A homily by Fr.
Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church ,
Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, November
27, 2011.
“HURRY UP AND WAIT”
(Homily text: Mark 13: 24 - 37)
“Hurry up and wait.”
No doubt,
if you’ve spent time in the military, you’ve heard this phrase, and have
probably used it yourself.
Use of the
phrase isn’t limited to veterans, however….I’ve often heard it used in
non-military settings, as well.
Waiting,
and hurrying to get to the place of waiting, are a fact of life….we wait in
lines here and there quite frequently, don’t we? And sometimes, we hurry to get to the place
where we will wait for awhile.
The two
ideas: hurrying and waiting, come
together in this season of Advent.
Hurrying
implies being busy doing something (in the military, it usually involved
getting ready to do something), while waiting carries with it the sense that
someone else is in charge (otherwise, we wouldn’t be waiting, if we’d had our
own way, would we?).
In this
holy season of preparation, a season in which we prepare to receive Jesus
Christ again at the great Feast of the Nativity (Christmas), we are to be busy,
getting our hearts and our minds in a condition so that He might take up
residence and be born in our hearts anew.
We are also
to be busy, getting ready for the Lord’s eventual return at the close of the
age. It is that time when He will come
in judgment.
These two
themes: Preparing for the Lord Jesus
Christ’s first coming at Christmas, and preparing for His eventual coming at
the close of the age, constitute the two great themes of the Advent season.
Having
mentioned the word “judgment”, we ought to pause here for a moment and have a
look at our gospel text for today, from Mark, chapter thirteen.
Notice the
foreboding language: “But in those days,
after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give
its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the
heavens will be shaken….”
Here, Jesus
uses traditional language which carries with it a clear sense of God’s
judgment. Darkened skies, the light of
the sun and of the moon failing, these things (and others) are meant to set up
in the listeners’ minds the fact that God is coming to judge.
Jesus’
language is drawn from a well-established tradition, and uses much the same
language that the ancient prophets used to describe God’s coming judgment. (We can see the same sort of language in Joel
2: 15, 2:31, and 3:15, for example.)
If God is
bringing His judgment, His coming judgment, in the return of Christ, who is
King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 17: 14 and 19:16), then what are we
to be doing as we wait for that day to come?
Christians
down through the ages have come to different conclusions as they await that
day. Some approaches among the family of
God have included:
Watching the skies and waiting: From the earliest days of Christianity, this
approach has been present. It was a
significant problem for the early Christians in Thessolonika, so much so that
St. Paul had to admonish those who were sitting around, waiting for the Lord to
return. He told them bluntly to not be
idle, saying “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If anyone will not work, let him not
eat. For we hear that some of you are
living in idleness, more busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the
Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own
living.” (II Thessalonians 3: 10 – 12) So some have wished that day would come by
sitting and waiting for it to happen, doing little (or nothing) else in the
meantime. Alas, as we look around the
body of Christ today, we can see evidence that some believers are taking the
same path, for they seem to focus quite heavily on the coming age, to the
exclusion of the present time in which we live.
Being about the business of ministry: Other Christians have tended to focus almost
exclusively on the work that God would have us do in the time and place in
which we live. Social outreach
ministries take a prominent place in these Christians’ lives and work. As important and vital as such ministries
are, the danger is that, oftentimes, such a focus can tend to push an awareness
of the coming day of judgment toward the back of our minds. In extreme cases, the reality of the coming
judgment is dismissed as an ancient belief practice that is couched in
traditional language, language that was common in ancient times. Such a view tends to see the language that we
encounter in today’s gospel text primarily in figurative terms.
Holding the two realities in tension: A third way of approaching the business of
being ready for the Lord’s eventual return is to hold that day in view at all
times, while being about the business that God has set before us in the day in
which we live, and in the settings where we find ourselves. The two realities thus come together, and are
held in tension. Such an approach tends
to see that both realities are not mutually exclusive concerns, that the need
for watching and waiting and for
productive uses of our time are to be held in truth alongside one another.
How then
might we hold the two realities in tension with one another, living as mature
believers in Christ?
I think the
word “mature” is to be a key aspect of our approach.
For us to
come to a mature faith in Christ, we must recognize that it is the Lord’s first
coming does two things for us:
- His first coming brings us into a right relationship with God. God’s love is seen in the coming of Jesus Christ. Christ came so that His death on the cross might pay the penalty for our sins. We are able to become righteous in the sight of God, as a result.
- Jesus’ first coming presents us with the blueprint for living a life that is pleasing to God. Consider the pattern of life that He provides as we think about the things He did in His earthly ministry:
- His care for the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, the lonely, the destitute,
- His teachings, which cast light on God the Father’s nature and His will for us,
- His miracles, which demonstrate that God’s very presence was made manifest in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Truly, as He said in John 14: 9b, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
But in
between that first and the second one, God’s judgment comes to us, day-by-day,
situation-by-situation, as we either choose to live by Jesus’ example, or
not. And as we do so, we are already
under judgment. In this sense then, time
collapses as God’s eternal time blurs the lines of time as we know it.
So, let us
“hurry up” and be concerned with the work God would have us to do in Christ’s
name, while we wait for His coming in power and great glory.
AMEN.
