If your church tradition doesn’t follow the lectionary, you don’t have this problem – at least not this time of the year. But if you do, I would like to share with you how hard it is, even to the point of disheartening, to begin a new church year with Mark 13:24-37.
Mark says: “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 that are in heavens will be shaken…. Take heed, keep on the alert: for you do not know when the appointed time will come.” vv.12: 24 and 33, NASB.
While urging his followers to be “awake” and be ready for Jesus’ imminent return, Mark reinstates a Second Temple vision, an apocalyptic theology that was popular in his days. It gains popularity in some contemporary Christian circles with movies and books produced on that theme.
The world of Mark is different from our own. The Gospel of Mark, considered one of the earliest versions of the gospel, is deeply apocalyptic. This apocalyptic vision was common during the later half of the Second Temple period (~200 B.C.E. – 200 C.E.). It was during that time of repeated oppression, occupation and evil that Jewish theologians of the time articulated this vision so that the world of violence will be replaced with the new world of hope where God will destroy the evil world and start anew.
This apocalyptic vision has something to do with eliminating Satan’s influence on earth, the source of why we experience poverty, sin, oppression, sickness, violence, and death. All these things belonged to the condemned world. To end Satan’s influence and to re-establish God’s reign on earth, God would send God chosen warriors to destroy evil. To Mark, Jesus was the means by which God destroyed Satan and to establish God’s rule. Instead of a very individualized system of salvation, in the first century Jewish world, Mark’s vision was very much in line with the Jewish thought about the future of Israel: “every nation which has not know Israel and which has not trodden down the seed of Jacob will be live.” (2 Baruch 72:4-6) The Good News of Jesus as understood by the immediate Jewish hearers in the first century would never omit the larger social and national ramifications. Salvation, a concept Christians today use loosely, was not salvation at all if there was no impact on economic, social, gender and national justice. There was why Apostle Paul and others urging Christ’s followers to live lives that reflect the gospel truth.
Mark 13:24-37 describes the climax of the apocalypse. But we live in a different world and much have changed since then. It takes me a long time to realize I do not subscribe Mark’s vision of how the world ends. I do not believe history is moving to that vision. It is more likely the world will be laid to ruin by our careless exploitation of the world resources, the aggressions insert by world’s mega corporations, and how nations relate to each other. But I share Mark’s hope that God will re-generate the world where violence and oppression will be no more. I hold on to the Advent hope is that God calls on us to live in ways that will eliminate oppression and injustices. With faith in Jesus, I trust that God is constantly transforming us to live in the world by ways of generosity, peace, justice, and love.
Advent is not the time for Christians to feel superior because of Jesus. But to walk alongside with Jews and many others to live our lives in ways that allows peace, justice and love to increase throughout the world. Let’s keep the hope alive that a peaceful world is possible.
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