NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 33 in Ordinary Time, Year B

The Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Today we come to the end of our reading of St Mark's Gospel. This is the last chunk of Mark we get in this year, the year dedicated to Mark's Gospel. Next Sunday for Christ the King we'll get John, and then when the new liturgical year starts immediately afterwards, it's going to be the year of Luke. So today is the last of the sessions which I've really enjoyed, looking through Mark's Gospel with you. Today our Gospel doesn't continue straight on from where we left off last time. You remember we left off last time with the widow's mite. Thereafter, we begin the great chapter 13, almost a standalone chapter: Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of the Temple, his preparation of the disciples for what is going to come, his preparing them to be on the alert, and all that that means. But we only get really the second half of that, or some of the second half of that, this Sunday. Why? I think because the Church doesn't want us to have the "being alert" part yet, because that's really reserved for Advent. So this is more the part of the Gospel that's not immediately to do with being alert now. It's what the coming of the Son of Man is going to look like. This is a chunk of Mark's Gospel that works very beautifully with a lot, an awful lot of quotes and references to the Hebrew Scriptures, but I want to bring out two particular — if you like — games. That's the bad word, which Mark is playing. He's using two different sets, or putting into Jesus's mouth two different sets. So this may have been from Jesus, and I suspect that quite a lot of it is, because we've got lots of references to it again in the book of Revelation and Thessalonians, suggesting that these words go back to Jesus. But he's putting together two different sets of contrasts, to do with the going of the Son of Man and the coming — the going and the coming, destruction and the return. And I hope you'll see that what we've got here is a very concentrated form of these, trying to get the disciples to focus on what is actually going to happen in their midst right now. But first, just to give a little background: do you remember that Jesus had been in the Temple, then he sat down opposite the treasury, and that was the last comment he made — which was, in a sense, as I said, rather a nostalgic remark, looking at the pathos of the widow. Then it says, "As he came out of the Temple." So first of all, he comes out of the Temple, and makes a comment about the stones on his way out. saying that you look at this building, not one stone will be left on another. Then he goes and sits on the Mount of Olives. Okay, we're here. We're taken straight back to the prophet Ezekiel. One of Ezekiel's visions was of the Holy One, the presence, leaving the Temple. It left the holy place, it hung around in the Temple for a little bit, then it left the Temple and hung around just outside it for a little bit, and then it went and perched on the Mount of Olives for a little bit, and eventually it left. So Mark is quite consciously, I think, talking about how finally the presence has left. Jesus had decreed the end of the Temple, and the Lord had left the Temple definitively. He sits and he teaches. The disciples ask him this question. Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask him privately, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" So Jesus's answer is towards that point. He's in a sense trying to get them out of thinking in terms of the times and signals that they think about. He's above all trying to get them to get out of conspiracy thinking, not to be moved by the great shocks and tribulations that are to come, but to be able to keep their eye on what is in fact coming in. So that's what the next verses are about. Now, at the same time that Jesus makes references to Ezekiel — or that Mark makes references to Ezekiel, which Jesus was enacting — there are the references to Daniel, another we would call apocalyptic book. But in Daniel the references are to the Son of Man coming: with Ezekiel leaving, with Daniel coming. And the whole point is that the two are happening simultaneously in the person of Jesus. The going and the coming are simultaneous in the person of Jesus. Many of the other quotes which Jesus hints at are from the book of Lamentations, again referring to the Lord going and the destruction that is about to come. But at the same time there are also references — not so hidden — to the Song of Songs, which is to do with the Lord being discovered, the Lord coming back and coming to meet his beloved. So these are the two that are going on: Ezekiel and Daniel, Lamentations and Song of Songs, both showing simultaneously a departure and the arrival. I think that if we read today's Gospel with that dynamic in mind, we'll get more out of it. So: "In those days, after that suffering" — and he's referring to the suffering that will have happened in what we now would describe as the period between Jesus's death and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Most scholars that I've been able to find — none of them think that Mark was written after the fall of Jerusalem. They think that Mark was written before the fall of Jerusalem. So in other words, these prophecies were genuine prophecies of something that did in fact happen. "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." So this is a composite of quotes from Joel, Daniel, and others, but it's actually quite a common theme, this notion of the sun will darken and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven. This is the standard way of referring to uncreation, because if you remember, at the beginning of creation, first of all there is the light, however that brings everything to being, and thereafter order is established and so on. So this is the way that the disciples refer to something so terrible that it's as if uncreation has happened. Then they will see — so when this uncreation happens — "then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven." Now, remember, Mark always does a double screen, split-screen reading. So here we have something that will be enacted at the crucifixion. Remember that at the crucifixion the sun went out, there was no light of sun and the moon did not give off any light. In other words, this passage was being fulfilled: uncreation actually happened. The breathing out of Jesus's spirit, his going up to death, was the going back outside to before the time of creation, because this was the work of the creator bringing in the new creation. "Then they will see" — at exactly that moment they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. So what they saw: they saw the Son of Man on a cross, and that was reigning from the cross, as we sing at Easter, and the notion that it was the definitive sacrifice of the great high priest, and therefore the clouds of incense were surrounding it, so that what they were seeing was the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Now, of course, at the moment that this happened at the crucifixion, they didn't see that. What they saw was someone being put to death, with the darkness. But of course it was the resurrection that brought out that in fact this was the real thing that had happened, and that had been the Son of Man, and that those who had actually seen the crucifixion had in fact seen the coming without being aware of it. In other words, from something that looked very small, frightening, insignificant, and negative, that was in fact the moment of the coming — the going and the coming were the same thing. "Then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds." from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. Now if you had been Peter, James, John, and Andrew listening to this — and those were the disciples to whom he was talking — you would have hoped perhaps that you would be backed up by the four angels who would be taking the news of this to the four winds, that you were going to be the witnesses. This is what you had been being prepared for. But in fact, on the day, the four angels are a Roman centurion and three women. That's the part of what's being referred to here. This is the beginning of the taking to all peoples, to every corner of the wind. And of course, this is the split-screen moment, because the original people who saw this were the four women, after the disciples had to become those who bore the sign of the power of this act to the ends of the world. So then he turns to the lesson of the fig tree. "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near." Now please remember that this is the second time that the fig tree has appeared significantly over the last week or so of Jesus's life. The previous one was when he declared the fig tree dead on his way into Jerusalem, and it had stopped bearing any fruit. That was when he was referring to the Temple. But here he's talking about the fig tree, its leaves turning tender, its branches becoming tender and putting forth its leaves. So once again he's referring to the crucifixion and its tenderness and its vulnerability, but the huge effect that is coming behind it. Because just as you can see the fig leaves becoming tender, it's becoming the sign of something very, very much bigger — a more powerful thing that is in fact behind it, which is: summer is coming in. So Jesus is saying what in fact you're going to see — the tiny sign that is me dead on the cross. Behind that there is all the power of the opening up of creation, and that is what you are to be involved in. "So also, when you see these things taking place" — which they're about to do — "you know that he is near, at the very gates." And yes, they've just come through those very gates. "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." He's really trying to emphasize to them: "Listen, you're actually going to see all this." "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." So here we have, if you like, something which is enormously significant: the notion that he understands that what he has been saying is opening up the inner dynamic of creation. It's not going to pass away, because creation — the bringing into being of creation, the undoing of the scapegoat mechanism by which we maintain… ourselves in, if you like, a failed, locked-down creation that's going out of being, and in its stead there is going to be brought into being the possibility to know and understand creation and live within it. These are not going to pass away. He is opening out the intelligibility of all that is. This is — but "about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father" — is saying, in other words, this is in the hands of the creator. He's bringing things into being. I may be the intelligibility of the dynamic, but I'm opening something up whose final contours angels don't know, humans don't know, only the creator knows. That's what he's leaving them with. I hope that we can rejoice in this, the very end of our time with Mark's Gospel at the moment, as we see the beautiful simultaneity of Jesus going to his cross and the opening out of the mission to which he invites us. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.