Sometimes you don’t see God

It is traditional to begin the season of Advent and the new year at the end of time. Mark chapter thirteen has been called the mini-apocalypse, because it sounds so much like the book of Revelation and a prophecy about the end of time. The language is poetic and striking. The sky will grow dark and the stars will fall from heaven. I can imagine the sky growing dark from smoke, but for the stars to fall this would suggest a total collapse of the galaxy and universe. That would be very bad. I read something like this and I wonder if Saint Mark had taken a modern astronomy class if maybe these words of Jesus would have been remembered differently. But the real kicker is when Jesus says that all of these things will happen before this generation passes. Well that was two thousand years ago. So what does that mean? We have been waiting for a long time to see the face of God.

What happens when people don’t see the face of God? According to Isaiah chapter sixty four, the people begin to behave very badly and live unethically because they begin to think that perhaps nobody will hold them accountable, and that they are alone in the universe. It is sobering to note that some of the greatest atrocities to humanity have occured while the Christian faith was reinterpreted into a liberal theology. Both the holocaust in Europe, and Jim Crow segregation in the United States with widespread lynching took place when high minded Christian theologians sought to separate Christian faith away from supernatural claims on reality to a more palatable and congruous. In other words something like the second coming of Christ and the end of time when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead was changed into an allegory to say that Jesus wasn’t really going to come back, but that was just the backwards thinking of a millenia ago. Rather than put their trust in Jesus, many people put their trust in their own work and inventiveness.

At the same time that Christianity sought to be relevant to a modern world, most Christian leaders, preachers, theologians, were silent in the face of cruelty and abuse of Jews in Europe and Blacks in America. At the time many people even saw a lynching tree as a good work that kep civil order. But it was precisely blacks in America who suffered unspeakable cruelty and Jews in Europe who out of anyone should be the ones to question where the face of God is. For many black Americans who knew mob violence it was in the cross of Jesus that they found hope and the strength to keep on going. 

La solución: Jesús viene

The good news is that Jesus is going to come. The prophetic words that he spoke in the Gospel of Mark did come true within his generation. The sun and moon were darkened, possibly by an eclipse. The powers that be were shaken from their thrones namely pontius pilate and the Roman rulers. And Jesus Chris the Son of Man did come into his glory. Jesus was glorified on the cross of Golgotha, he was hung from a tree. To many people they looked to the cross and saw only foolishness and weakness. But those who are being saved, but to those who are suffering, moaning, and groaning to see the face of God then the cross indeed is the glory of God. Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” These words give hope to anyone that has ever longed to see the face of God. Even Jesus who is God, felt like God had abandoned him on the cross. When you feel abandoned this gives you good news, because you aren’t alone. Jesus reaches out from the cross to give you his strength.  Jesus said that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will remain forever. 

photo courtesy Mueller flickr