We say, “Happy New Year” today, a whole month ahead other people. Instead of celebrating Christmas for 6 to 8 weeks, right after Halloween, we have another season called Advent, which no one else in the world cares about. We still insist that December 25 is Christmas, not the whole month before it. For those who feel the need to be counter-cultural, feel free to be a Christian! Let’s start not from the beginning, but from the very end!
One of the favourite saying of storytellers is, “but I am getting ahead of myself!” “Are we getting ahead of ourselves?” In many areas of life, yes, we are! Our consumer culture does not allow us to delay gratification – it has to be instant, right away: "buy now, pay later!" "Travel and vacation first, no payment for 6 months…" We spend what we have not yet earned! There is a nice word called credit that allows us to do that. We are always getting ahead of ourselves! The Commercial Christmas season is all about shopping, spending and saving. We will diet first before getting fat again, then another round of new diets we will adopt as New Year Resolution. How can we wait? No, we cannot!
With the new church year, we begin with Year B of our 3 year-lectionary, which uses primarily the Gospel of Mark as the designated Gospel. As you know, Mark does not have a birth narrative at the beginning of his story. It poses a bit of a problem for the Advent readings… Instead, the chosen reading for today is a discourse about the end of time from Mark 13. At first sight, it may not seem appropriate to begin at the end. However, Advent has to do with the coming of the Lord, the birth being but one form of the appearance of Christ. After all, we are living in between the first and the second advent of Christ. At the core of Christian faith, we understand that the end time has to do with the coming of the Lord. God is "the One who comes" to strengthen and to heal, to reveal, and to redeem. Therefore, the posture of the people of God is always one of expectation and hope in waiting.
Part of the preparation of Advent has to do with waiting for God to appear in our lives in various places and situations. We arrive at the season of Christmas with the wonderful mystery of the incarnation of “God with us”! We start off examining the promise of God with us at the end of time.
A lot of doomsday prophets proclaim the end is very near, and some actually claim they know exactly when! There have been too many doomsday cults throughout history; they have devoted their energy solely in unfruitful predictions and speculations. They choose to prepare for the end time by stopping to live in the mean time. Some end with very tragic outcomes. Remember 30 years ago in Jonestown,
We have seen a sign board that said, “Prepare to meet Thy God!” We usually think of meeting God only at the end of our lives. Most people don’t think of encountering God in their daily life. Yet, Christians claim that we can have a relationship with God by faith through the person of Jesus Christ. By faith, we can relate to God and encounter God even in our everyday life. God is not a stranger to us, when we can pray to this God, ask for forgiveness, praise and worship God, and give thanks for God’s many blessings.
Given such relationship, should we be afraid of the end? Should we fear the Final Judgment?
It is like have regular performance reviews in your job, with on-going evaluations with your managers or supervisors. There should be no unpleasant surprise at the end of each evaluation period. The best evaluation process should produce no surprises. Whereas, if performance evaluation or judgment only takes place once in a life time; then it will be a very different matter. These days, management cannot fire anyone without giving prior warnings along the way, unless the employee had done something seriously wrong.
Moreover, if a faith relationship already exists; at the end of our life time, when we have to meet God as the Final Judge, will we find a friend or a stranger? Given in last week’s Gospel of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, there is surprised reaction to those people being judged, there may still be surprises for us, too. Would our confidence turn us into self-righteous fools with spiritual arrogance? Would we follow blindly our religious rules and fail to see the needs of those around us? Or, would our preoccupation with good works turn us into unthinking machines dispensing mercy and charity?
Again, our perception of God certainly influences and colours our relationship with God. It may determine whether that relationship is one of fear, or one of loving trust. Would we find God an angry and vengeful God ready to punish us, as in the Isaiah (ch 64) passage? Or, do we relate to God as Abba Father, more of an intimate daddy? Or, do we submit to a God where the relationship is more one-sided, as in “we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
On the other hand, apocalyptic endings are really good news for the believers! It is about Hope! Even if the details sound horrifying and horrific! It provides comfort and hope for deliverance, especially to those who were facing persecution and suffering in the early church.
St Paul assures the church in Corinth that the grace of God that strengthen them in the first place will continue to do so as they wait for the revealing of Jesus Christ. He said, “He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”(1 Corinthians 1-3-9)
Since we do not know the timing of the end, unlike those who claim that they know, we are reminded that Jesus’ words to the disciples are “Beware! Keep Alert! Keep awake!” These words of action are all in the present tense. A commentator, James Edwards (The Gospel According to Mark p. 406) argues: “All the signs that have been given add up to one conclusion: the End cannot be prepared for. That is because the End is ultimately not a ‘then’ but a mysteriously present – ‘now’. The sole preparation for the End is watchfulness and faithfulness in the present.” What we do now matters. Rather than anticipating what is to come in the future, we should concentrate on living with watchfulness and being alert in the here and now.
Yes, our existence takes place in between the first and the second advent of Christ. As Christians, we live with the end in sight, but we are not distracted by it. Some would advise us to live every day as if it were the last day of our life. That way, we can treasure each moment and live it to the fullest. As we wait actively, keeping awake for God, we do so with a joyful expectation. We don’t wait idly, full of anxiety and worries.
Therefore, when we talk about the end, are we getting ahead of ourselves? No, not when we have the end in sight and live according to the hope that God has set before us! Thanks be to God. Amen.
Fr Victor+
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