Standing Under the Scriptures
December 7, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Isaiah 40.1-11: In language of incomparable beauty, the prophet proclaims the redemption of Israel from its exile.

Mark 1.1-8: Picking up from the Isaiah passage, Mark portrays John the Baptist as the forerunner of the Christ

These weekly notices began as way of expressing thoughts about our readings which had come to me too late to be articulated in the class. I will be doing some of that in this notice. But let us go first to things that did get said.

In our first reading, 1 Corinthians 1.3-9, we noted especially two features. Firstly, although Paul later cites some serious shortcomings in his Corinthian converts---factionalism, even a flagrant sexual irregularity---here he speaks of them as enriched in every way by the grace given them in Christ Jesus and, further, as not lacking in any spiritual gift. But rather than regarding this as a self-contradiction, we found it to be an illustration of a central feature of his letters. This is that they hold within the same optic both the actual condition of his addressees and the condition to which in Christ they have been called. As for how Paul achieved this combination, we saw that it was essentially by his summoning his readers to live into their calling---thereby summoning us also, while providing a model for our own dealing with people.

Secondly, from his summons he goes on to give a rationale to the Corinthians for living into their calling: “…as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is to say that they may then be guiltless in the Day of his appearing, his Second Coming. The Day necessarily entails judgment, from which he wants for them to be spared. His reprovals of them later on in the letter may be seen as directed to the same end.

As for the nature of the Day, of Christ’s Second Coming, our Gospel reading, for which we took the whole of Mark 13, speaks of the nature of this. Thus it complements the Corinthians passage, and both passages comport with the focus of Advent. Mark 13 is known as the Little Apocalypse by virtue of its resemblance to the Book of Revelation with its account of disasters coming upon the world. It consists of Jesus’ response to his disciples’ exclamation over the great buildings that they see when they arrive in Jerusalem. He forecasts not only the buildings’ eventual destruction but also the coming of a time of turmoil and utter calamity. False Christs will arise, nations will war against each other, his followers will suffer persecution, and deadly divisions will result even within families. The setting up of a “desolating sacrilege” will inaugurate scenes of utter desolation. Indeed, the disorders will be of such magnitude as to be reflected on a cosmic level. He conveys this by quoting verses from the Old Testament, mainly Isaiah: “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven… “

But it is at just this point that the Son of man will be seen “coming in clouds with great power and glory.” And with him will come the new life that is to arise out of the old; Jesus speaks of the “birth pangs.” And he uses the figure of a fig tree about to send forth its leaves to convey this conjuncture of events. In conclusion he stresses the unknown timing of his coming and the need therefore to watch.

In our assessment of the passage we discussed the difficulty we have, in our secure upper middle class environment, in comprehending the catastrophes that Jesus speaks of (some of which did come about when the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion of the years 66 to 70). We might have been better equipped to understand had we been in Europe in World War II or in Vietnam as it was collapsing, or perhaps living currently in Mumbai. But we perhaps did not focus sufficiently on the place that such events have in the overall scheme of things. They are here presented as signs of the Second Coming. And this in turn points to a resolution of the preceding difficulties, the manner even of this Sunday’s magnificent Isaiah passage. The image of the fig tree putting forth leaves is in its gentleness to the same effect. Luke’s version of the Little Apocalypse puts it this way.

”Now when these things begin to take place, look and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (21.28)

That there is an element of judgment in the Little Apocalypse, as also in our Corinthians passage, is not to be denied. The disasters that will be inflicted even on the elect suggest that they too are in need of purification. But judgment is not to be separated from redemption. Without judgment it cannot be fully meaningful, for then what we are redeemed from is left amorphous, ill defined. Conversely, without a consciousness of redemption, at least at some level, judgment cannot be borne. Redemption history is the answer, I think, to the question to be asked of events, both personal and historical: Where is the Lord in this, as Judge and as Redeemer? Still in the Second Coming we may regard judgment as outweighed, indeed vastly, by redemption. The injunction to watch, which Jesus addresses not just to his immediate hearers but to “all,” is not to be taken as a threat of punishment if we fail to do so. Instead it is an advisory of the blessedness that we will thereby miss out on. For this blessedness can come to us only if we are prepared.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted