We thought we were doing so well. Didn’t everyone want to be like us? We had dreams: everyone can own a house and build a future and be somebody and be left alone. Everybody can have their 15 minutes of fame. We can all be on Big Brother or Australia’s Got Talent or Australian Idol. We can all have what we want. Sure we overlooked those that couldn’t, but please they didn’t really want it, did they?
Then all of a sudden, the rug is pulled out from under us. And we don’t know about our futures anymore and we worry about the futures of our children and our grandchildren. What are we going to live on in our retirements? What jobs are going to be available? How will we maintain our lifestyles, our security, our society? How do we even know that we’re going to be around tomorrow to enjoy what we have? How do we know that we’re safe?
So God, what do you think you’re doing? And just where are you? After all, it’s not as if you haven’t shown your face previously? It’s not as though you haven’t pulled out a miracle or two for the sake of your chosen people before. Remember the Exodus: what a show!
Come and sing unto the Lord for we have triumphed gloriously:Aren’t we half as good as them? Aren’t you just as interested in us as you were in them? Think about the stories of you meeting with people like Hagar and Moses and Elijah, Jacob and Mary and Joseph.
the horses and the riders are thrown into the sea!
You know it’s all your fault that we’re in the state we’re in, don’t you? We wouldn’t have done any of it, if you’d been around. That’s why we’re in the hole we’re in. Don’t you know that our churches would be full and our communities would be vibrant, if only you would make yourself clearly known? But you, you hide, and we suffer. When you’re not there, we easily fall away and do everything but we should do. It’s all your fault. So, what are you going to do about it?
We’d like to see a cataclysm: a great outpouring of wrath where all the bad guys get their comeuppance. And, of course, we know who the bad guys are: everyone but us! It’s those people who gambled too much on the stock market; and those others who can see how wealthy the West is and who will do anything to be like us; and if they can’t be like us, they’ll pull us down. It’s those people who don’t like other people; it’s people who aren’t like us. So what are you going to do about?
We want a cataclysm. We were promised a cataclysm. The Gospel of Mark has you talking about a cataclysm; well at least your Child, Jesus, talking about a cataclysm, but if in seeing Jesus, we see you, it’s as good as you promising one (even after all that guff with Noah). Yes, you promised us a cataclysm; and we expected one; and we expected to be the onlookers to that glorious event, the ones saved from your wrath, watching the entertainment as you routed your enemies.
The communities behind the Gospel of Mark, of course, would have known about cataclysm. The power of Rome depended upon the might of its armies. The Markan collection is gathered together just about the time of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. It was a cataclysm; and they so much wanted the end of the world and the beginning of the new one. Can we blame them? The hope was that, in the midst of such cataclysm, despite such cataclysm, even because of such cataclysm, the purposes of God would be revealed, more than be revealed, would be achieved; that God’s reign would finally come to fruition – the reign that had been glimpsed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Yes, that was it, the Christ event. That event was so cataclysmic that the people just knew that God was near: any threat to an imminent triumph must surely be a sign that God would be acting soon.
But, the Gospel of Mark is more circumspect. It isn’t about preparing for the end or predicting the future. It isn’t about watching for the unleashing of the wrath of God. It’s about preparing for God’s reign; it’s about living God’s reign; and that is entirely different.
The reign of God glimpsed, begun, inaugurated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is about anything but the wrath of God. This cataclysmic event which we now describe as incarnation, as embodiment, as being made flesh, is cataclysmic, but it’s not about the wrath of God destroying God’s enemies, nor is it about the destruction of the world in order to bring about a new one, rather it is about God entering the world which we already have, which has already been gifted to us by God. It is about the Creator entering the created order. And that is cataclysmic: the God who is above and beyond and around us is with us, becomes one of us – knows what it is to strive for something worthwhile in a state of limitation and to be defeated; knows what it is to give of oneself to something important to the point of the loss of self; knows what it is to know the depths of being human, of being created, of being mortal, frail, fragile, broken...
And in the process, asks us, not to expect God to be any different from who God is, and not to expect to watch the cataclysmic outcome of the wrath of God destroying God’s enemies (because there’s a fair chance we’d be among them if that happened), but to be about our living as the people of God in the hope that all things will work together for good because of this God who wants to be in relationship with us so much that nothing, nothing, not one thing will prevent God from doing just that.
And yet still we wait for the cataclysm. Surely, the financial world will realise its folly in the face of the current situation, and review its practices. Surely the great powers of this world will see what the problem is in the face of successive waves of terrorism and wipe it out. Surely, whatever we want can happen; and whatever we dream about can be.
But that is not the promise: it is not the promise given in and through Christ… no matter how hard we lament or confess or plead, no matter who we blame or what we look for. The promise to us in Christ is that God is the one who reigns, that God’s reign is both our gift and our calling, and that the God who gifts and calls us is primarily a God of love. In Christ, God has decisively acted to demonstrate utter acceptance of us, utter care for our wellbeing, utter willingness to be in relationship with us – the type of relationship that is not coersive, or abusive, or violent; the type of relationship that is offered, and not forced upon us; the type of relationship that invites our response and accepts whatever that response may be. That action is cataclysmic. It is cataclysmic because it everything (past, present and future) in its embrace as we discover that it is in and through the Christ event that we are who we are in relationship with God: accepted, loved and free.
Why would we look for more? In Christ, God became human. Not to erase our experience; not to obliterate our experience; nor even to over-write our experience; but to enter into it, to know us, to know it and still to be in relationship with us, still offering us relationship despite what we do, what we’ve done, who we are.
So we find ourselves in Advent, still waiting for the “consummation of all things which Christ will bring” to quote the Basis of Union; and still called both to prepare for that coming and to live in the reign already begun in Christ.
Come thou long-expected Jesus!
… Now thy gracious kingdom bring!
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