Sermon of Pamela Werntz

Last week we marked the end of a liturgical year with the last teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew – Matthew’s version of the Son of Man coming in great glory to sort everything out (that is, every nation out) using the criterion of service to those who are hungry, thirsty, strange, naked, sick and in prison. Today we start a new liturgical year. Happy New Year everyone! It’s the beginning of Advent – and where does the lectionary take us? To the same spot in Mark’s gospel – Jesus’ final teaching before the passion narrative begins. So we begin where we ended. It’s circular and not linear – church and life. Endings and beginnings are all wrapped up together.

Mark’s version has some similarities and some differences compared to Matthew’s version – each of the Gospel writers tells the story of Jesus in their own way. In this case, Matthew and Mark both describe the end of the world and each has Jesus giving some advice for how to prepare for the final exam! Like Matthew, Mark’s Jesus is offering words of assurance, of hope and comfort. In Mark, the context is destruction, desolation and despair. The arrival of the Son of Man, Mark’s Jesus says, is going to be so powerful and glorious that it will knock the stars right out of the sky – that’s how big it’s going to be. There will be smoke and angels – it’s going to be very very impressive. Bigger than anything anyone has ever seen.

The interesting thing to me is that there’s no mention of what will happen to those who aren’t gathered, the “non-elect.” For Mark the focus is purely on those who have been suffering and how they will participate in the eternal rule of the Son, having been gathered from every direction and from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. I like that – it reminds me of what I’ve said a thousand times to my kids when they’ve clamored to point out someone else’s wrong-doing or to know someone else’s punishment. “You just worry about your own behavior,” Mark seems to be saying.

Jesus says something in Mark that Matthew doesn’t mention: no one knows when this will happen -- even he doesn’t know when it will happen. So what to do in the meantime? How shall we live between now and the end of the world as we know it? Well, learn a lesson from the fig tree, Jesus says.

The contrast is dramatic isn’t it? In one breath, Jesus is describing the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling stars, shaking heaven and earth. And in the next breath, he’s talking about a plain old fig tree right in front of them. For us it might be a maple tree or an oak tree. Biblical scholars can’t agree on what this means – why this reference to a fig tree is there in the middle of this story. Maybe Mark made a mistake – maybe he missed part of the story, or the connection, once obvious, is now obscure. There are lots of ways to make meaning of this passage of the fig tree or it can be dismissed as irrelevant. Perhaps you know, there’s a rabbinical argument that if the Word (that is, the Bible) was not inspired by God, we wouldn’t be able find so many different and even contradictory meanings in it! I happen to find this passage to be particularly inspired and inspiring.

I’m thinking that Jesus is inviting his listeners (we are they) to pay attention to what’s going on right in front of us. Because no-one, not even Jesus, knows when the end will come. So what is the lesson of the fig tree – the tree that’s mentioned in the Bible probably more than any tree other than the majestic cedars of Lebanon? As soon as its branch becomes tender – supple – yielding to pressure and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the Son of Man is near, at the very gates. In other words, pay attention – watch -- and pray, some ancient biblical manuscripts add.

The Gospel of Mark’s emphasis is on keeping awake. The Greek is probably better translated: keep watch, be alert, be alive – watch for signs in what is right in front of you – be alert for God’s saving action in the world – be alive to the possibilities of grace happening when the stars begin to fall.

It occurs to me that I don’t know a thing about the End of the World, capital E, capital W. But I do know something about endings of worlds, endings that have darkened the sun and the moon, made the stars fall from heaven, shaken all I know of heaven right out of me. I know something about endings due to death, and other losses not quite so devastating, but still worthy of enormous grief. I know, with some considerable distance in terms of length of time, the new beginnings that have been born out of those endings. I can remember and point to folks who, I believe, were angels, messengers, sent from God to gather up the pieces of my broken heart. I imagine that Jesus is saying, while you are waiting that considerable length of time for the world to be made right again, pay attention what’s going on right in front of you. Watch for God at the gates – especially the gates to your hearts. Keep watch and pray.

Pay attention. (I once worked for a guy who was constantly saying “I’m so broke, I can’t even afford to pay attention.” – and although he was joking, I found it to be sadly true more times than not.) Keeping watch actually requires some work – particularly teamwork – folks taking turns at a watch post while others eat or rest. While one is keeping watch, it makes sense to stay awake – but this is not a final lesson from Jesus about tossing and turning and worrying all night long. It’s about being attentive and being alive to the possibilities of new beginnings even in the midst of the chaos of grief, not succumbing to the deadening numbness that might get us through the day, but doesn’t make us more available to God.

When I was working on this sermon I remembered Annie Dillard’s book, For the Time Being, where she writes this piece called “Now.”1 I’m going to read it to you.

“Now. There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time – or even knew selflessness or courage or literature – but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

There is no less holiness at this time…than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day…Ezekiel…saw visions of God. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said “Maid, arise” to the centurion’s daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.

Purity’s time is always now. Purity is no social phenomenon, a cultural thing whose time we have missed, whose generations are dead…. “Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai,” says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment, Tillich said, “If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all.”

So as we begin this new year, I hear Jesus reminding us to expect that the Holy One is near – and that indications of the same are all around, in things as ordinary as trees.