The Gospel reading for today in the Missal, which we use at St Mark’s, is different from that in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), which we use at St Gabriel’s, the reading in the Missal being several verses shorter than that in the RCL. So, in order to harmonise the Gospel readings for the purpose of today’s sermon, the longer reading is printed below so that it can be read by everyone before moving on to the sermon.
Mark 13:24-37
24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the cock crows, or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”
Sermon
In the years before I was ordained, I was part of a group of people, from various parishes in the area where I lived, who used to meet quite regularly for Discussion Groups and Bible Studies. One of the Bible Studies we did was on the Gospel of St Mark and I always remember the meeting when we looked at the passage from St Mark’s Gospel from which this morning’s Gospel reading is taken. The person who was leading the study was a Licensed Reader from a local parish, and the reason I remember this session of the Bible Study so well, is because I’ve never forgotten what they said about the verses that make up our Gospel reading today. What they said was that they really didn’t like this part of the Bible at all and, if there was one part of the Bible they could do away with, it was this bit. And that was because this is the part where Jesus lies to his disciples!
This Gospel reading is part of a longer discourse in which Jesus speaks about the ‘End Times’. He starts by speaking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and then, in answer to questions from Peter, James, John and Andrew, he goes on to speak about the signs that will herald the end, and herald his return ‘with great power and glory’. During this discourse, Jesus says,
“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
This is usually taken to mean that Jesus’ own generation, his disciples and other contemporaries, would live to see all these things happen. But they died a long time ago, and these things have still not happened yet. That makes these words of Jesus quite difficult for us to understand. And it was these words that led the Reader who led our Bible Study that night to conclude that Jesus must have been lying to his disciples when he said this. What other explanation was there?
But, if we go down the route of thinking that Jesus must have been lying, because what he said doesn’t seem to be right or to make sense, we could easily find ourselves on a very slippery slope indeed. If we think that, for whatever reason, Jesus lied when he spoke these words to his disciples, or alternatively, try to get round that problem by saying Jesus never really said them, where does that line of thinking end? If we think Jesus lied here, how do we know he wasn’t lying elsewhere? We might then look at other things that Jesus said that we find difficult to understand, or believe, and decide he was lying then too. And if we start to think that we can’t really believe Jesus’ words, might we not also then start to look at what he did, and wonder just how much of that is true as well? In fact, if we go down this road, of only believing Jesus when we can fully understand what he said and meant and did, or if we don’t fully understand at least prove what he said and did is true, we might easily find ourselves wondering whether any of his words are true and if anything we read about him in the Gospels really happened. That is the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of trust in Jesus, and of hope in him too. It’s the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of faith.
We have to accept that some of things we read in the Bible, including some of Jesus’ words, not to mention the miracles he performed, are hard to understand. And because we don’t understand them, we might even find some of these things difficult to believe at times. But we always have to remember that we’re neither asked nor expected know and understand these things fully, but to have faith, to believe and trust even when we don’t know and don’t really understand. As St Paul says in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians,
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And we see this in today’s Gospel when Jesus himself openly admits that there are some things that even he doesn’t know.
After telling his disciples about the signs that will herald the end, Jesus quite openly says,
“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
And if there are things concerning the Father that even Jesus, the Son of God, doesn’t know, how can we expect to know and understand everything? If Jesus didn’t know everything, why should we think we ought to be able to know and understand everything? If Jesus didn’t know everything, why should we think that anything we can’t understand, must be wrong, or can’t have happened, or must be a lie? But many people, including many in the Church, do seem to think in this way.
A problem that I think we all have, even as Christians, in modern times, is that we’re all children of the Enlightenment. As I’m sure many of you will know, the Enlightenment was a movement that arose in Europe during the 17th and 18th Centuries that championed human reason as the means to understand the universe and improve the human condition. It led to the ascendency of a worldview based on science and provable scientific facts over a worldview based on Christianity and faith in God. Many of the Enlightenment’s high ideals about human beings, such as their inexorable progress through the application of reason and science have now been discredited, but the primacy of science over religion is still with us. It’s been with us for a long time and so it surrounds us and influences us from our very earliest days of life. We grow up being taught that every question has an answer and must be, and eventually will be, answered. And so we grow up thinking that we, either personally or as human beings generally, can and will answer every question if we think about it long enough and hard enough. And because we’re brought up under the influence of that scientific worldview from our earliest days, it becomes part of who we, even if we don’t realise it. And that can make us very mistrustful or dismissive of anything that can’t be answered or that we don’t understand. In my experience, that seems to lie behind the thinking of many people who believe in conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately, because it’s become part of who we all are, many people in the Church have, perhaps without realising it, allowed the prevailing and all-pervading scientific worldview to undermine their faith, or to take precedence over their faith. And so we have the ‘God of the Gaps’ Christians, those who believe that, where science seems to contradict their faith, it’s their faith that’s wrong. And, as science seems to contradict more and more of their faith, the space for God is reduced to the gaps in scientific knowledge where faith can still exist without contradiction by science. We have Christians who simply dismiss parts of their faith because they seem to go against human reason. Christians who dismiss parts of their faith because they don’t understand them. Christians who dismiss parts of their faith for these reasons because these things lead them to think that their faith, or at least parts of it, can’t be true.
But science is concerned with observable, provable facts and, as the Letter to the Hebrews says
“faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
And so simply because we don’t understand something or it seems to go against human reason, we shouldn’t dismiss it as impossible, unbelievable, or a lie. That the end hasn’t come yet, for example, doesn’t mean that Jesus was lying to his disciples when he said ‘this generation’ would see it, and neither does it mean he didn’t really say that at all.
In his admission that only the Father knows when the end will come, Jesus points us to some very important things that we always need to bear in mind when we read Jesus words, or indeed, the Scriptures generally. When Jesus said that ‘this generation’ will not pass away before they see the signs of the end times, he can’t have been speaking simply about his disciples and contemporaries: he can’t have simply meant that those who were living on earth at that time would see all these things happen. How could he have meant that if he didn’t know when it would happen? This tells us that we can’t ‘cherry pick’ the Scriptures, or Jesus’ words. We can’t pick and choose which bits to believe and which bits to dismiss as unbelievable, or even lies. We have to take them as a whole if we even hope to understand them.
So, when Jesus spoke about ‘this generation’, he must have meant something other than simply those who were alive then. In the Scriptures, ‘generation’ can mean a type of people who share a quality or characteristic, so he may have meant his disciples would see these things, but not necessarily those he was speaking to at the time. He may have meant his disciples whoever they might be at the time these signs occur.
Jesus also said that he would
“gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
So by ‘this generation’ he could have indeed have meant those he was speaking to and others who were living at the time, as the term is generally taken to mean, but he may have meant that they will see these things from heaven. That wouldn’t contradict Jesus’ statement that these things would happen before that generation passed away.
In the Scriptures too, ‘generation’ can also apply to a race of people. So Jesus may have been speaking about his own race, the Jews, implying that, whatever happens in the meantime, including the destruction of the Temple, the Jews will see these things, whenever they happen.
The truth is, whilst we assume that Jesus’ disciples knew what he meant by ‘this generation’, now, 2000 years later, we simply don’t know exactly what he meant. But that doesn’t mean we can’t believe what he said. What it does mean is that, if we don’t understand something, it might be our understanding that’s at fault, not the words we’re reading that are untrue, and not our faith that’s misplaced.
Today, we begin the season of Advent, and so we’re once more called to stay awake and watch for the Lord’s coming. We don’t know when that will be, only God our Father knows that. But we have Jesus’ word that he will come and, because we don’t know when that will be, if we’re going to be ready to meet him when he comes, we have to be ready at all times. But we’ll only be ready at all times if we’ve taken Jesus’ words seriously and acted on them. And we won’t do that by going through his words to see if we can understand them and then picking and choosing what to believe and what not to believe. If we’re going to be ready to meet the Lord when he comes, we need to have faith that all his words are true and worthy of our trust and obedience, whether we fully understand them or not.
Amen.
You will find the Propers for Advent 1 here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 