I would like to start by wishing you all a Happy New Year because today, 5 weeks before the secular world, the Church celebrates New Year’s Day.  And like the secular year, this is a time of anticipation and looking ahead.

As we look forward to the Incarnation of God as a defenceless baby, there is the knowledge that it is He who has chosen to be vulnerable, to come down to us and live with us.  But we also need to hold on to another image, that in due time He will also be our Judge.  It can be difficult to hold both those images at once but it is important because it prevents us, at Christmas and beyond, from falling into being ‘matey’ with Jesus and forgetting that he is God, who created and redeemed us and whom we should worship for ever and ever.  He is the Friend of sinners, but also their Lord and King.

The spirit of waiting can be found in our Old Testament lesson, in fact the writer is pleading with God to ‘tear open the heavens and come down.’  For the Jews it would have been a terrible and alarming thing if God had come down to them: the mountains would quake, the nations would tremble at His presence.  Particularly as His people had sinned and God was right to be very angry and punish them.  Even so, the writer pleads –

In a short while I want to explore today’s Gospel reading.  But before doing that I want to talk a little bit about the Gospel of Mark.  As we start a New Year in the Church so we start using a different Synoptic Gospel.  Last year it was Matthew’s Gospel and this year it is Mark’s.  Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written down but this did not happen until a good 40 years after Jesus had lived and died.  In New Testament times the oral tradition was very important because most people could not read.  During these forty years the traditions about Jesus had developed and the Gospel contains testimonies of early Christians explaining about the significance that he had come to have in their lives since his death and resurrection.  He was the long expected Messiah but his way of doing things was not what any Jews had expected. We do not know exactly who Mark was: in the past it was thought that he was the companion of Peter but there is no evidence for this.  He was obviously very involved in the early Church and he wrote his Gospel for both Jewish and Gentile Christians.

The year in which Mark’s Gospel was finished was a momentous year for Judaism and Christianity for it was in that year that Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans.  The Jews had begun a revolt against the Romans in 66AD and many, many Jews were killed by the Romans. Christian Jews too were killed but they were committed to non-violence, and so were seen as disloyal by the Jews in a time of war against a despised Empire. It is likely that as persecution became a serious problem, and as Christians were dispersed that some written record was wanted of the life and teaching of Jesus. So Mark’s Gospel was written, to be followed soon by those of Luke and Matthew.

That’s enough background.  What does today’s Gospel reading have to say to us? Chapter 13 starts with the foretelling of the destruction of the Temple (obviously very pertinent at the time that the Gospel was being written down) and then of persecution, also very relevant, followed by a description of ill-treatment in Judea, causing people to flee. 

This all reminds us that we need to serve in God’s way and that through this service God can act.  The beginning of our passage tells us that after all the suffering Jesus describes even the sun will darken and the moon not give any light, stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  And against this Picture of destruction the Son of Man will return to redeem the suffering of His people. 

Over the centuries people have looked at this prophecy and tried to come up with a date for the ‘end of the world.’  Some people who believed they had succeeded in this woke to find them selves penniless, having spent everything that they had the night before, in an unchanged world.  They would have done well to listen to the verses near the end of our passage which tell us that only God the Father, NOT EVEN JESUS, knows when that day will come.  So although Christ’s disciples believed that this so-called ‘Second Coming’ was imminent it was impossible for them, or Jesus to know this.  We cannot even be sure what the ‘Second Coming’ will be like.  It may just (well rather more than just!) mean when we die, when we are invited into God’s Kingdom for eternity, we will see Jesus at the right hand of the Father, welcoming us into that Kingdom.  But whatever the coming of the Son of Man on clouds means this passage tells us that we should not be concerning ourselves with when and how, we should be busy serving God, helping others to share in His Kingdom here on Earth.

I wonder what the disciples made of all of this.  Since their arrival in Jerusalem Jesus had wowed the people when he processed on a donkey, cleansed the Temple and challenged the chief priests, elders and scribes in the Temple itself.  He had behaved as if it were he who had the authority in the Temple rather than the officials and then he had gone on to tell them that the very temple would be destroyed.  For the disciples the only positive message in all of this was that the Son of Man would return and gather the elect together.  I am pretty sure that the disciples knew that the Son of Man and Jesus were one but they must have wondered just how it would all come to pass.

And what does it mean to us?   It takes us back to the Incarnation, to the ‘First Coming’ of the Messiah because it serves to remind us about God’s way of doing things.  When that special baby was born in that lowly stable in an outpost of Judea, he did not get special treatment.  His mother was almost made persona non grata, there was no home for him to be born into, and those in power sought to destroy him at a young age.  When he started his ministry the people of his own town derided him. As he healed the sick, the authorities accused him of being possessed by a demon and when he tried to show the Jewish authorities the way of love, they chose to have him killed.  And yet still he could not be destroyed and he rose from the tomb on the third day, triumphant over death.

Christ’s followers who were being persecuted at the time Mark was writing his Gospel, and thereafter, knew that through all their suffering God was with them in a special and intimate way.  Whatever destruction happens, God will triumph, His great power, love and glory will shine through. 

However any of us suffers, God knows what it is like first-hand.  There is much suffering in this world and there will continue to be until God’s Kingdom is fully established.  But that suffering can be shared with the One who created us and redeemed us.

Whatever Jesus meant when he talked about ‘The Son of Man Coming in clouds’, Advent is about looking forward to God’s Kingdom coming on Earth.  As Mark wrote at the beginning of his Gospel: 

And what should our response be? One of the Advent hymns, which we have just sung, puts it like this:

Amen