This Week : 3 December 2017 – Here and Now
This Week : 3 December 2017 – Here and Now

This Week : 3 December 2017 – Here and Now

Bible Reading: Mark 13:24-37

Dear Friends

So what would you do if the world were going to end tomorrow? Would you reconcile with a long lost friend or family member? Would you finish a project you started years ago? Would you tell your children, or maybe your parents, that you love them one last time? Would you wrap your beloved in one long, tender embrace? What would you do?

Asking and answering this question has a way of clarifying our values and sharpening our priorities, and it’s not a bad question to ask as we move from the festivities of Thanksgiving to the headlong dash toward Christmas. Why? Because it’s easy to get so caught up in the cultural pressure to have the perfect Christmas that we can lose a sense not only of what Christmas is supposed to mean but actually of ourselves.

Here’s where Mark’s otherwise confusing and alarming passage has something to say. Because after all the predictions about the end, Jesus says that no one will know the day or the hour and so we have to keep close watch. He goes a little further, actually, and compares our situation to that of servants who do not know when their master will return and yet are expected to be prepared for it. One way to read this mini-parable is as a call to constant vigilance. And I think there’s something to that. We are indeed called always be on the lookout for our Lord whether at the end of time or in the face of our neighbour’s’ need.

Another way to read this injunction to watchfulness is to hear Jesus declaring that his return when the heavens shake and the sun is darkened is precisely the moment when he is nailed to the cross and we see God’s love poured out for us and all the world. Whatever, whenever, and however the end of the world may come, that is, that end is both prefigured and realized right here, in the form of a man who goes to the cross out of love for us and all the world. For this reason have theologians across the ages declared Jesus’ cross as the pivot point of history, for at that moment one age ended and another begun.

Once asked what he would do if he believed the world would end tomorrow, Martin Luther is said to have responded, “I would plant a tree today.” We also, confident of God’s love and sure of God’s promises about the future, can also invest in the present, in the everyday and the ordinary, in the people and causes all around us. For we have God’s promise in the cross and resurrection of Christ that in time God will indeed draw all of God’s creation not just to an end, but to a good end.

So remember how you answered that question about what you would do if the world were to end tomorrow? Well, guess what? You don’t need to wait. You can do those things now! Love the ones you want to love; finish the work you started; be reconciled to those who need you; be faithful to the people and tasks around you; undertake some small and wonderful and great endeavour. Why not? For Christ has come, Christ is coming, and Christ will come again, all in the name of love.

Solomzi

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