I watched with amusement, recently, as a gentleman across the table from me at a church committee meeting struggled to stay awake. Our meeting came at the end of what had apparently been a tiring day for him, and now the meeting itself was running long. No one there would question this member’s devotion to the church or his commitment to its work. But he simply could not keep himself awake. His eyes would blur and begin to flicker, his head would start to bob, and finally his chin would sink into his chest.
As is so often the case in settings of involuntary sleep, he did not slumber for long. A few moments would pass, his body would jerk and his eyes would pop open again. Just as his naps did not last long, however, neither did his intermittent awakenings. Soon he was back into the familiar cycle, and his chin was back in his chest.
I have experienced that struggle. We all have. Perhaps we’ve fought it in a classroom or a committee; while trying to enjoy a movie, a concert, or a play; while driving at night, which is a particularly frightening experience. Or, perhaps we have even felt the struggle to stay awake while in the midst of a one-on-one conversation.
Sometimes, sleep simply seems irresistible. And no matter how hard we try, we cannot manage to stay awake. What’s a person to do?
Isaiah 64:1-9
The book of Isaiah is readily understood as a three-part book, and our passage comes from the third part. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are generally associated with the pre-exilic period of Isaiah himself. Chapters 40 through 55, meanwhile, reflect and address a different context: the period of the Babylonian exile rather than the earlier era of the Assyrian threat. And, finally, the last eleven chapters of Isaiah seem to be addressed to the post-exilic inhabitants of Jerusalem. That, then, is the context of our Old Testament lesson.
The scene that Isaiah imagines — indeed, invokes — anticipates the kind of scene that Jesus later describes when teaching about the end of time (a part of which is reflected in this week’s gospel lesson). Isaiah’s picture of mountains quaking and nations trembling resonates with Jesus’ images of stars falling and the heavens being shaken. This climactic day is both global and cosmic. When this particular act in history comes to an end, it will not be merely with a curtain closing. No, but rather the scenery will topple, the stage will crumble, and the entire theatre will be shaken.
The lectionary linking of this Isaiah passage with the later Mark passage suggests to us a backdrop of New Testament eschatology against which to read Isaiah. As such, Isaiah’s plea that the Lord “would tear open the heavens and come down” has a layer of meaning for us as Christians that it would not have had for Isaiah’s original audience.
Likewise, the assurance that God “works for those who wait for him” has added meaning for us. Waiting for him is precisely the current condition of Christ’s followers, and it is the setting of so many of Jesus’ end-of-time teachings. The servants wait for their master’s return, the bridesmaids wait for the bridegroom’s arrival, and the vigilant Christian watches and waits for the coming of the Son of Man.
While the look and feel of a tumultuous spectacle is not unique to Isaiah’s picture, he offers a clearer insight into the cause-and-effect than we may find elsewhere. “That the mountains would quake at your presence,” he prays, and “that the nations might tremble at your presence.” The turbulence in Isaiah’s vision, therefore, is not merely some natural upheaval of human events or cresting wickedness. Rather, all the quaking and trembling is in response to the very presence of the Lord. As the soldiers in the barracks scramble into place and stand at attention when the commanding officer enters, so, too, with the earth and its people when the Lord tears open the heavens and comes down.
In stark contrast to the tremors that accompany God’s presence, meanwhile, is Isaiah’s later portrait of God’s absence. “Because you hid yourself we transgressed,” the prophet observes. And “you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” The tumult surrounding his presence may seem daunting, but see the trouble and despair that occur in his absence. We may sweat uncomfortably in the summer sun, but if the sun disappeared we would be lost altogether.
Meanwhile, a contemporary audience may miss the boldness of the prophet’s statement that “we have all become like one who is unclean.” The phrase seems merely poetic to a modern reader, but within the context of Old Testament Israel the prophet is saying a profound thing.
First, the Hebrew word for “unclean” (tawmay) is the same word used to describe Dinah’s condition after she had been raped by Shechem (Genesis 34:5). She had been defiled, and that is the strong language the prophet uses to describe his people’s condition.
Furthermore, the distinction between clean and unclean is a significant theme in the Old Testament Law. The people were to religiously avoid contact with unclean things, they were forbidden from eating unclean foods, and they were to be thorough and merciless in dealing with uncleanness, whether in skin, clothing, houses, or the community. “You are to distinguish,” God says, “between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean” (Leviticus 10:10).
We are familiar with the leper law in scripture — the requirement that a leper had to call out “Unclean, unclean!” (Leviticus 13:45). The concern, of course, was to maintain the health of the community at large. The lepers, while perhaps many in that time and place, were still a tiny minority of the community, and the laws were designed to keep the disease from spreading as much as possible. But see how the prophet has painted a dramatic picture: “We have all become like one who is unclean.” There is not, then, a community of clean and whole people with a few unclean ones to be ostracized. Rather, the whole lot of us is unclean — defiled, to be avoided, and to be dealt with mercilessly.
Finally, the prophet expands on the uncleanness of the people by exclaiming, “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” While the human stage of an awakened conscience is to recognize how filthy our filth is, there is another level: the before-God recognition that even our cleanness is filthy. The prophet is not here decrying how shameful is the people’s wickedness, but rather how shameful is the people’s righteousness. The image is reminiscent of Paul who, after itemizing his proud accomplishments and asserting his righteousness (Philippians 3:4-6), reevaluates it all as rubbish (3:8; the Greek, skubalon, refers to the excrement of animals). So it is that our righteousness is like dirty laundry and our best accomplishments are like the stuff we’re careful not to step in.
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
In topical teaching and preaching, this passage is the kind of material that never gets dealt with. American Christians typically engage in such a rush to relevance, so eager for personal application, that a passage like this goes largely overlooked. This is “flyover country” for most Bible reading and study. The lectionary, however, forces us to land here instead of flying over it. What others choose to bypass we make our destination.
These early verses found in most of Paul’s letters are commonly known as the “thanksgiving section” of an ancient epistle. For our purposes in the New Testament, however, the importance of this section may best be illustrated not by its presence in most of Paul’s letters but by its conspicuous absence from one of Paul’s letters.
Galatians is clearly the angriest of Paul’s epistles, and he noticeably passes the traditional thanksgiving section in order to go straight to his lament: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you” (Galatians 1:6). While they are customary, therefore, thanksgiving sections should not be dismissed as empty or meaningless. Paul does not write the same thing to every church in this section, and he does not include this section at all when writing to the Galatians.
I have been in a number of settings over the years where some variation on this question has been asked: “What are you thankful for?” Folks share the matters for which they are most grateful, and that typically results in a list of things, people, and circumstances. Somewhat in contrast to those familiar answers, however, Paul’s thanksgiving section is all about God. Even though this passage is addressed to the Christians in Corinth, and even though it is ostensibly about them, still there persists this theme that reveals Paul’s true orientation. One-fifth of all the words in this brief passage are nouns or pronouns referring to God. The apostle, who elsewhere said that for him to live was Christ (Philippians 1:21), bears witness to that fact by the way the Lord saturates his thinking and his language even when talking about other people.
Paul’s language presents us, meanwhile, with a kind of fill-in-the-blank opportunity. Take his initial sentence — “I give thanks to my God always for you because...” — and consider how that phrase might be followed. If the apostle were writing to your church or mine, how would he complete that sentence, that thought?
Paul’s claim that he gives thanks always because of the Corinthians becomes remarkable as we read the two Corinthian letters that follow. Every church has its issues, of course, but the church in Corinth seems to have more than its fair share. Most of 1 Corinthians is devoted to answering their questions and addressing their problems, and 2 Corinthians reveals a genuinely painful struggle that Paul and the Corinthians have experienced in their relationship. Yet, still, he is always thankful for them.
This introductory passage includes allusions to subjects that will be recurring themes in the letter. “Speech” and “knowledge” are recognized here as goods, but later qualified as not the greatest goods (see, for example, 8:1, 11; 13:1-2; 14:9-19). Paul also references here their “spiritual gifts,” which becomes a major topic later.
Finally, Paul looks to the future — “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” — which ties this passage to our other two lections. He is eager that they should be “blameless” on that day, and he recognizes — as we have seen in Isaiah and will see again in Mark — that the present involves waiting (“you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ”).
Mark 13:24-37
All three synoptic gospels include a collection of end-of-time teachings of Jesus during the extended narrative between the events of Palm Sunday and Easter. In Matthew, the teachings with an end-of-time theme occupy most of chapters 24 and 25. Luke devotes somewhat less of his Holy Week account to this material than Matthew, giving most of chapter 21 to it. In Mark, the key chapter is chapter 13. Specifically, Mark 13 corresponds substantially to Matthew 24 and Luke 21, though the three chapters are not identical.
Mark’s use of this material is perhaps the most striking of the three inasmuch as he has so much less “red letter” material than the other two. For Matthew and Luke, these end-of-time teachings are a comparatively small percentage of the overall collections of Jesus’ teachings that they include in their gospels. Mark, on the other hand, is very sparing in his sayings of Jesus, focusing more on his deeds than his words. This end-of-time section, therefore, represents a significant percentage of the total teachings of Jesus recorded and reported by Mark.
In regard to our particular passage, verses 24-32 are represented in the same contexts in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. Verses 33-37, however, are not found in the corresponding portions of Matthew and Luke. If Mark’s brief reference to a man going on a journey and leaving servants in charge is an abbreviated form of the parable of the talents, as some have argued, then we find it elsewhere in Matthew (ch. 25) and Luke (ch. 19). In both Matthew and Mark, therefore, this entire teaching is found in the midst of the Holy Week narrative. In Luke, meanwhile, the parable of the master leaving his servants in charge while he goes on a journey appears just prior to Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
Within the larger context of Jesus’ end-of-times teachings, it is worth noting the three very different themes that are developed. On the one hand, the nature of life prior to the coming of the Son of Man seems to be so ordinary as to be innocuous (for example, Matthew 24:37-44 and Luke 17:26-30), though Mark does not echo that theme. On the other hand, there is the cautionary note that extraordinary events should not be easily mistaken for his coming (as in Mark 13:5-10, 21-23). And then, finally, there is the theme of truly cataclysmic events that will accompany his return (such as Mark 13:14-20, 24-25).
Likewise, the end-of-times teachings leave us with different impressions about the timetable of these events. What Jesus teaches for the first half or more of Mark 13 adds up to suggest a long process. Don’t jump to quick conclusions, we hear him saying, for many things will need to take place and be fulfilled before the Son of Man appears. But then, in verse 30, he makes the remarkable claim that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”
The convergence of these competing themes leaves readers shrugging their shoulders. How, then, are we to know when Jesus will return? Well, frankly, we don’t know. And, notably, we discover that we have significant company in that lack of foreknowledge: such as the angels in heaven and Jesus himself (Mark 13:32).
Finally, the underlying Greek word here for generation (geneya) is used numerous times by Jesus (exclusively in the synoptics). Examining that broader context of Jesus’ use of the word, it’s hard to dispute the plain meaning of the text: Namely, Jesus seems to be saying that the aforementioned signs will all occur within the lifetimes of his contemporaries. On the other hand, a careful look at Jesus’ use of the term also reveals an entirely negative connotation. “This generation” is impossible to satisfy (Matthew 11:16-19), “evil” (Matthew 12:45), “faithless and perverse” (Matthew 17:17), “adulterous and sinful” (Mark 8:38). “This generation” will persecute and reject the Son of Man (Luke 17:25), will be “charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world” (Luke 11:50), and will be condemned by the people of Nineveh and the queen of the South at the judgment (Matthew 12:41-42).
Given that larger context of Jesus’ references to “this generation,” therefore, it stands to reason that the guarantee in Mark 13:30 is a prediction of judgment. It’s not merely that the present generation will get to witness, like spectators or bystanders, the prerequisite signs of his coming. No, but rather they will be the victims of the unfavorable and portentous events.
Application
The conclusion of the gospel lesson strikes a note that is typical of Jesus’ end-of-time teachings: “be on the watch” and “keep awake.” Acknowledging that no one knows “that day or hour,” he warns that it may come “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.” This is a deliberately inconvenient assortment of times. Lest we assume that the big event will occur at an opportune time — when we are paying attention, when we are naturally awake and alert, when we are open for business — Jesus cautions that he may come while we are sleeping, and he concludes, “Keep awake.”
I don’t take Jesus to mean, of course, that all of his followers for the past two millennia were expected literally to go without sleep until they finally cracked and died. I do take seriously, however, the profound challenge we face: to maintain an attitude of alertness and readiness when it is so tempting to change into something comfortable, fluff the pillows and call it a day. Our appetites and our culture conspire to distract us, and we are tempted to set aside the work of our long-delayed master in favor of something else — something more immediate, more pressing, more comfortable.
But let the rest of the world scramble to get into line and stand at attention when he suddenly arrives. We should be found already in place, fully attentive, and ready to go.