Wait  a minute. What is going on here? This is the first Sunday of Advent on the church calendar, and, more than that, it is almost Christmas. Thanksgiving is over along with “Black Friday.” The shops and malls are playing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” and “Winter Wonderland,” everything is decorated to a fare thee well but we gather in church today and hear the gospel thundering about suffering and the sun being darkened, the moon without light and stars falling from the sky.

Not long ago, my wife and I joined a tourist excursion to mainland China. One day, our hosts took us to a beautiful local park where we met hundreds of Chinese locals playing board games, kicking soccer balls, doing Tai Chi exercises, folks playing music on whatever instruments they had brought. There was even a several hundred voice ad hoc choir and orchestra in the midst of a community sing. They noticed a small group of non-Asian faces so they struck up a number that they figured we could join in as well. It was “Jingle Bells.” August. Ninety degrees. And we joined in with gusto:

Dashing through the snow,
In a one-horse open sleigh.
O’er the fields we go,
Laughing all the way.
(in the public domain)

“Jingle Bells” in China — where Christmas is not a big holiday. In August. Ninety degrees. But here we are in church less than a month from the big day, and we get gloom and doom. What is going on?

Our lesson from Mark 13 is part of a chapter that is often called The Little apocalypse because it sounds so much like the language of the more famous Apocalypse that we find in the book of Revelation. As you Bible scholars know, apocalyptic literature usually comes out of scary times. In the Old Testament, for example, we find this kind of material in the book of Daniel, which comes from the era about a century and half before the birth of Christ when Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek emperor, desecrated the temple and tried to impose pagan practices on the Jews. Jump forward a bit and we find the book of Revelation coming from the end of the first century when Christians were being persecuted because they refused to worship the Roman emperor. While this style of literature is definitely strange to us, the word apocalypse itself simply means “unveiling” or, in fact, “revelation.” The style of writing wants to convey a message of hope in “code” that would not be understandable to those who are outsiders. That way the author would hope to get his or her message across without arousing the suspicion or anger of the hostile authorities.

Apocalyptic literature normally smacks of a strong and stark contrast— simply put, good versus evil. It relies on lots of symbols — numbers, colors, animals — “codes” that only the faithful would understand. It regards present dangers as passing phenomena that will lead eventually to God’s ultimate victory. It is a word of hope to a persecuted faithful who, when the end is finally realized, will finally receive a godly reward. The phrase is be ready for it.

The Christian church has preached this theme for generations. Thus, we encounter the two mini-parables that Mark quotes. The first involves a fig tree. No curse this time as with other references in the gospels. This time, a simple observation. The disciples had asked for a sign (Mark 13:4), so Jesus offers one. Most of the trees in that part of the world are evergreen, but the olive and the fig are deciduous, losing and replacing their leaves every year. The olive tree blossoms early, so it is not a trustworthy indicator that summer is around the corner. The fig tree, however, blossoms late, so its blossoms promise that summer is almost here. This fig tree is not withered but is blossoming, a harbinger of hope.

If the first parable is about signs that should alert us, the second is a reminder to stay alert. A householder goes off on a journey and leaves his servants (you and me) in charge with instructions to keep watch. That was an admonition that would have resonated in that culture because they knew about instructions to Roman legionnaires who pulled guard duty — if they fell asleep on the job, they could be executed for the offense. Spiritual vigilance is important. “Therefore,” in the words of Jesus, “keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”(Mark 13:37)

In some churches, the emphasis is very heavily on apocalyptic themes — the rapture of the church, the great tribulation, and the imminent return of Christ. There is the threat of being “left behind” that fueled the interest in those best-selling books and the movie that grew out of them several years ago. That is one way those who felt it was their job to tell us teens what we needed to hear to try to keep us in line — “You don’t want to be caught in the back seat of the Chevy with Suzy and the windows all fogged up when the Lord returns, do you?” Gulp. The message was and is be ready!

Fine. But right now I would rather dial that back a notch... or two or three. To ensure against the danger of having our eyes so firmly fixed on heaven that we are no earthly good, I would encourage you to be ready in the here and now. Be ready for this life and the life to come will take care of itself.

How do we go about it? Well, I have some very good news for you. Whether you realize it or not, you have already begun... by being right here. I am absolutely convinced, after a lifetime of dealing with people at the heights, at the depths, and every place in between, that there is no better way to be ready for life out there than by spending time in here. It is here in God’s house that we build the solid foundation that is crucial to surviving the winds and waves that come with the storms of life.

Ann Weems is a wonderful poet and the wife of a Presbyterian minister. Her son Todd was brutally murdered just after his twenty-first birthday. How does a mother deal with such a devastating blow? Friends tried to help and offer consolation. One was a seminary professor who called to her attention all the biblical material that seemed to be saying so much of exactly what she was feeling. Noting her prodigious poetic talent, he encouraged her to put her feelings to paper. The result is a remarkable compilation that not only helped her healing process but has helped thousands of others as well. The book is titled Psalms of Lament and comes from that collection in scripture where other poets have bared their souls in despair. My copy says, “To David, Through Tears — With Hope. Ann Weems.” Her poetic preface, composed after her work was done, describes what she has learned:

In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls
of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one.¹

A promise of healing and wholeness. “Through Tears — With Hope.” That is the church.

We need one another. If you recall the story of creation from the first chapter of Genesis, you will remember the litany of “and God created this, and it was good... and God created that, and it was good, and so on.” It only takes until the second chapter of Genesis for us to find something that is not good — “and God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’” No man, no woman, no boy, no girl, is an island.

This is one of the reasons I believe in the church, I encourage  folks to attend, and I challenge them to join and take responsibility for what goes on. For all its flaws, for all its foibles, for all its failures, the church is God’s divinely instituted way of offering people who need people the chance to find them. It offers the chance to give life meaning through involvement with others. Vaclav Havel, the first president of Czechoslovakia upon its freedom from communism (and himself a poet and playwright) once said, “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.”² The church cannot and will not allow such a state of blissful ignorance.

We can make a difference, you and I. The vast majority of what happens in our lives is in our hands and is very much of our own choosing. In Robert Fulghum’s  best-seller with that wonderful title, It Was On Fire When I Laid Down On It, he recounts the following conversation: he spoke with a colleague who was complaining that he had the same stuff in his lunch sack day after day. “So, who makes your lunch?” Fulghum asked.³

“I do,” said the friend. Up to us.

A man went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way back to town, trying one path after another, but none of them led out. Then abruptly he came across another hiker walking through the forest. He cried, “Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town?”

The other man replied, “No, I am lost too. But we can still help each other in this way — we can tell each other which path we have already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out.”⁴

That is exactly what Christ’s church is all about. We make our way through this vale of tears, we become confused, we get lost, we search for a way out. We finally find our way with the help of others who care, others who can share with us their own disappointments, their own blind alleys, their own roads already tried.

The church. Think about how it helps you to be ready. Early on, from our first days in Sunday school, we learn that “God is great and God is good.” God is big and strong and mighty, and there is nothing my God cannot do. God made this world. God made the animals and the birds. God made you and me. Even when we see news of horrible disasters like earthquakes and floods and terrorist bombings, we see miracles as little babies are found alive in the rubble, children reunited with parents after all hope had been lost. We learn that the great God of heaven can take even awful things and bring good out of them.

In the church we learn, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105). The Bible — there are many good books in the world, but there are none like the good book. According to the American Bible Society, 87% of Americans own at least one, and the average household has three.⁵ It is unrivaled as the world’s all-time best-seller.

Unfortunately, most Americans are remarkably ignorant of biblical basics. One Gallup survey, for example, shows that fewer than half of our nation can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis). Only one- third knew who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (many said Billy Graham, not Jesus). One quarter could not say what we are celebrating at Easter. One New Jersey pastor made his own small effort to encourage Bible reading, posting this adage on his church sign: “A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to a person that isn’t.”⁶

In the church we learn, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” We believe, because of what we learn here, that we have a mission in this world. The gospel is good news and it demands to be shared - it deserves to be shouted from the housetops, printed on balloons, slapped on billboards, chanted at ball games, scrawled across the sky. Can’t do all those things? We learn in church that one of the best ways to share the gospel is by the way we live.

Most importantly, we learn, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). You scholars know the name Karl Barth, probably the best-known theologian of the last century. Dr. Barth was asked near the end of his remarkable career to state the most significant truth he had come across in his lifetime of study. After a moment of thought he is reported to have answered, “Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” It is in this holy place we learn that the Jesus we come to know in scripture is living and dying proof of God’s love for you and for me.

Back to that trip we took to China. Our day in the Beijing park happened to be a Sunday. Normally, my wife and I would have tried to find a church on a Sunday wherever we might be, but this being China, and no one in our group being at all fluent in Chinese, we knew that our options were limited, to say the least. So God spoke to us there in that park. China and the West have been at political odds for a long time, but you would never have known that by the reception we received that day. Smiling faces, outstretched hands, folks wanting to have their photographs taken with us. All of us, in our own languages, belting out “Jingle Bells” in the summer sun.

What came to mind was that quote frequently (but inaccurately) credited to Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary use words.” Good thing that words were not necessary that day since we could never have understood each other’s words anyway. The gospel that did come through that morning was the same one we had learned so many, many years ago. Where? In Sunday school, of course.

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
(in the public domain)

Indeed. There will come a day... We don’t know when, but it is coming. So ready or not... keep your eye out. It is going to be great!

Amen!