The One Who Knocks
Scripture Reading: Mark 13:24-37
The sun will set at 4:25 PM this evening, or should I say, this afternoon. To quote the famous Yankee philosopher Yogi Berra, “It gets late early around here.” Such is life in the northern hemisphere in late autumn and early winter. To counteract the seasonal creep of early evening gloom, there’s a movement afoot to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. I must say, I’m not a supporter. If it were up to me, I’d go back to the schedule that we had 40 years ago when I was growing up. Spring ahead the last Sunday of April, fall back the last Sunday of October. Six months on, six months off. I like the symmetry of it.
It’s not that I enjoy seeing the sun set before the workday is even done. Far from it. It’s just that I appreciate the natural rhythm of the seasons. It’s why I could never live in South Florida or Southern California, where the seasons are a steady drum beat of sameness. And as a preacher, I find the early darkness at this time of year instructive. Fleming Rutledge, a favorite theologian of mine who happens to live on the other side of the Hudson River in Westchester, famously wrote that “Advent begins in the dark.”
Advent, while it marks the beginning of the new church year, lives in the looming shadow of Christmas. The moment the Thanksgiving leftovers get put in the fridge, there’s this collective rush out in the world to dive straight into Christmas. Even the calendar is conspiring against Advent this year. With the fourth Sunday of Advent falling on Christmas Eve, it’s like we’re losing one whole week of Advent. All the better to get to Christmas even faster!
Listen, I get it. Christmas is a season of light, and in a world with so much darkness, we want to turn on the lights. But Advent is much more than a countdown to Christmas. Advent is about waiting and yearning and longing for the light to come into the world. As the evening darkness encroaches upon the waning afternoon sunlight, so too do the forces of darkness lengthen their shadows over the world. War in Ukraine, savagery in Israel, collateral carnage in Gaza, growing authoritarian movements abroad and here at home, mass migrations of people fleeing poverty, violence, and political instability, and whole areas of the globe becoming uninhabitable due to changes in climate.
I don’t mean to get all apocalyptic, but…well, actually, I do. Advent is nothing if not apocalyptic. Just look at our Gospel reading today! After a six-month deep dive into Matthew, today we dip our toes into the waters of Mark. We won’t remain here for long, at least not yet. For now, we’re just passing through.
Chapter 13 of the Gospel of Mark is known as Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.” [Don’t be scared, it’s just a little apocalypse.] When we hear the word “apocalypse” in association with the Bible we probably think of the Book of Revelation and certain portions of Daniel. But tucked away in the Gospel of Mark, the shortest—and for my money the most overlooked Gospel—is this so-called Little Apocalypse. It’s little not in the scope of what it says—for it concerns the end of the world and the final judgment—but in its small size, occupying just one of the Gospel’s sixteen chapters.
Mark also tones down some of the fanciful imagery that’s dialed up to eleven in Daniel and Revelation. Oh sure, he writes that the sun will be darkened and the stars will fall from heaven, but there are no bowls of blood, devouring beasts, or four horsemen of the apocalypse, as found in Revelation. The emphasis is not on a final battle between good and evil but rather a final judgment in which the Son of Man comes to gather his own. The imagery is not that of a warrior prepared for battle but rather of a master of the house returning home from a long journey unannounced.
“Alright,” you may be thinking, “a kinder, gentler apocalypse is all well and good, but aren’t we counting down the days to Christmas? Why are we talking about apocalyptic things at all? Shouldn’t we be preparing for the arrival of sweet baby Jesus lying in a manger? What does all this talk of apocalypse have to do with the birth of the savior?”
The Church lives in this middle space between Advents, proclaiming “Christ has come, Christ will come again.”
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the readings leading up to the birth of Jesus, the light of the world, are so dark? That’s because, as I’ve already mentioned, Advent is not merely a countdown to Christmas but a countdown to Christ…to Christ’s coming…his first coming, of course, but also his second coming, when he will come in glory to judge the living and the dead. Advent is the in-between time, the time between Christ’s first and second coming. The Church lives in this middle space between Advents, proclaiming “Christ has come, Christ will come again.”
Let’s take a step back and appreciate the power of that promise—“Christ will come again.” What we are affirming when we say that is that Jesus, who was crucified, died, and was buried, and whose death was a matter of public record, has been raised from the dead and will come again to set things right…to establish justice, to show mercy, and to vanquish the powers of hell once and for all.
That is quite the promise! Because if you follow the news at all, the powers of hell seem fully unleashed upon the world, especially the part of the world into which Jesus was born. And not for the first time either. The Gospel of Mark was written at a time of cataclysmic upheaval in Israel, which was then occupied by Rome. In the year 66, a series of isolated uprisings soon became a full-scale rebellion against Roman rule. Rome responded with the full might of its legions who initiated a reign of terror that a Jewish historian of the time described as an “orgy of fire and bloodshed.” Tens of thousands of Jews were massacred. The temple was destroyed.
And so Jesus says here in Mark, “But in those days, after that suffering, 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.” Before the first rays of Christ’s light herald the dawn of the new age, there will be complete and utter darkness. That will be the moment. When things seem as though they cannot possibly get any worse, when the sky cannot get any darker, that will be the moment when the master of the house will draw near, approach the door of his house, and knock.
Therefore, be alert. Keep awake. It’s easy to hear this as a threat or as a warning. Keep awake or else! But this is not so much a warning as a word of encouragement. Jesus isn’t telling us to run around in a frenzy working tirelessly for the kingdom lest he find us idle upon his return. That reminds me. I need to get one of those t-shirts that says “Jesus is coming. Look busy.”
But seriously, Jesus wants us to be alert and awake not out of fear and anxiety but out of hope. Let’s be alert to the presence of Christ among us now so that we will recognize him all the more when he comes. And let’s not fall asleep to the hope that we have in Christ’s return.
Jesus wants us to be alert and awake not out of fear and anxiety but out of hope
In a moment we’ll sing “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” my favorite Advent hymn (thank you, Jered). The third verse describes what Christ’s coming did and will accomplish and is basically verses 26 and 27 set in poetic meter:
Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away
The days of darkness are numbered. The clock is ticking. The master of the house will return home. This is not a threat. It’s not something to be feared. It is rather a promise. Again, the picture that Mark paints of the final judgment is not a great battle but simply the owner of the house returning home. Perhaps that’s because the battle is already over.
That’s right. If you blinked, you might have missed it. Call it the anticlimactic apocalypse, if you will. The forces of hell—sin and death—have already been defeated on the cross. The master of the house who returns home is Jesus Christ, who returns from the grave, a grave that could not hold him. Sin and death are defeated powers but they are not yet destroyed. For now, their shadows still darken the world, at least until the light of Christ shines in its fullness upon his return.
It’s not only sin and death that the light of Christ dispels. The second coming of Jesus Christ shines a light on the fleeting nature of all human endeavors. In his inescapable light, all our attempts to show to the world that we are somebody, to create legacies so that our name will live on, to prove ourselves worthy of God’s love, are revealed for what they are…vain attempts to save ourselves when what we really need is a savior. Advent is a cry in the dark, an acknowledgement on our part that we need saving. You need saving. I certainly need saving. And Lord knows this world needs saving.
So by all means be alert, keep awake, but not out of fear but rather anticipation, for the one who knocks is none other than Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who is and was and is to come.