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Advent 1

Mark 13
24In those days, right after that time of suffering,
"The sun will become dark,
and the moon will no longer shine.
25The stars will fall,
and the powers in the sky will be shaken."
26Then the Son of Man will be seen coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27He will send his angels to gather his chosen ones from all over the earth.
28Learn a lesson from a fig tree. When its branches sprout and start putting out leaves, you know summer is near. 29So when you see all these things happening, you will know that the time has almost come. [e] 30You can be sure that some of the people of this generation will still be alive when all this happens. 31The sky and the earth will not last forever, but my words will.

Isaiah 40
1Our God has said: "Encourage my people! Give them comfort.
2Speak kindly to Jerusalem and announce: Your slavery is past;
your punishment is over. I, the LORD, made you pay
double for your sins." 3Someone is shouting: "Clear a path in the desert! Make a straight road for the LORD our God.
4Fill in the valleys; flatten every hill and mountain. Level the rough and rugged ground. 5Then the glory of the LORD will appear for all to see. The LORD has promised this!"
6Someone told me to shout, and I asked, "What should I shout?"
We humans are merely grass, and we last no longer than wild flowers. 7At the LORD's command, flowers and grass disappear, and so do we. 8Flowers and grass fade away, but what our God has said will never change.


What time is it?

A brief survey of the watches in a room will reveal the awful truth of time. We may not know the precise time. Some are clearly ahead, others are behind, and some vainly imagine they are correct every time.

The beginning of the long dash following ten seconds of silence marks one o'clock Eastern Standard Time.

The National Research Council official time signal is familiar enough to ardent CBC listeners, and I have caught myself more than once struggling to correct the time on my watch while listening to the CBC (and, of course, driving the car – the place I most commonly listen)

There is, of course, a better solution. I have a watch (Casio, $29) that resets itself every morning at 1 a.m. to the atomic clock at Fort Collins in Colorado. A little indicator does a flashy thing and 'presto' I'm in sync with U.S. Naval Observatory and an array of over 80 atomic clocks worldwide. Colorado is also the home of the world's official timescale, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Sadly, I discovered this week that my special watch was off by an hour. Secret, pro-Bush messages beamed to my watch cost extra.

Now: the truly alarming news for you time-junkies. It's made up. It's a complete fabrication. There is no time in the sense that someone once said let's call this Sunday and let's call this 11 a.m. (give or take) and we will have invented time for ourselves. There were no atomic clocks before the atomic age, only groups of people who imagined that they had the correct time. The whole situation improved when Sir Sandford Fleming and Co. decided to create zones of time, but it was little more than a factual dressing on an obvious fiction. There is no time.

'Wait,' you are going to argue, 'the sun rises each day and the sun sets every night and so therefore there must be time.' You look in the mirror each day and see the steady progress of time, you will argue (or ignore) and so there must be time. Every year we mark our calendars and count down the days to the day of turkey and eggnog and then it arrives and so therefore there must be time.

Not quite: in fact, you have proved my point. There are two times, time that appears in lines and gray hairs and babies that become teenagers and the other time, the real time that begins with sunrise and sunset and seasons and recurring occasions and the endless déjà vu of everyday.

How many of you know the film 'Groundhog Day'? (Note to aspiring filmmakers: create a film that highlights a day every year and television stations will air it on an ongoing basis) In Groundhog Day Bill Murray plays an not-so-nice man who is caught in Punxsutawney, PA and must repeat the day over and over until he gets it right. He discovers, of course, that the secret of a satisfying life is to live for others rather than yourself and the loop is broken. It remains, however, a powerful metaphor for anyone who feels forced to repeat things in life until we get it right. Enter Christmas.

***

24In those days, right after that time of suffering,
"The sun will become dark,
and the moon will no longer shine.
25The stars will fall,
and the powers in the sky will be shaken."

What does this sound like? It belongs to the first Sunday of Advent but it also sounds like another significant passage we hear year by year:

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. 52The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. Matthew 27.50-52

Here we are, poised between the first Sunday of Advent and Good Friday, lost in time insofar as the powerful parallel is too hard to ignore yet the times are dissimilar. Jesus is alive and warning his disciples about a time after his death described in a manner that sounds precisely like the day his death. There is more:

Before them the earth shakes,
the sky trembles,
the sun and moon are darkened,
and the stars no longer shine.

In this passage, the prophet Joel (2.10) describes the coming judgment, meted out, in this case, by an army of locusts send to destroy a wayward Israel. Again, the language is alarmingly similar, in part because both Jesus and Matthew adopt this imagery to convey the gravity of the time to come. And it is also timeless, happening in the time of the prophets, the time of the disciples, and in the time to come.

Amid the judgment, however, a word of hope:

Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity. Joel 2.13

The customary tearing of garments can be replaced with an internal rending, grief for sins of the past and the death of those sins leading to a new way of being. Again, it is no accident that the temple curtain was torn in two. The gospel writers loved Joel and found power in God's desire to break with the past inside the Holy of Holies. God is no longer confined to the inner sanctum of the Temple but at large in the world, at large and looking to reenter human experience in a new and profound way. Enter Christmas.

***

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

The words sing. The words take flight. The words speak of the comfort we desire in the broken places in our lives. Even as we recall that Advent and Christmas are like a cosmic 'do-over' we are still left with the knowledge that our preparation will be incomplete. Many of the mistakes that we decided last year we wouldn't make again will be repeated. Things will be left undone and unsaid and unmet and we will spend at least part of the season feeling unfulfilled. Part of the answer we need to hear will come from Isaiah and Joel:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God...return to me...for I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love...

Time repeats precisely so we can get it right. Christ returns not to judge but to find us: lost coin, lost sheep, lost and prodigal child. What time is it? It is time to make room once more. It is time to become open to being found. It is time to turn from the things that hold us back and fill us with grief. It is time to hear words of comfort and truly listen. It is time.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 8:06 AM