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27 November 2011
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The First Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the New Church Year, and what does the Gospel designated for this day spring upon us but a discourse that is, by all the world’s standards, nothing short of a cosmic buzz-kill. We are joining Jesus and the disciples in Jerusalem, smack-dab in the middle of the events of Holy Week. Peter and the boyz have just been busy marveling at human achievement and human technology. “Look at all this great architecture – made of such big stones – think of the imagination, the ingenuity, the daring, the strength it took to bring these huge stones here and to hoist them atop one another high into the air to raise up these magnificent structures here on Temple Mount!” Jesus, no optimist about human nature, and not having been taken in by Hegelian dialectic, is not at all impressed. “See these great buildings? Not one stone will be left on top of another. And as for all your other human enterprises, there will be wars and rumors of war, nation will rise against nation, and all hell will be continually breaking loose. Nor will you yourselves be able to avoid calamity, suffering, and death. And in the midst of it, all sorts of people with all sorts of schemes and dreams will come along claiming to know the meaning of history, appointing themselves as Messiah, offering you their way to a better world, to better living through GE, chemicals, digitalization, and offering salvation through meditation and moralization; pay them no heed, they are all false. But be watchful, I am telling you the things you need to know.”
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