a lawless blog

First Sunday of Advent B
November 27, 2011

Reading I: Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7
Responsorial Psalm: 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19
Reading II: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Gospel: Mark 13:33-37

Advent is about the coming of the Lord: not only in the birth of Jesus

or in the final gathering of all the nations of the earth,

but in everyday happenings.

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening, or at midnight,
or at cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!'"

On your toes!

What does it mean that the gospels open with an urgent call for personal change because something's in the air, and end on a note of urgency: Stay awake!

Early Christians thought it meant the end of the world was just around the corner. After 2000 years we don't seem to worry too much about that. Perhaps we feel that evolution has still some way to go before the human adventure is shut down.

Maybe we can hear the "Stay awake!" as a call to be always on the lookout for new opportunities, new openings, a new start, for the Lord comes in many different ways every minute, every day. As a new year of liturgical celebration begins we are watching for the coming of the Lord all over again.

The four gospels are extraordinary literature. If we could get away from the ennui bred over many years of repeated readings, followed by dreary sermons that fail to trigger our imagination or even incite our interest. It is fascinating just to look at the gospel accounts of what Jesus said and did in those three brief years. The dramatic energy in the way the accounts are put together, from the initial urgent call for change to the very unusual closure, the call to "Be watchful! Be alert! Stay awake!"

It's like a coach with his team before a big game: "You've got to make up your mind to win!" he begins, and after going through the various strategies, he sends them out with a urgent: "Keep on your toes!"

Is there something about human kind that we need to be told to "Wake up"? Is it a fatal flaw that has grown more critical as civilisation has advanced? "She'll be right, mate!" "Chill out! Don't stress. Siddown! You make me nervous." Whenever there is an enquiry following a disaster, the report often remarks on a lack of preparation, a lack of attention to some risk, a failure to foresee what in retrospect is all too obvious. Somebody was asleep on the job.

Perhaps this is a special problem for religion, where stability and establishment seem to be more important since they bolster the authority of the priesthood. In every other part of life we have always to be changing, always ready to take a new step, to turn an opportunity into an achievement. Success in business, in sport, in education, in science, in warfare, in love... Success comes to the one who is ready to grasp the opportunity, to capitalise on the chance, to drop old patterns and adopt a new approach as circumstances change.

Education is good, as is training, skill, habit, tradition, discipline, drive, commitment: all these are good, but without alertness and flexibility they are a trap because we get too relaxed, thinking we have done everything we had to do to win, and we don't notice some change, something unexpected.

Quiet contemplation is good, but the contemplative too must be alert and flexible.

It seems pretty clear that the institutional church is suffering from this sort of crippling rigidity. The Church even sees Tradition as a prime value and holding on to traditional ways a prime virtue. I wonder why, when around me nature cycles yearly through the seasons, and the growth of spring matures quickly in the heat of summer, bears fruit in autumn and is gone by winter. There is always something new in the garden.

With the Year A cycle of readings ending last Sunday, we begin where we left off, in the closing chapters of the gospels. This coming Year B will feature Mark's gospel, with a section given to John's gospel, each of these being shorter than either Matthew's or Luke's.

As a way of reading the scriptures the lectionary provides a good pattern to follow. We could study the lot, cover to cover, and know it all. However for daily nourishment we need to chew over one piece at a time and allow it to enlighten the mind and fire up some enthusiasm in the heart. 

There are many commentaries available as preparation for the Sunday liturgy. Some are scholarly, some have more technical information, some are like homilies such as you might hear during the liturgy. Others break open the words and lead along a path of meditation, and these may be especially useful for anyone who does not attend a liturgy.

Our approach here is to ask questions of the reading, to shake the tree and beat the undergrowth in the hope of rousing some game thoughts that may be hiding there unnoticed. There's no point in reading any scripture unless we learn something practical for ourselves from our reading. To learn we have to be curious; to be curious is to ask questions.

I always try to start from where I am, which is roughly where 'we' are in this 21st century - today. In reading, what you understand depends on where you are coming from, and on what you expect to find in the writing.

To use today's first reading as an example: it can be read with the attitude of the Jewish people for whom it was first written. These were people trying to get a clear idea of their god and very conscious of their need to keep on side with him for fear he would turn away from them.

You, Lord, are our father,
our redeemer you are named forever.
Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,
and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?
Return for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your heritage.
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
with the mountains quaking before you,
while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,
such as they had not heard of from of old.
No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you
doing such deeds for those who wait for him.
Would that you might meet us doing right,
that we were mindful of you in our ways!
Behold, you are angry, and we are sinful;
all of us have become like unclean people,
all our good deeds are like polluted rags;
we have all withered like leaves,
and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
There is none who calls upon your name,
who rouses himself to cling to you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have delivered us up to our guilt.
Yet, Lord, you are our father;
we are the clay and you the potter:
we are all the work of your hands.

The prayer expresses the tension between hope and fear, between guilt and love. What we expect to find in this reading is some idea of how they felt six centuries before Christ. This is the atmosphere in which Jesus lived and his teaching is set against this background.

Over the 2000 years of our common experience since, our perspectives have changed continuously. There have been periods of trust and joyful communion, of familiarity with the Lord, and other periods in which fear and guilt have paralysed the community and produced monstrous results.

We have to shake off the negative mentality that would see us as "like unclean people, all our deeds like polluted rags". For this we need to keep on our toes, always looking to left and right till we see things sharply. To do less is to risk getting caught drowsing, depressed, discouraged, defeated before we start, lost in the nightmare dream of despair that gloomily sees this experience as our natural condition and our unavoidable destiny.

As if there were no difference between

what was in the mind of this old prophet

and what was in the mind of Jesus.

There is a new perspective.

Many of Isaiah's expressions sit well with Jesus,

but the basic assumptions do not.

Jesus taught a radical trust in the father.

We see it all through the gospels,

but to grasp it we need to keep on our toes and watch,

watch out for the moments when we have a choice to make,

an option to crawl along the way of fear

or to take the risk of running upright - trusting.

The Lord is always coming;

for us to be alert.

He comes in ordinary things,

mostly in the nearest people, the partner, the children,

the neighbours, the people at work and on the street.

In our friends and in our opponents.

Be alert. "On your toes!"