SCRIPTURE READINGS:
You Word, O Lord, is a lamp to our feet. A light to our path.
Isaiah 64:1-9
Mark 13:24-37
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
REFLECTION:
The theme for this first week of Advent is hope, and our readings today are about just that – hope, in the midst of upheaval, uncertainty, struggle and whatever else life throws at us, God does not abandon us. Throughout history, people have experienced extraordinary pain and injustice and this continues in our world today, but God is with us. Our challenge is to look to God’s coming, to experience God’s promise and to sense God’s sacred presence within the context of our lives and the lives of others.
The reading from Isaiah is concerned with community life in Jerusalem during a time of disappointment, despair and tension. The people have returned from exile in Babylonia filled with hope and anticipation, only to find a land in rubble, and their temple in ruins. They remember a God of power and might – the mountains quaking, the nations trembling at God’s presence. An awesome God who they failed to listen to and to follow, time and time again. They lament their sinful behaviour, and for having pushed God away. They call out to God, their father and maker, reminding God that they are his, begging God to remember his love for his people. They look to God in the heavens, asking that they be ripped open so that God can come down; God’s dwelling place on earth, the temple, is no longer there. In the midst of destruction and despair, the people of Israel turn with hope to the one who can help them, the one they belong to, the one who is always there.
Hope in the Old Testament is a confidence that God can and will make newness because God has the power and will to overcome all that is failed, broken. The people remember God’s generosity toward those whom God loves.
In Mark, there is a similar theme of extreme suffering and an envisioning of divine intervention as the only way to find delivery from affliction. Mark’s hearers would have known all about oppression. A horrendous Jewish revolt in 66-70CE ended with the Romans starving out Jerusalem before breaking through, destroying the temple and crucifying many Jews. More Jews were killed by Jews than Romans during that period, with starvation causing some desperate behaviours. It is in this context that Mark views the times as ‘the last times’. We can only imagine what the people must have experienced; why they would have looked to the end of the world as their aspiration, as their basis for hope.
Mark provides an apocalyptic vision of the Son of Man receiving the authority to rule after centuries of oppression by foreign forces. All the faithful from across the world will be gathered by his angels. Finally freedom will reign and there will be peace. And we are told to stay alert, to keep awake because no one knows when these things will happen, when the end will come – but for Mark, it was imminent. Wait with hope. Keep awake.
Both in the Isaiah reading and in Mark, we are shown how people have hope and how they live with unpredictability in their lives. We are the same. We have hope in God because of our faith and because of our human nature. Human beings continue to wait for something new, despite sometimes horrific situations. The hope we have in God can seem a little opaque sometimes because we don’t always know what hope actually looks like. There is a unknown and unpredictable quality to what we are hoping for – sometimes we can’t imagine it ourselves. All we know is that we want the situation we are in to change or we want some response.
At times, God is very accessible and at other times, God can appear distant or closed to us. We respond to this unpredictability with prayer. God knows everything and we do not. The cry for God’s intervention in our lives and our world, is a cry throughout time as can be seen in our readings today
In our world today, the places and situations where despair and powerlessness exist continue. People still live in fear, hunger, pain and experience abhorrent and unjust situations. We can look closer to home and remember the bushfires that ravaged large parts of our country. We have just come out of 8 months of lockdown restrictions that have crippled our economy, our community and brought insecurity and struggle to many. Other countries are still being ravaged by the virus. Where is God in suffering? God is in the hope, in the knowing that all human experience contains meaning, even when that meaning is beyond our own understanding. Hope is in the possibility of something changing for the better or as in Mark today, the belief that when things are so bad, God will not abandon his people. God will return and his kingdom will overthrow the injustice of our human world.
We know that we are loved by a God who made us, like a potter molding clay and breathing life into our being. The intimacy and connection of God to each of us and our lives is inherent. We are called to live in the world with the authority that hope gives. To live in the light of a hope which is found beyond our human experiences, remembering that God is with us.
In this time of Advent, we are called to prepare, to wait and to be alert. Waiting with anticipation and with hope for the coming of the Christ. Amen.