An Advent of Biblical Proportions

I had been in Jerusalem for two days. The adrenaline that had been powering me through the jet lag was beginning to wear off. But I was determined to keep up my schedule. Just before I went to bed at the hotel I looked at the map to plan a morning run. Our hotel was on the west side of the Old City and I saw that if I ran around to the east side of the city and crossed the bridge across the Kidron Valley I would find myself in Gethsemane - the place where Jesus prayed on the night of his betrayal. Our schedule was full so if I was going to do this I had to get up at 5 am for a 5:30 run. But when the alarm went off at 5 am I groaned. I hit the button and briefly considered skipping the run and going to sleep. But then I heard Jesus' voice. That happened a lot in Jerusalem. I kept hearing Jesus say things. Like when I was running up the Via Dolorosa, the route Jesus had taken to the cross, and it was steeper than anything I had run on the Eastern Shore, and I was considering walking a little bit, and I heard a voice saying, "What would Jesus do?" But this was not the Via Dolorosa; it was the Garden of Gethsemane I wanted to go to. And what did Jesus say to Peter, James & John when he came back from praying there and found them sleeping? "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" That's what I heard. So I got my lazy self out of bed and went running. It was dark at 5:30. The street lamps put splotches of fluorescent light on the sidewalks and pavement. Dogs barked. A rooster crowed down in the valley. Along the street in front of the south walls of the Old City Hassidic Jews lined up to catch buses to work. Around the east side Muslim workers did the same thing. Bells rang in the Christian quarter to call people to prayer. A recorded voice sang out the call to prayer from the minarets. In some ways it was like every other city in the world. In other ways it was like no other place. When I got to southeast corner of the walls the sun was just starting to peek over the Mount of Olives. The first morning I went running it shocked me to get to this point because I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by graves. Along the walls was a large Arab cemetery with graves right up to the walls below the Temple of the Rock. They even covered the entrance to the Golden Gate - an ancient gate that has been closed up for centuries now. Down below me in the Kidron Valley was a Christian cemetery and across the valley, all along the southern base of the Mount of Olives was a huge Jewish cemetery. Now why are all these people buried in the same area? The prophet Zechariah, in chapter 14, tells of a time when the Lord would come to vindicate the people against all their enemies. And Zechariah clearly says that God's feet will be on the Mount of Olives and the mountain will split in half to create a valley through which the people besieged in Jerusalem will escape (Zech 14:4). So the Jewish Messianic belief has centered on this notion that when the Messiah comes he will appear first on the Mount of Olives and that closed up gate, the Golden Gate, will open. To be buried on the Mount of Olives is to be in the front row for the day of the Lord's salvation. Muslim beliefs about the end of times also have a role for Jerusalem as a place of judgment. But as I heard the story, there is a defensive reason for the graves. No Jewish messiah would dare to touch dead bodies and to risk becoming unclean, so the graves are meant to block the Golden Gate. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but there are lots of stories in Jerusalem. Then there are the Christians. And what is it that we expect? Christians have traditionally looked to the east as the direction from which Jesus will return in the clouds to claim the chosen people. Most old churches are oriented toward the east. And if you're in Jerusalem, the sun comes up in the east over the Mount of Olives. So to be buried near the Mount of Olives, again, is to be in the front rows for the return of our Messiah. Why am I telling you this story on the first day of Advent? Because this is that strange season of the year. Time gets muddled. Expectations are all mixed up. Music in the malls has been proclaiming a baby in a manger since the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving disappeared in a Black Friday avalanche. The ABC Family TV network is proclaiming the 25 days of Christmas ending on December 25 instead of the traditional 12 days of Christmas beginning on Christmas Day. Santa Claus is already getting overexposed. Our credit cards are already maxed out. Cats living with dogs. It's all mixed up. Even in our scripture readings it's all mixed up. We come expecting angel choirs and shepherds in the fields and Isaiah tells us about dried up leaves and broken pottery. We want to sing 'joy to the world' and 'peace on earth,' but Jesus tells us to stay awake because the heavens are going to shake and the earth is going to quake and something dreadful is going to happen before the coming Day of the Lord. There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, persecutions, family divisions. Happy holidays! Advent must be something we didn't expect. Advent must be more than just a rehearsal of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Advent must be about a day we didn't expect, but maybe we should. Advent on the Mount of Olives is about a time yet to come when even death is not the end of the story. There are thousands of dead people waiting at the Golden Gate for one more chapter in this story. So maybe we ought to be looking for more than just a good deal during this season. Maybe we ought to expect an advent of biblical proportions. The 13th chapter of Mark's gospel, which we read from this morning, has always troubled Christians. It comes near the end of the gospel as Jesus is preparing for his arrest and crucifixion. His disciples are trying to get a handle on how this all going to go down. They're in awe of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the opening verses of this chapter they sound like tourists. "Teacher, look at these buildings! Look at these stones!" Jesus is not impressed. "These will all be torn down," he tells the disciples. "Not one stone will be left upon another." Then he goes on to describe for them the tribulations that are to come. Disturbances of the earth and of the heavens. Persecutions for his followers. Conflicts that will lead to death and destruction. Horrible things. "Pray that it may not come in the winter," he said. Then Jesus concludes his warnings with this line that we have been puzzling over ever since. After saying that no one, not even Jesus, knows when the end will come, when he will appear over the Mount of Olives with his angels to gather the chosen from the ends of the earth, he says, "This generation will not pass away before these things come to pass." Now to hear this in 33 AD is one thing. And that generation did not pass away before many of those things did take place. The city was destroyed. The holy site of the Temple was desecrated with pagan worship. There were wars and rumors of wars. There was death and destruction and persecution. By 70 AD Jerusalem was a wasteland. But that generation did pass away and still Christians waited. And each new generation has waited. Maybe it will come when Rome falls. Maybe it will happen when we get to the year 1000. Maybe the year 2000. Maybe on in May of 2011. No, we miscalculated. Maybe it's October. Everyone who has ever made a prediction about the end of time in their lifetime has been wrong. Unless we missed something dramatic. So what could that mean? Well, maybe "this generation" doesn't mean a specific strata of time, but a kind of people. A kind of people who are less than holy, but who need a savior. A kind of people who know struggles and trials. A kind of people who thirst for a word from God. In God's time, maybe we are of the same generation of those disciples because we are the same kind of people. And what does Jesus tell such a people? To stay awake. To be ready. To be alert. How hard is that? Well, in chapter 13 Jesus tells the disciples to be alert and in chapter 14 he asks three of them, "Why are you sleeping? Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" It's harder than it looks to stay awake. Staying awake means living your life in expectation. It's an active expectation. We don't wait for Jesus by putting our lives on hold and neglecting the world around us because, really, what does it matter if Jesus is coming again? No, to have an Advent of biblical proportions means to be know that everything we do every day, every moment is invested with meaning and importance. You think you're living your life and yours alone? You think nobody else should care what you are doing because really, it's nobody's business? Your business is my business. I can't live your life for you, but I can tell you that it matters how you treat other people. It matters how you manage the resources that have been given to you - your time, your money, your talents and gifts. It matters how you direct your life and what you give yourself to. It matters because there is a time at the end of time when our lives are exposed for what they are - a day of judgment. But it also matters because if the message of Jesus has transformed our lives and we are expecting the coming kingdom, our lives in the here and now ought to be infused with glimpses of that kingdom - "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." This season is a hard one. It's hard to keep. It's hard to hold yourself in a creative tension between what is now and what is to come. It's also hard because so many of us have so many things going on within us during the holidays. It's not always soft lights and warm memories. In our minds and our hearts are memories of past hurts that grow more painful at the holidays. Ways we have been wronged or slighted or neglected or abused. Loved ones that we have lost and that we miss more acutely at the holidays. Rough places that feel rougher. Hard times that feel harder. But keep alert. Keep watch. Don't hit the snooze bar until Christmas. Because you are not alone in this season. God has things for you to do and things for you to receive. And we have things to do together as a people waiting for Christ to come. Thanks be to God.