Mark 13:24-37

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and forgotten where you were at?

You might have been traveling somewhere, spending the night in a hotel, and for a brief second, it’s quite a shock to discover you are not in your bedroom at home but in a strange room. As your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness of the room you begin to familiarize yourself with where you are and then you can’t help but wonder when you are. So, you blindly grab around for your phone to try to see what time it is. And since you’re already awake you decide to try to go to the bathroom without stubbing your toe on a suitcase.

The gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent B is shocking and then disorienting. It might be hard for your congregation to imagine what falling stars and a darkened sun have to do with getting ready for Christmas. The passage begins with an ominous phrase, “But after that suffering” and ends with Jesus grabbing us by the shoulders and shaking us as he yells, “Stay Awake!” It's a jarring start to the season of Advent that reminds us that Advent is about preparing for the return of Christ more than it is preparing for Christmas. And yet this passage is not directly about the return of Christ, or is it?

Take a moment to look around the sanctuary and consider where both you and your congregants have parked your eschatological interpretive luggage so that you don’t trip over it. Even if folks don’t look down at verses 5-23 with the woes to pregnant and nursing mothers, the darkened sun and falling stars today’s passage (vv24-25) will be enough to make folks think about “the last days” before Christ’s return. And why shouldn’t they believe Christ’s return is what chapter thirteen is about since their bible has a subtitle above the chapter which reads “Signs of the End of the Age”?

Before touching folks’ eschatological luggage, let’s first adjust our eyes to the room we find ourselves in. We have woken up in an apocalyptic place and it is not the Book of Daniel or The Revelation, but a section in Mark’s story. Questions arise as to which verses in ch. 13 refer to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and which verses refer to the Parousia or Christ’s return. Some interpretations bounce back and forth assigning certain verses to the destruction of the temple and others to the return of Christ. Others divide the chapter neatly in half with vv.1-31 referring to the destruction A.D. 30-70, and with vv. 32-37 referring to Christ’s return. Still others see the entire chapter to be about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

Complicated interpretations disappear when we remember what room (or story) we are in. We are in Mark’s Gospel, and Mark spends three chapters (11-13) describing what Jesus does for three days. Jesus takes his disciples on multiple field trips in and of the temple all the while sparring with the temple authorities. Ch. 13 begins with Jesus and His disciples leaving the temple and sitting down (position a rabbi and students take for a lesson) “on the Mount of Olives opposite (loaded word) the temple,” which they can still see in the background. After they marvel out loud at the temple’s grandeur. Jesus’ shocking words that the temple will be destroyed, leads them to ask when this will happen and what signs accompany it? (vv.1-4).

Kent Brower explains, “After Jesus’ startling pronouncement in 13:2, the question on their minds is the fate of the temple and how it relates to Jesus himself.”[1]

For the rest of the chapter Jesus gives an answer which describes the temple’s destruction, which is his vindication after the past two chapters of struggles with the temple authorities.

“But preacher, all this stuff about the sun and the moon being darkened and stars falling and all the stuff earlier in the chapter about ‘the end’ and ‘those days’… Doesn’t it sound like a passage on the return of Jesus?” Yes, it does, if you have been taught to associate apocalyptic imagery with the return of Christ. But apocalyptic literature reveals what is hidden. It doesn’t have to deal with the return of Christ to reveal things about their hour or our own.

Enter the lesson of the Fig Tree. Back in chapter eleven (11:12-14) right before Jesus enters the temple courts and overturns the money changer’s tables, He encounters a fig tree. It has leaves on it but no fruit. So, Jesus prophetically curses the fig tree for not being fruitful. The next day as they are on their way back to the temple Peter sees the fig tree completely withered and is amazed prompting Jesus to give another mini lesson (11:20-25). Jesus’ lesson on the fig tree in ch. 13 no longer seems so random and mysterious (or erroneously applied to signs of parousia?) when we consider Jesus’ previous fig tree lesson in relation to the temple. But now the fig tree’s late-spring twigs and leaves are pointing to summer’s imminence and an additional lesson. The season is about to change, and the temple system is quickly coming to an end.

“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (v.30).

If Jesus has been speaking about the return of Christ, how can He tell folks the folks there (ca. A.D. 30) that their generation will not die out before these things happen? Avoid the interpretive acrobatics that end time prophecy scholars perform to make certain verses from ch.13 be about Christ’s return despite what v. 30 says about this generation. If you decide to touch someone’s eschatological heirloom suitcase, don’t unpack in public in the form of a sermon. A simple “Jesus says ‘all these things will happen’ during the disciples’ lifetime and therefore these things cannot be referring to His return because He did not return in their lifetime” will suffice.

If Advent is about focusing on Christ’s return, why start with a gospel lesson focused on an event that has already taken place? i.e., the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Roman Empire between A.D. 30-70. But isn’t that precisely how advent works? We read stories that foretell Christ’s first coming (an event that has already taken place) so that we can learn how to prepare for Christ’s second coming (an event in the future we hope for).

They marveled at the temple (13:1) and Jesus did too, but in a different way. At the end of Palm Sunday’s parade Jesus, “…went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve” (11:11). How can we help folks look “around at everything” in the broken temple systems (religious, political, economic, etc.) of our world? And then realize that for them it’s already late?

Can the various episodes in Mark chs. 11-13 inspire us and help us uncover the oppressive and sinful systems that burden people in our hour? Instead of abandoning institutions, dare we seek to reform them by overturning tables? Dare we challenge the unbelief of the Sadducees? Will God really resurrect the dead one day? Dare we challenge the scribes who get it right, but still get it wrong by not interpreting and applying the scriptures with love? Dare we speak the truth like Jesus did to the scribes?

“They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation” (12:40). And look there’s a widow just now who “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (12:44b). Is Jesus channeling the same disgust and rage that Martin Luther felt when he saw the poor buy indulgences instead of bread because they thought it would save their loved ones’ souls?

Is it good news or bad news that the institutions that we have built our lives around or given sacrificially to (compare widow’s sacrificial gift to the temple (12:41-44) with the woman’s sacrificial gift of anointing perfume to Jesus (14:3-9) might be coming to an end? For some its good news that certain temple systems are soon to come to an end. For others, its bad news, or at least hard news. It is unbelievable news to say the least. But the good news for all is that although the end of the temple system is near Jesus is also near.

The good news is that “when you see these things taking place, you know that [Jesus] is near, at the very gates” (v.29). Heaven and earth may pass away (v.31) (not literally but figuratively) and your whole world may be turned upside down as institutions you have built your life around crumble, but Jesus’ words will still be able to give life. Jesus’ words will help us to wake up to the ways that we are being hurt and hurting others by systems that so often go unexamined.

When I was in middle school, I went on a snow skiing trip with my youth group. One night while we were sleeping in our hotel room, we woke up to someone banging on our door and yelling “Get out! Get out! The hotel’s on fire.” We didn’t dilly-dally putting on our clothes. We couldn’t see the flames at first, but we could see and smell the smoke. We could see folks stumbling out of their doors. Others up on the second floor were frantically throwing their luggage over the railing to the parking lot below. And the folks darting out of doors on the ground floor were at risk of being hit by the luggage which was falling like stars from the heavens. Someone was going to get hurt. But folks like their stuff and folks like their sleep. And while most had the attitude of every man for himself, there was one youth worker barely dressed himself, who was running door to door trying to wake others up to the danger at hand.

May Jesus wake us up this advent to the systems that oppress and to the systems that we need not make sacrifices for in order to save. May we heed the cries of the servant who was assigned to “the door to keep watch” (v.34). The prophets seek our good with lifesaving news even if their loud banging scares or annoys us. And even if all our luggage or beliefs are burned up and our temples torn down, may we find Hope in the fact that the suffering will come to an end and that Jesus is near and will be with us to the end.

[1]Kent Brower. Mark: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition. Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2012, 326.