It is the first Sunday of Advent and the lectionary Gospel reading is Mark 13: 24 – 37. (The Lectionary is a series of Bible readings for each Sunday of the year.) In this passage of scripture Jesus tells of a time when he will return to the world and full establish God’s kingdom.
The so called “second coming” is a difficult concept for Christians – let alone non-Christians – to grasp. And I suppose one of the most difficult of all concepts to accept is when this will happen. And part of this must be “How bad do things have to get before Jesus returns and sorts things out once and for all?”
It is a question Christians have wrestled with for 2,000 years. And it is a question non-believers must level at us.
And for those who are impatient I have some bad news. In the Bible passage I mentioned a moment ago Jesus says that even he doesn’t know when he will come again. It could be today tomorrow or another 2,000 years.
The Message translation of the Bible puts it this way
32-37 “But the exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven’s angels, not even the Son. Only the Father. So keep a sharp lookout, for you don’t know the timetable. It’s like a man who takes a trip, leaving home and putting his servants in charge, each assigned a task, and commanding the gatekeeper to stand watch. So, stay at your post, watching. You have no idea when the homeowner is returning, whether evening, midnight, cockcrow, or morning. You don’t want him showing up unannounced, with you asleep on the job. I say it to you, and I’m saying it to all: Stay at your post. Keep watch.”
After 2,000 years of watching and waiting we could be excused for being a bit bored. However, the watching has to be an expectant, active watchfulness because we never know when he will appear.
Some waiting is passive. For example a girl standing at a bus stop waiting for a bus is passive waiting. All she does is stand at the stop and wait.
But the same girl standing in the same place but knowing that the bus will take her to the railway station in order to catch a train to the airport so she can go on holiday will experience a different kind of waiting. It will be full of expectation, it will be active waiting.
Jesus clearly had active participation in mind when he instructed his followers
33 Be on guard! Be alert[e]! You do not know when that time will come.
Jesus clearly doesn’t want us to know when he will return. If we knew he was going to return on a specific date we’d put off doing anything about his return until just beforehand. To avoid this lethargy he urges us to live as if his return were just around the corner. So there is no time to nod off in the waiting room!
Prudence Phillipson uses this analogy. When her children were young the floor of their playroom often became messy with games and toys strewn everywhere. Prudence got her children to clean up their toys and games by telling them she was going round the corner to the shop. "When I come back," she warned, "everything should be in its place." She would then give each child a task before she left. The oldest child would be given more complicated tasks while the simpler ones would go to the younger children. Then she would leave. The children would either do as she told them or else disregard her instructions.
When she returned, sometimes she would come quietly up the stairs and see through the half-open door that they were quarrelling or fooling around or just absorbed in something. Then there were other times when she would see that her children were not quite finished with their task so she would creep away to give them more time. Sometimes she would shut the front door with a bang and hear sudden noises of bustle as they hurried to get the room straightened. At such times one of the children would call out, "Not just yet, Mummy. Give us a little longer."
In thinking about her children, Prudence writes, "Each Advent I recall this experience with my children and wonder how many times the Lord has been close at hand, seeing the chaos of our world and longing to come, but waiting, sparing us judgment a little longer." Perhaps we are given more time to get our lives in order.
(Source eSermons)
I’ve talked about passive and active waiting. I just want to clarify something about active waiting. The phrase “Active waiting” suggests we have to be busy during the waiting. And that’s true we can be doing things to prepare the way for the Lord and his Kingdom certainly. But active waiting isn’t about doing as such or being busy.
A few years ago I remember seeing a T shirt which had the slogan “Look busy Jesus is coming”. And that can be a tendency among many Christians – including myself. In the time we’re waiting for Jesus we get busy. But Active waiting isn’t about being busy or looking busy. Active waiting is about being prepared and anticipating. Not just clock watching.
It’s the season of waiting in queues, waiting for packages to come in the post, waiting for children to give you their Christmas lists, waiting in traffic, waiting for a parking space, waiting, waiting, waiting.
One thing we don’t do very well in our society is wait. We get impatient. We get nervous and some even get angry. That’s because we see waiting as wasted time. It’s boring to sit and wait. It’s "down" time or "dead" time. We equate waiting time with being non-productive.
Waiting does not have to be seen as a bad thing. Waiting is an opportunity to reflect or meditate. Nor do we have to fill our idle time with things to do. The more time we spend working the less time we have to spend with our families or attending to our souls. Our society has become so production focused that we have lost sight of the fact that we need time to think, relax or just wonder.
The passage from Mark’s gospel we’ve been thinking about today illustrates one of the most important puzzles of the Gospel. And that is the “Already here / Not yet” quality of Jesus.
The Already Here Jesus has established the means by which we are part of God’s family and have a relationship with God. But Not Yet do we live in complete relationship with God.
The Already Here Jesus has started to build the Kingdom of God and there is evidence of that Kingdom in the world if we look. But not yet as his Kingdom been fully established.
As that well known theologian Noddy Holder once said "Look to the future it’s only just begun."
In this passage from Mark’s Gospel Jesus is sending a message about living in the challenging between time. That is the time between the Already Here time and the Not Yet time. We are in that Between Time. Therefore, we are called to be alert and awake and called to live our lives in accordance with Jesus who has come, died, been raised from the dead. And by being alert, being prepared, being watchful, we may find that not only will be ready to live in the promised realm of God when it comes, but we may experience even now what life in the new realm will be like.
What should we be doing while we’re waiting? We should be worshiping him, praising him, serving him, loving him, and loving one another as he commanded us to do. When we do those things, we will be ready, no matter when he comes.
Let us look to the future – it’s only just begun.
