earth! Stoop to our level to meet us eye-to-eye! Dip into our world to remind us who we are and whose we are!
In one of the very few occasions throughout the Old Testament, Isaiah dares to call God "Father." This term of endearment was too colloquial and familiar for most of Israel's interaction with Yahweh. But if God's people were to engage God's ways more fully, transcendence must be minimized, and incarnation had to occur.
Isaiah could not imagine just how fully this prayer of his would be answered, but God certainly heard and responded. Jesus not only stepped out of eternity into time, God incarnate among us, but he also taught us to pray "Abba!" ("Daddy!"), naming God as our loving father in the intimacy of family care.
It was indeed earth-shaking, as Matthew notes in his gospel account of Jesus' resurrection. But in that encounter between heaven and earth, everything changed. And, as the writer of Hebrews notes (Hebrews 12:18-29), the shaking that Isaiah hoped for and the quaking that Jesus brought, are only an anticipation of bigger shaking and quaking yet to come, when heaven and earth will be reunited, and we will all know God face-to-face.
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The city of Corinth, located at the southwestern end of the narrow land bridge between Greece's northern and southern mainland regions, played a vital role for the region in both land and sea trade. It was a wealthy metropolis during the first century AD and coupled that abundance of resources with many social vices. Sexual openness and experimentation, in particular, oozed out of Corinth, until the rest of the Mediterranean world began to use its name to identify lascivious lifestyles.
Paul's stay in Corinth is quickly told in Acts 18:1-17. He began his missionary sojourn there as usual, with a time of teaching about Jesus to the Jews in the local synagogue. Paul was eventually forced out by vigorous opponents who refused to acknowledge that Jesus could have been the promised messiah. Although Paul was no longer permitted to speak in the synagogue, the leader of the synagogue became a believer, as did a good number of its members. From a new location in the house adjacent to the synagogue and also from his workspace as a tentmaker in the Corinthian market, Paul broadened his preaching dialogues with people until a thriving congregation was formed of both Jewish and Gentile converts.
Encouraged by a vision that affirmed divine blessing on his ministry in Corinth (Acts 18:9-11), Paul remained in the city at least a year and a half (virtually all of 50 AD and well along into 51 AD). Then he decided to make a report back at his sending church in Syrian Antioch, and took his new friends Priscilla and Aquila along (Acts 18:18). Stopping briefly in Ephesus across the Aegean Sea, Paul felt a strong pull to engage in a similar church-planting effort there. But he was already committed to his travel plans, so he left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus and vowed to return soon (Acts 18:19-21).
It was probably a couple of months later that Paul traveled overland through Asia Minor and set up shop in Ephesus (Acts 19:1). Priscilla and Aquila had already established a solid core of converts and new leaders. Among their number was Apollos, a keen and well-schooled Jew from Alexandria, who was able quickly to understand how Jesus could be the Jewish messiah (Acts 18:24-28).
Paul stayed on in Ephesus for more than two years (Acts 19:8-10) carrying out a number of regional mission journeys (note the various travel itineraries listed in 2 Corinthians 1:15--7:16) and growing a significant Christian presence in the city itself. It was during this time that members from his former congregation in Corinth to contact Paul with questions about theology, ethics and church practices. Paul's responses would eventually become his most passionate and profound letters of Christian instruction. We know them today as 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Probably sometime in late 51 AD or early 52 AD Paul sent a letter of strongly worded reproof to the Corinthian congregation. No copies have survived, but from what Paul himself says about this communication in 1 Corinthians 5:9, it is easy to see why some might take exception to it. Indeed, it appears that a number of people in the congregation began to disown Paul's authority after reading that letter and then began to instigate factionalism in the community. Cliques grew based upon personal preferences about which leaders were better preachers, and who had a right to claim greater sway among them (see 1 Corinthians 2-4). Meanwhile, a delegation of three men (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus), all highly respectful of Paul's apostolic authority, traveled from Corinth to Ephesus, bringing to Paul an oral report about the difficulties going on in the church. They also carried a written list of questions that members of the congregation were raising.
Paul quickly wrote a letter of response. Although it was actually his second letter to the Corinthian congregation, because the earlier communication has been lost, this one survives as 1 Corinthians in our New Testament. Paul quickly addresses the difficulties some have at his continued influence in the congregation. He chastises the members for dividing up into parties where each waves a banner acclaiming the worthiness of a different leader. These groupings were sinful and disruptive, according to Paul, for they denied the honor that ought to be given only to the true head of the church, Jesus Christ.
Before he lashes out with these strong injunctions, Paul's first thought is a note of appreciation to all who have remained faithful in their love for Jesus and their commitments of shared ministry with Paul. While the world may well "Corinthicize" in its mad rush of hedonistic self-destruction, Paul knows that the congregation as a whole is holding onto hope and expectation. God has begun to dawn eternity into time, and they are ready, willing, and able to fully bask in its marvelous warmth and light.
Mark 13:24-37
There is much that is both comforting and, at the same time, disquieting in this familiar parable. We all expect to be sheep, bringing kindness to the ill, care to the poor, hope to the incarcerated, and food to the hungry. But the point of Jesus' parable is that those who do such things do them as a natural outgrowth of their religious disposition, and are not even aware that they are this "sheep" kind of person! If we were able to rack up points, so to speak, we could keep score about our holiness, and win heaven through our good deeds. But we cannot. And yet, in the mystery of grace, if we are informed by God's love and transformed by God's grace, we somehow do things that truly matter.
Notice that the actions Jesus commends are all good and upright and moral and socially transforming. But notice as well that those who do such things, to the glory of God and the honor of Jesus, don't even realize what they are doing. It is not a check-list of perfections that they mark with a pious pen. Instead, it is a lifestyle of other-focus that leads to blessings on those around them.
New Year's resolutions are appropriate, to a degree, since self-discipline is one of the most powerful educational devices available to the human race. Moreover, goals are extremely important in building a life of significance, for "he who aims at nothing will always be certain to achieve it!" But spirituality is never served best when packaged in its nutritional information and festooned with a snobbish price tag that boldly declares, "See what a good boy am I!"
Instead, the point of Jesus' teaching is to tumble our New Year's resolutions on end, and develop eyes for the world around us. If, by the close of this New Year, the edges of darkness are pushed back slightly, children have slept in greater peace, sores have been soothed and loneliness reduced, Jesus' parable will have taken root, and we won't even have noticed it. But others will!
Application
There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville's great epic, Moby Dick, where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (chapter 119). His obsession with the White Whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine Providence might be unleashing furious anger against this ill-fated quest. But Ahab is a fighter, and with clenched fists, amid the lightning bolts and against the raging thunder he yells a taunt at the Creator who chastens his cause: "I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance."
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: "But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee..." He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short -- the one who could "rend the heavens" and "set twigs ablaze" and "cause water to boil" and "cause the nations to quake" and make "the mountains tremble" slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Advent is, for the church, a solid hook in the vast, uncharted chaotic voids of space, allowing us to tether and take our bearings from at least one point which is neither shifting with the currents nor dependent on our own powers to establish it. Advent is the place where Archimedes can set the fulcrum of his lever and move earth and the planets in a meaningful way because there is a critical unmoved position from which everything else is to be measured. Advent is that date on our calendars that was penned in by God, not us, indicating a promised encounter that we might often doubt but which cannot be erased from the pages of time.
An Alternative Application
1 Corinthians 1:3-9. We once promised one of our daughters that we would be making a visit to see her, over 5,000 miles away from where we live, at a certain date in the future. She counted on our arrival and made plans to greet us, to house us, to feed us, and to show us around her world. How could she be so certain that we would be there when we promised? Because she knows our character. She has learned to trust us and trust in us. True, the "fickle finger of fate" might raise all manner of obstacles, and perhaps even void our plans, but not if we could help it. Our word is as good as gold with our daughter. She trusts us. She was confident we would be there. She arranged her life by that promise.
How much more should we expect God to keep promises, as Paul reminds those in the Corinthian congregation? In the spare evidence of these days, when we are roiled by circumstances and challenged by materialistic denials of any first cause, religious trust seems foolish. Except... Except that God made a promise, and we have seen God's character in creation and in the divine affairs with Israel and in the testimony of Jesus. So we wait...
Courage is a funny thing. It's a bit like happiness: the more you seek it, the more you demand it, the more you try to call it up, the less it shows its face.
Words can stir us to courage, but only when they are grounded in confident expectation and hitched to unshakable values or realities. Who would not rally around the "I have a dream..." speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., in which he paints the colors of freedom? Who would not feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940: "Let us... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "
Courage, as faith's activator, is the call in Jesus' words to us today. He sits with his shell-shocked disciples in the temple precincts, sensing the profound disturbance at his words that this marvelous place of holiness and beauty will soon lie in rubble, but pointing them to a larger cataclysm that will shake the whole earth as eternity finally sears into time.
We've been there with the disciples, haven't we? Famed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembered a terrible day during WWII. He was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler's infamous Dachau death camp. "We were at work in a trench," wrote Frankl. "The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces."
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in "living" if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past; only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt "a last violent protest" surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted "yes!" against the "no" of defeat and the gray "I don't know" of the moment.
At that exact second, "a light was lit in a distant farmhouse." Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment he began to live again.
Advent often reminds us of our similar need. The grayness of our bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms us. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today's repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
With David (Psalm 43:3), we shout, "Send forth your light and your truth!" Don't leave me alone. Give me some sign. Light a candle in the window and take me home.
Advent reminds us of the power in Jesus' words to his disciples. God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long,
and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song
and put a lantern in my hand.
Because we know the many pressures of life, there is something absolutely amazing about the strength and peace and confidence that are part of our return to Advent anticipations. We need to remember again the fundamental secret to living on the edge of cruelty and pain and spite and injury and death. We need to learn anew that only a God who has ultimate control over all these things can make life itself meaningful. Only a God who allows the miseries for a time -- as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development -- can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace and joy and harmony.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Isaiah was overwhelmed by a divine commissioning (Isaiah 6) that took place in the temple during the year that King Uzziah died. He was guided by the theology of the Sinai covenant (Isaiah 2-5), which mandated that Israel was supposed to have a unique lifestyle among the nations, a set of behaviors that would serve as a missional call for others to join this holy community in a global return to the ways of their Creator. He was confident that Yahweh could resolve all political problems (Isaiah 7-11), no matter how daunting they might seem. He believed Israel/Judah needed to repent (Isaiah 12) and recover their original identity and purpose as Yahweh's covenant partners and witnesses. He was certain that Yahweh was sovereign over all nations (Isaiah 13-35), even if Yahweh's primary focus was attached to Israel/Judah. He heard the heartbeat of divine love and compassion, wrestling for the soul and destiny of Israel/Judah as a loved companion and partner (Isaiah 36-41). He saw Yahweh transforming Israel's/Judah's identity and fortunes through a "Suffering Servant" leader (Isaiah 42-53). He envisioned a future age in which all the world and every society and even the universe itself would be restored to harmony with its Creator and would resonate with magnificent glory (Isaiah 56-66).
These things must be understood in order to fully appreciate today's lectionary reading. Yahweh's holiness separated God from God's people, as King Uzziah learned when he tried to serve as high priest and instead became a leper under divine judgment. This was still the big story when Isaiah crashed into God's glory the day he received his calling as a prophet.
But the problem of Yahweh's transcendence and otherness was connected to Israel's own waywardness. Precisely because these people could not see God's daily presence or know God's ongoing intimate leadership, they were constantly getting into trouble and doing things in inappropriate ways. This triggered the curses of the Sinai covenant (Exodus 20-24), bringing invading armies, like those of the troubling Assyrians.
For fifty years Isaiah wrote, counseled, pleaded, and wrestled for the soul of Israel. Now, as he peered into the future, he begged Yahweh for closer ties and deeper bonds. Tear apart the veil that separates heaven from earth! Stoop to our level to meet us eye-to-eye! Dip into our world to remind us who we are and whose we are!
In one of the very few occasions throughout the Old Testament, Isaiah dares to call God "Father." This term of endearment was too colloquial and familiar for most of Israel's interaction with Yahweh. But if God's people were to engage God's ways more fully, transcendence must be minimized, and incarnation had to occur.
Isaiah could not imagine just how fully this prayer of his would be answered, but God certainly heard and responded. Jesus not only stepped out of eternity into time, God incarnate among us, but he also taught us to pray "Abba!" ("Daddy!"), naming God as our loving father in the intimacy of family care.
It was indeed earth-shaking, as Matthew notes in his gospel account of Jesus' resurrection. But in that encounter between heaven and earth, everything changed. And, as the writer of Hebrews notes (Hebrews 12:18-29), the shaking that Isaiah hoped for and the quaking that Jesus brought, are only an anticipation of bigger shaking and quaking yet to come, when heaven and earth will be reunited, and we will all know God face-to-face.
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
The city of Corinth, located at the southwestern end of the narrow land bridge between Greece's northern and southern mainland regions, played a vital role for the region in both land and sea trade. It was a wealthy metropolis during the first century AD and coupled that abundance of resources with many social vices. Sexual openness and experimentation, in particular, oozed out of Corinth, until the rest of the Mediterranean world began to use its name to identify lascivious lifestyles.
Paul's stay in Corinth is quickly told in Acts 18:1-17. He began his missionary sojourn there as usual, with a time of teaching about Jesus to the Jews in the local synagogue. Paul was eventually forced out by vigorous opponents who refused to acknowledge that Jesus could have been the promised messiah. Although Paul was no longer permitted to speak in the synagogue, the leader of the synagogue became a believer, as did a good number of its members. From a new location in the house adjacent to the synagogue and also from his workspace as a tentmaker in the Corinthian market, Paul broadened his preaching dialogues with people until a thriving congregation was formed of both Jewish and Gentile converts.
Encouraged by a vision that affirmed divine blessing on his ministry in Corinth (Acts 18:9-11), Paul remained in the city at least a year and a half (virtually all of 50 AD and well along into 51 AD). Then he decided to make a report back at his sending church in Syrian Antioch, and took his new friends Priscilla and Aquila along (Acts 18:18). Stopping briefly in Ephesus across the Aegean Sea, Paul felt a strong pull to engage in a similar church-planting effort there. But he was already committed to his travel plans, so he left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus and vowed to return soon (Acts 18:19-21).
It was probably a couple of months later that Paul traveled overland through Asia Minor and set up shop in Ephesus (Acts 19:1). Priscilla and Aquila had already established a solid core of converts and new leaders. Among their number was Apollos, a keen and well-schooled Jew from Alexandria, who was able quickly to understand how Jesus could be the Jewish messiah (Acts 18:24-28).
Paul stayed on in Ephesus for more than two years (Acts 19:8-10) carrying out a number of regional mission journeys (note the various travel itineraries listed in 2 Corinthians 1:15--7:16) and growing a significant Christian presence in the city itself. It was during this time that members from his former congregation in Corinth to contact Paul with questions about theology, ethics and church practices. Paul's responses would eventually become his most passionate and profound letters of Christian instruction. We know them today as 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Probably sometime in late 51 AD or early 52 AD Paul sent a letter of strongly worded reproof to the Corinthian congregation. No copies have survived, but from what Paul himself says about this communication in 1 Corinthians 5:9, it is easy to see why some might take exception to it. Indeed, it appears that a number of people in the congregation began to disown Paul's authority after reading that letter and then began to instigate factionalism in the community. Cliques grew based upon personal preferences about which leaders were better preachers, and who had a right to claim greater sway among them (see 1 Corinthians 2-4). Meanwhile, a delegation of three men (Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus), all highly respectful of Paul's apostolic authority, traveled from Corinth to Ephesus, bringing to Paul an oral report about the difficulties going on in the church. They also carried a written list of questions that members of the congregation were raising.
Paul quickly wrote a letter of response. Although it was actually his second letter to the Corinthian congregation, because the earlier communication has been lost, this one survives as 1 Corinthians in our New Testament. Paul quickly addresses the difficulties some have at his continued influence in the congregation. He chastises the members for dividing up into parties where each waves a banner acclaiming the worthiness of a different leader. These groupings were sinful and disruptive, according to Paul, for they denied the honor that ought to be given only to the true head of the church, Jesus Christ.
Before he lashes out with these strong injunctions, Paul's first thought is a note of appreciation to all who have remained faithful in their love for Jesus and their commitments of shared ministry with Paul. While the world may well "Corinthicize" in its mad rush of hedonistic self-destruction, Paul knows that the congregation as a whole is holding onto hope and expectation. God has begun to dawn eternity into time, and they are ready, willing, and able to fully bask in its marvelous warmth and light.
Mark 13:24-37
There is much that is both comforting and, at the same time, disquieting in this familiar parable. We all expect to be sheep, bringing kindness to the ill, care to the poor, hope to the incarcerated, and food to the hungry. But the point of Jesus' parable is that those who do such things do them as a natural outgrowth of their religious disposition, and are not even aware that they are this "sheep" kind of person! If we were able to rack up points, so to speak, we could keep score about our holiness, and win heaven through our good deeds. But we cannot. And yet, in the mystery of grace, if we are informed by God's love and transformed by God's grace, we somehow do things that truly matter.
Notice that the actions Jesus commends are all good and upright and moral and socially transforming. But notice as well that those who do such things, to the glory of God and the honor of Jesus, don't even realize what they are doing. It is not a check-list of perfections that they mark with a pious pen. Instead, it is a lifestyle of other-focus that leads to blessings on those around them.
New Year's resolutions are appropriate, to a degree, since self-discipline is one of the most powerful educational devices available to the human race. Moreover, goals are extremely important in building a life of significance, for "he who aims at nothing will always be certain to achieve it!" But spirituality is never served best when packaged in its nutritional information and festooned with a snobbish price tag that boldly declares, "See what a good boy am I!"
Instead, the point of Jesus' teaching is to tumble our New Year's resolutions on end, and develop eyes for the world around us. If, by the close of this New Year, the edges of darkness are pushed back slightly, children have slept in greater peace, sores have been soothed and loneliness reduced, Jesus' parable will have taken root, and we won't even have noticed it. But others will!
Application
There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville's great epic, Moby Dick, where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (chapter 119). His obsession with the White Whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine Providence might be unleashing furious anger against this ill-fated quest. But Ahab is a fighter, and with clenched fists, amid the lightning bolts and against the raging thunder he yells a taunt at the Creator who chastens his cause: "I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance."
Yet even Captain Ahab, torn by his demons and captured as much by the Whale as he seeks to capture it, knows that there is a need greater than victory and a power more tenacious than brutal force. He falls to the deck in a tormented confession: "But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee..." He almost pleads with God to stop the awful battering of antagonistic powers and descend in kind humility so that the passions of love might be reborn and rekindled again.
This, of course, is a marvelous bridge between the bellicose prophecies of the Old Testament and the juxtaposed incarnation of Jesus that emerged out of them. God did indeed come down, like God had done in the times of Moses and the Pharaoh. But this time God chose the suckling child rather than the plague blasts as the means of arrival and encounter. We who marshal our forces for good or for evil are suddenly caught up short -- the one who could "rend the heavens" and "set twigs ablaze" and "cause water to boil" and "cause the nations to quake" and make "the mountains tremble" slipped in as a helpless child, and the world knelt to kiss him on a starry night in Bethlehem.
This is the language of Advent, the renewed language of confidence in God, the crisis of these times, and the anticipated next act of divine intervention in human affairs. But it all begins with the faithfulness of God upon which our own faith and faithfulness can be pinned.
Advent is, for the church, a solid hook in the vast, uncharted chaotic voids of space, allowing us to tether and take our bearings from at least one point which is neither shifting with the currents nor dependent on our own powers to establish it. Advent is the place where Archimedes can set the fulcrum of his lever and move earth and the planets in a meaningful way because there is a critical unmoved position from which everything else is to be measured. Advent is that date on our calendars that was penned in by God, not us, indicating a promised encounter that we might often doubt but which cannot be erased from the pages of time.
An Alternative Application
1 Corinthians 1:3-9. We once promised one of our daughters that we would be making a visit to see her, over 5,000 miles away from where we live, at a certain date in the future. She counted on our arrival and made plans to greet us, to house us, to feed us, and to show us around her world. How could she be so certain that we would be there when we promised? Because she knows our character. She has learned to trust us and trust in us. True, the "fickle finger of fate" might raise all manner of obstacles, and perhaps even void our plans, but not if we could help it. Our word is as good as gold with our daughter. She trusts us. She was confident we would be there. She arranged her life by that promise.
How much more should we expect God to keep promises, as Paul reminds those in the Corinthian congregation? In the spare evidence of these days, when we are roiled by circumstances and challenged by materialistic denials of any first cause, religious trust seems foolish. Except... Except that God made a promise, and we have seen God's character in creation and in the divine affairs with Israel and in the testimony of Jesus. So we wait...
