"Hold On...The Day Is Coming"
November 16, 1997
Hebrews 10:11-25/Mark 13:24-32
go toBible Study
"Hold On...The Day Is Coming"
I had just finished putting my groceries on the check-outstand when the tabloid racks caught my eye. There two different'journals', and I use that term loosely, had as their cover storythe coming end of the world. All one had to do was to lay out themoney and all the great happenings, including the most recentsituation in Iraq, would be explained for you. Such a deal!
Even though I knew what the Scriptures were for this Sunday, Ididn't buy them. Nor did I enter my subscription to the'spirituality' book club which had sent along an advertisement,and again a deal, for a subscription and four books for a dollar(hard for me to resist!). In the pages of that club's littlecatalog I saw reference after reference to books like TheCelestine Prophecy and The Prophecies of Nostradamus,newly translated and explained. Books and publications which layout the approaching end and how to prepare for it. Such a deal!
Why didn't I take these deals? Because, I know that the dealoffered is no bargain and not worth the time nor the money. Whatis more, the closer we get to the new 'millennium' mark the moreof this kind of material we're going to see. Prophets, seers,sages and rages will be coming out of the woodwork; each with adifferent vision and a different interpretation of how and whenthe end will come. Christians in every age have dealt with thesame material, sometimes more successfully than others, and we'vealways come to the same conclusion: "Hold On...The Day IsComing. We don't know, but God does...so hold on.
We remind ourselves of this reality through the cycle of theChurch year. Each year as the cycle draws to it s close, we'reinvited to consider the end; to consider all of life under theaspect of eternity grounded in the certainties guaranteed byfaith. These faith certainties are the providence of Godexpressed in the goodness and beauty of creation; God's will tosalvation shown in Christ's life, death, resurrection, andreturn; and the life which awaits those who have preparedthemselves to receive it in faith; this future is made real inthe present. Quite frankly, this is neither the stuff of thetabloids nor of prediction. It is the stuff of mystery and oftrust. I think T.S. Eliot spoke of it in one of his "FourQuartets" entitled "East Coker" when he wrote:
To arrive where your are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy./In order to arrive at what you do not know/You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance./In order to possess what you do not possess/You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not/You must go through the way in which you are not./And what you do not know is the only thing you know/And what you own is what you do not own/And where you are is where you are not.
As a consequence we cannot hear what Jesus is saying inliteral terms, although this has been the temptation throughoutthe ages. When Jesus spoke these words he was making reference tothe "Day of the Lord," a concept which had been on thelips of the prophets in various ways. This "great day"was to be the decisive intervention of God into the course ofhuman events, history and salvation. Thus, it was described incataclysmic, cosmic terms of wars, plagues, and natural disastershowing the earth and everything in it shaken to its roots. Thistype of literature is called 'apocalyptic' because it 'uncovers'or 'reveals' the day of the Lord. It serves to capture theimagination, as it did during the Middle Ages entering theWestern funeral liturgy as the tract, Dies Irae. "Dies irae,dies illa/Solvet saeculum in favilla/Teste David cumSibylla..." "Day of wrath/O day of mourning/lo theworld in ashes burning/David and the Sibyls warning..."Those mournful words and their tune captured the mood in Mark of"the sun shall be darkened, and moon shall not give herlight." When these apocalypses, from various sources, getall mixed together there can be some fantastic claims andexpectations...most of which disappoint.
They disappoint when they are taken literally, "thisgeneration shall not pass away till all these things bedone," and it doesn't happen. They disappoint still morewhen these words are turned into some sort of secret code whichwill unlock the knowledge of the future -- as many have tried todo in assigning symbolic meaning to each phrase of variouspassages. They disappoint most, however, when they are relegatedto a mere literary genre; the quaint attempts of a bygone time toexplain the world around it. When the latter occurs, it robs usof what this literature most wishes to callus to : a sense of thetranscendent.
When Jesus used this imagery, I believe, he wasn't justreferring to the apocalyptic "Day of the Lord," theimages of chaos and change, wrapped up with a little parableabout the changing seasons, all point to something even morebasic. And the timing of these words, coming just before hispassion and death, seem to direct us to the images of Genesis andGod's creation of order out of chaos, light out of darkness, andnow God's bringing a new creation of the world through the crossand resurrection. What is meant to transfix us here is not"day of wrath," but the Good News of God bringing thetranscendent into the imminent -- bringing that which surpasses,is beyond us, into the here and now, bringing a new day"which the Lord has made." Jesus is pointing to theremaking of the world and the restoration of God's image in allof creation through the faith of those who come to believe.
We Christians live in the tension of the "already but notyet," of a kingdom that is present, but not in its fullness.We have a priest who has made sacrifice for us "once and forall," who has "sat down at the right hand of God,"to make intercession for us and who will come in "thefullness of time." We are not privy to when this"fullness" will be, but are to "watch and pray forwe know not the day or the hour," and are to encourage oneanother as we discern the Day "drawing near." I thinkwe are called to this state of watchfulness in order to keep usfrom complacency -- which is still one of the greatest plagues ofChristian faith. I like what one commentator on Mark's Gospelwrote:
Someone has said that the worst "ism" in the world is not fascism or communism but somnambulism. There are so many forms of sleepwalking -- the glazed eyes which never notice one's ideals are being whittled away, one's purposes being pared down; never notice the evil forces in the world, gaining strength. Watch and pray against the sin that so easily trips us up, the compromise with wrong, so reasonable in the beginning, so deadly in the end. Watch, lest we neglect the renewal of life in communion with God, lest our sympathies harden. Watch, lest the great opportunities for service to God's kingdom come and pass by, unseen and unseized.
To live in this attitude of watchfulness allows us first todiscern that the Day Jesus spoke of is already here -- if we openour eyes and look inside ourselves and around us we can see it.This watchfulness allows us to discern and to study the signs ofthe coming of the Lord in our personal lives, in the experienceof the church, in the life of the world. These comings, theselittle 'Days of the Lord,' which are unceasing, discreet butdecisive remind us to watch, but more importantly to follow dayafter day.
The French poet and clergyman de la Tour du Pin wrote:
How many more centuries of pain/Before the full daylight Lord?/You are patiently molding us, we are going toward the end/But your body of humanity is slow to complete./Not enough nights to welcome you,/Not enough heads to bow before you!/We announce you in the sufferings of the world,/We speak before being born./In the shadow that covers us and where we are waiting for you,/We already sing your light./How many more centuries before it may dazzle us,/How many remembrances of Christmas?/The Father of all love has entrusted his hope to us,/We stretch our hopes toward him./In you, our hopes are all one;/Your hope quivers, it overcomes our pain.
Hold on, the day is coming...is already here. Amen!
