Mark is in a hurry. No sooner does he slap a title on his Gospel than he’s off and running. Yet even that title makes one stop and think. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Beginning? Good news? Is he resetting the clock? Making a fresh start? Will this good news be a second chance, an enduring new hope?
As soon as Mark teases us with his title, he points to Jesus as the fulfillment, not the repudiation, of what was written in the past. The words of Israel’s prophets are coming to pass. John the Baptizer is the predicted voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. In his enthusiasm, Mark says that everyone comes out to see John, but when one is talking about the beginning of a new world, some hyperbole is understandable.
John’s a queer character indeed, and it is easy for us to get caught up in his dress and diet, missing his message. He points forward, toward the more powerful one coming after him who will baptize not with water but with a mysterious Holy Spirit. That one, of course, is the Christ, already named in the first verse. The new era is here.
Biblical time is a curious thing. It can be very long or very short. “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day,” wrote the author of the second letter of Peter. When God is waiting for us, time stretches out. “The Lord…is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Our waiting for God can also seem to take forever. “We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is home.” Clearly righteousness is not very much at home on the earth we now inhabit.
How do we reconcile God’s time and our time? How do we reconcile Mark’s conviction that a new world has begun in Jesus Christ when everything seems just the same as it always has been? That’s the paradox of the Christian life. It is the central characteristic of the kingdom of God, already here yet still to come. It confronts us every Advent.
Peter’s letter gives us a remarkable clue to our place in this paradox. “What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness,” he wrote, “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” Waiting for and hastening the day of God! We are not passive observers of God’s time. We are active participants. In this new creation, what we do has an effect on time.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that what we do changes our perception of time. If we work for the coming of the Kingdom, that place where righteousness is home, then years may seem like days. If we turn away from God, days may feel like years. Yet the patience of God lasts even longer, as God waits for us to repent and turn back.
Advent, the time of paradox, is also a time to be mindful of how we live. “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by God at peace, without spot or blemish.” Like Lent, Advent is inwardly focused, though not so penitential. Advent is God’s time, conflating a birth two thousand years ago with the present age and a future yet to come. It is indeed a new beginning, predicted in the past, still unfolding. Let it be for us a time of joyful waiting.
[Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8.]
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
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3 comments:
That first line of St. Mark is my favorite of the whole book: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God:” It ranks for me with Genesis 1:1 and St. John 1:1 and Hebrews 1:1-2. In all four of these, one is arrested immediately with the sense that this is something of utmost importance – as it is. I am glad that the Collect for the Feast of St. Mark incorporates this phrase.
Having said that, St. Mark is probably my least favorite of the Gospels, though I respect its raw intensity. Perhaps this year I will see more in it; it is, after all, Holy Writ, along with the other three.
I am not sure that I agree with you about Advent being less penitential than Lent. It is not so if one reads the Office. “For three transgressions of Israel and for four...” as we heard last Sunday morning from Amos: and in Year One, we get the first chapters of Isaiah. Advent is a coming to terms with how thoroughly we have screwed things up. This year more than any in my memory, this is something we need to hear.
But there is light shining in the darkness, a light that cannot be extinguished. In terms of the Lectionary, it culminates with Evensong for December 24 and Isaiah 59, where “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter,” but the LORD sees it and does something about it: “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion...”
And before this, when we finally make it to the week of Advent 4 and the lessons from chapter 1 of St. Luke, the great lessons of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Magnificat, the Song of Zechariah – it always is all I do to get through them, for the glory of the LORD is in these stories, almost too much for us to bear.
There is indeed light shining in the darkness. It is that light toward which we are hurtling in Advent, not the cross. That is why I say that Advent is not so penitential as Lent. We do not prepare to place ourselves at the foot of the cross; we prepare to worship the newborn King. Purification is necessary, as is the recognition of why that birth is needed at all. It does have a penitential flavor. Advent reminds us once again that we must pray at all times in the Spirit.
I did not appreciate Mark until a course in seminary where we walked through it in Greek. One must necessarily slow down then, to see what lies behind Mark's haste. It is not as satisfying a Gospel, to be sure: no nativity narratives, no resurrection appearances. Yet it has great integrity in its own narrative form, and set the standard for the other Gospels. Would Luke still seem so beautiful if we did not know Mark?
These ideas will help me, I hope, as we live with St. Mark for a year of Sundays. And I now see your point about Advent. Thank you!
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