Reading from the Gospels, Advent 1,
Year B: Mark 13.24-37“The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”— Mark 13.24
“End and Beginning” by Her Greatness the Rev. Jan Richardson, who had her own “Little Apocalypse” with the sudden death of her beloved husband this year,
The Rev. Jan Richardson, a United Methodist minister who is gifted artist, writer, spiritual director and speaker, has a terrific take on the gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of a new year on the church calendar (lectionary).
This is from one of her blogs she publishes every year for Advent Season, “The Advent Door.”
It used to come as something of a shock to me: that a season commonly perceived to be about joy and peace always begins with the end of the world. Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gives us a little apocalypse. That’s what it’s actually called: “Little Apocalypse” is the name often given to Jesus’ discourse on the Mount of Olives, where he describes to his listeners the events that will take place as he returns.
This time around, as Advent approaches, Jesus’ apocalyptic talk comes not so much as a shock as it does something that feels familiar to me. December 2 will, unbelievably, mark a year since Gary’s unexpected death—a year since our world came to an end, a year since the onset of my own little apocalypse.
The ending of one’s personal world is not the same, I know, as The End of the World that Jesus describes here. Yet the first Sunday of Advent invites us to recognize that these endings are connected; that the Christ who will return at the end of time somehow inhabits each ending we experience in this life. Every year, Advent calls us to practice the apocalypse: to look for the presence of Christ who enters into our every loss, who comes to us in the midst of devastation, who gathers us up when our world has shattered, and who offers the healing that is a foretaste of the wholeness he is working to bring about not only at the end of time but also in this time, in this place.
As Advent begins, is there something in your life that is ending? How might you look for the presence of Christ who comes to you in that place?
-
“Blessing When the World is Ending”
Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.
Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.
Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun
the knife
the fist.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door
the shattered hope.
Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone
the television
the hospital room.
Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.
But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.
It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.
This blessing
will not fix you
will not mend you
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.
It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.
More of Jan’s work (for sale) here and also go here.
