Reading the signs of the times — and responding with integrity

A sermon preached at All Hallows by Katharine Salmon on 30 November 2008
(Advent Sunday)

• Audio (listen to this sermon online)

Readings:

Isaiah 64:1—9, 1 Corinthians 1:3—9, Mark 13:24—37

The first Sunday of the new liturgical year brings together many aspects of our relationship with God that draw us to reflect through the seven hundred years that span Isaiah to Corinthians — and then on to where we find ourselves today. What does it mean to wrestle with God, to watch and to wait and to engage in the world with all its challenges, difficulties and fears as we look at the signs of the times?

I imagine it was always a difficult job being a prophet, whether in Isaiah’s time or in NT times, as prophets were frequently misunderstood. It can be tempting to try to read this in terms of prophecies of the end of the world and the return of Christ, and too often these passages lead to preachers trying to come up with specific information about these. I promise I won’t attempt that this morning. I feel it is more helpful to try to see what these passages were saying to the early Christian communities, and to the Jewish communities in the case of Isaiah, and see how they may speak to us today.

In many ways Advent is a helpful time for looking back through our Biblical history and a time of thanksgiving for God’s providing for us, and looking forward to our growing relationship with God and our development as a Christian community as we seek to know where God is calling us in our ministry here in Hyde Park and in the other communities we belong to. It is a time to renew our prayer, find time to be with God, and to find time just to be among the busyness and hassles that so often characterize the Advent season because too often we are surrounded by commercialisation, hype and what feels like an endless treadmill of shopping and the media frenzy that frequently invades our personal space!

This passage is the second half of Jesus’ sermon — it uses the language of high apocalyptic symbolism in order to address the request for ‘true signs’ of the end of the world. The apocalyptic vision, according to liberation theologian Ched Myers, looks to the end of the politics of violence. Jesus says that things will only change when the principalities and powers are pulled down from their ‘heavenly thrones’. Mark particularly identifies the darkening sun with the revelation of Christ — it is the second time Mark mentions the dramatic advent of Christ (Mark 8:38).

Traditional theology has often assumed that these verses in Mark 13 refer to a time beyond the bounds of story and history — the Second Coming. There are 3 occasions of Christ’s coming in Mark’s Gospel which parallel the 3 revelations of his death. At the heart of Mark’s apocalyptic vision is Christ’s demonstration of the power of non-violence. Ched Myers suggests it is read as a prelude to Gethsemane and Jesus’ ultimate gesture of non-violence.

There is a consistently strong parallel between Jesus’ words here in the chaotic reality of 1st-century Palestine and our own chaotic world situation. We see economic downturn, environmental disasters, wars and famines. We don’t have to look further than the TV news to see news of violence in our own communities and the wider world. We are often aware of what feels like our own powerlessness in the situations around us. When we witness the growing disparity between rich and poor, it is hard to believe in the redemptive purpose of history. How do we get the balance between the temptation to react with angry emotion when we see the environmental destruction of our world’s resources, or the death of a child where the services that should have protected him failed to do so, or responding with panaceas and the belief that God will make everything all right. How do we read the signs of the times and respond with integrity?

From the Gospel perspective experiencing pain, sorrow, grief — we enter into Christ’s agony as well as into Advent. In faith communities like All Hallows we can bring the pain of the world and the pain of our own community to God in prayer. We face our own brokenness in the brokenness of the world, and we connect at a deep level, deeper than that given by our media, or even our humanity.

The reign of God that this passage talks about goes beyond our individual souls — to an entire radical transformation of the social order. There is room at the divine banquet for everybody — outcasts sitting in the place of honour at the banquet, Christ’s healing love available and given to all.

Before she was martyred in El Salvador, Jean Donovan spoke of the vulnerability of following Christ, the risk of walking into the unknown with a friend who often seems to disappear or go ahead instead of staying close by. The risky calling of Advent is to watch and pray and look at the signs around us — engaging in that struggle, watching and praying in the darkness, despite the darkness, through the darkness. It is engaging with our community. It is about struggling with God. Eventually coming to the realisation at the end as Isaiah does, that God is the potter, and we are the clay, and we are the work of God’s hand, even in our brokenness. It can be really hard to hang on in there and say that in the times when our lives and the lives of those around us perhaps seem to resemble broken pieces of pottery rather than a beautiful work of art.

Sometimes the pottery God makes us into is not what we expect. Hence, this illustration which I call ‘The Greenbelt Panda’ This was the year of making the lifesize Noah’s Ark at Greenbelt — some of you may remember it— and in one of the big marquees, lots of people were making animals of all shapes and sizes. Some animals were very obvious, especially the dinosaurs being made by a large group of children, other children were making sheep, or other sensible animals. Well, however hard I tried, this panda was not going to be a panda, and this was even in the days of me having two hands working normally, but it was also the Greenbelt when I was first conscious of my walking getting worse, having spent most of that summer in and out of hospital, and however hard I tried, this panda would not have proper panda legs. Thoroughly frustrated, I was going to squash it back into its ball of clay and give up, when one of the little boys who was making a rather beautiful sheep reminded me that of course God knew I was making a panda, and really that was all that mattered, so I kept my Greenbelt panda as a reminder that God knows what to do with clay even when we don’t!

In Advent, we are called to look at the signs of the times — called to watch and pray with whatever engages us around us in our lives and communities.

The Jewish communities knew signs from Scripture They knew the tradition of God’s engagement with the Israelites through darkness and despair to hope. Isaiah struggles with God in today’s OT reading. His relationship with God is characterized by intimacy and mutuality — two essential qualities of friendship. He wrestles with God, chiding god for letting us wander — expressing anger with God — why do you hide your face — He finally admits our need of God as the potter — and us being the clay — and the relationship is restored —but it is in the OT sense of relationship — highlighting sin as dividing us from God. Contrast this with the NT relationship with God — strengthened by faith in Christ — full of grace, knowing that the relationship and love are freely given.

Both Isaiah and Paul in the letter to the Corinthians express hope and desire for future revelation.

Elie Wiesel — Just person came to Sodom determined to save its inhabitants — day and night he walked through the streets and markets protesting against greed and falsehood and intolerance. In the beginning, people listened and smiled ironically. Then they stopped listening: he no longer amused them. The killers went on killing, the wise men kept silent, as if there were no just person in their midst.

One day a child, moved by compassion for the unfortunate teacher, approached him with these words:

Poor stranger, you shout, you scream, don’t you see that it is hopeless?

Yes, I see, answered the just person.

Then why do you go on?

I’ll tell you why. In the beginning, I thought I could change others. Today, I know I cannot. If I still cry out, it is to prevent others from ultimately changing me.

Today as we reflect on our place in the watching and waiting of Advent, the challenge is to wrestle with God in the places we find hard to understand in our own lives, and in the society around us, to find time to meet with God in the weeks leading up to our celebrations of Christ’s birth. Can we, as Brother Roger of Taizé said, ‘tear our hands from our eyes and go forward with the light of our faith’?

In monastic religious communities it is often the custom for each member of the community to be given a candle on the first Sunday in Advent, and encouraged to use it in prayer, and in watching and waiting. In my former community, we would often use the Celtic prayer which is on the bulletin as we watched and waited and wrestled with God for ourselves, our community and our world.

‘Calm us to watch for the gift of Christ;
Cleanse us to prepare the way for Christ;
Teach us to contemplate the wonder of Christ;
Touch us to know the presence of Christ;
Anoint us to bear the life of Christ.’

I leave you the prayer and the candle as a sign of hope in your waiting and watching this Advent.

Copyright © 2008 Katharine Salmon

Audio

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*Notes on the audio formats

• MP4 format
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• MP3 format
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• RealAudio format
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  Alternatively, you can install Real Alternative, which will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player. Real Alternative is free, and works well with all major browsers; it is also a much smaller download (5.7 MB). Get it from http://www.free-codecs.com/Real_Alternative_download.htm.

This page was last updated on Sunday, 7 December 2008

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