MK 1:1-8 

Marginally Mark…2nd Sunday of Advent…Revised 2017 

For MK & those who’ve followed & succeeded him & his ‘brand’ of Christianity down the years since Jesus’ presence on earth, the Gospel begins not with Bethlehem but with the arrival on the scene of John the Baptiser. JB echoes earlier prophets Malachi & (2nd) Isaiah, promising, & at the same time, warning, that Someone will succeed him & baptise with Holy Spirit rather than water.

If ‘coming-ness’ is a main theme of Advent (as I believe it is) today our thrust may be that the coming-ness of people to JB will be succeeded by, & in a way, fulfilled by the coming-ness of God in Person in the Son of Humanity, Jesus the Christ. In whom the coming-ness of God’s quality of time (kairos) superimposes God-self on human subservience to, & fascination with, length of time, chronos. God’s will is only done on earth as it is in Heaven when God’s time & ours are aligned. Heaven being wherever & whenever & by whom-ever God is to be found.

If ‘MK’ makes a choice of where to begin, the other three gospels also make their own choices. Leaving us to answer the question, ‘Where does our gospel begin? Our own, personal, experience of gospel? Is there something symbolic in our uncertainty about where MK’s gospel ends? We do need to identify where gospel begins for us, but true Gospel doesn't have an ending, does it?

 In starting as he does by quoting Isaiah, MK straightway draws our attention to how much Jesus builds on the message - there IS just one message - of spiritual giants gone before. Experience tells me we can't assume our hearers know & understand the connectedness & continuity of Scripture & life.

I think it's John Dominic Crossan who somewhere points out there's a religio-political edge to people being called out across Jordan to JB, & then, after baptism, having to re-enter the Promised Land & reconquer it for God. This time with changed hearts, not swords. The real way to 'make God's paths straight'. Living out God’s politics is what it's all about. What we're meant to be all about. Ched Myers1 makes a related comment: ‘…the new order of the kingdom does not rise from within existing power relationships but quite independently of them, at the margins of society.’

None of this is a matter of ‘What’s in it for us?’, but, ‘What’s in it for God?’ When we're called, baptised, Spirit-filled, then we too can point beyond ourselves & our strengths or frailties, & those of our world & its politics, to Jesus, the Christ of God among us by His Spirit. As Jesus points us beyond Himself to God the Source of all Being.

1 Binding the Strong Man, Orbis, Maryknoll, NY, ’97 edn., p.122

MK 13:24-37 

Marginally Mark…Advent 1…Revised 2017

Many, of course, will see ‘Mark’ tweaking what Jesus has said long before to hold out both encouragement & hope for times becoming more & more difficult. Jesus hasn’t ‘come back’ yet, & the young church is walking a hard path as is the Jewish nation. Brendan Byrne¹ puts it: ‘What is described here in highly apocalyptic language is not ….to be taken literally. This does not mean it has no relationship to reality. The gospel’s describing a transcendent reality - the establishment of God’s Rule on earth  - & employing the only language suitable for expressing that reality: the language of symbol & myth.’ 

All this adds up to the need for a great deal of imagination in our preaching. Advent calls us to wait hopefully. Wait & hope for Whom? Wait & hope for what? How are we to wait? What’s the significance of a Church heading towards Christmas with a passage leading up to the end of Jesus’ earthly life?  

Jesus is drawing on the Scriptural heritage of His people & the tribulations they've already experienced & weathered over the centuries to challenge disciples of His day. Two millennia later, He’s challenging us to face the realities & consequences of the politics of our day, too. What encouragement can we gain from the picture ‘MK’ paints of Jesus back then? What kind of encouragement does today's Community of Believers walking a similarly hard path need?

Heavenly powers of any kind don't seem to cut much mustard today, do they? Before we take refuge in apocalyptic, remember there are always more signs on the ground than in the heavens! Today's signs may be different, for the church & for the world at large. But they’re still signs; for those with spiritual eyes & ears to see & hear! Christ is born in squalor, raised amidst terror, despised & rejected by most of those He came to, crucified beside a rubbish dump, & raised from death to show God’s grace & love & ultimate power. Can we serve such a Christ if we’re failing to care for His fellow-belittled? In our chronos while we wait for God’s kairos to triumph? Jesus’ 'fig tree' allusion is an illustration of a principle of God's Rule: being ready demands being ready now, in our chronos, & God’s overlapping kairos.

Advent isn’t about Christ coming at Christmas, back again in Resurrection, or even at the ‘Last Day’. But it is about ‘coming-ness & coming-together-ness; God’s way(s) of coming. It is about God’s kairos, when necessary, over-taking & over-riding our chronos situations.

¹ A Costly Freedom, Liturgical, MN, 2008, p. 207