When
he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John,
and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be
the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that
no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they
will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be
alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there
will be famines. This is but the
beginning of the birthpangs.” (Mark
13:3-8)
…
part of the Gospel for last Sunday… I
didn’t want to pass it by. We hear about
the beginning of the birthpangs… the onset of labour.[1] Jesus mentions wars, earthquakes, famines… we
of course can add pandemics, climate crises, corruption in high places… Then we could ask, if these are birthpangs, what
is being born? W B Yeats, in 1919, his
pregnant wife critically ill from the influenza pandemic, the world groping
back to its feet after the First World War, his beloved Ireland falling into rebellion
and civil war… and Yeats famously wrote:
Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
the
best lack all conviction, while the worst
are
full of passionate intensity…
The
darkness drops again; but now I know
that
twenty centuries of stony sleep
were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
and what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
What
rough beast…? I think Yeats rejected faith
and Irish Christianity because he found it too often not much like Jesus. In our day, faith in God is widely dismissed
as incomprehensible. Human encounter
lies wide open to some rough beast. And
indeed… so much of what occupies or entertains people now, seems to be about
monsters, catastrophes, super-beings, aliens… as though reality, the gift of
creation, simply discovering the day and its essence, spending time seeing
beauty or meaning, making connections, doing some task well… as though all of
that is simply unconscionable, too tedious altogether.
Grown-up
faith, approaching Advent, sees the familiar roads start to peter out. We move into vision and apocalypse. Ahead, it becomes a contemplative trail. Now we need the poets and the prophets... and
the language of silence and waiting... and steadiness. It is here that we pause… we start to watch hopefully
for the dawn. To pause at the threshold
is always a sensitive and respectful thing to do. And we can see, there is no rough beast
slouching to Bethlehem, unless it’s us. We learn clearly here, from Jesus, that earthquakes
and viruses are not apocalypse. God’s
newness is seen to the eye of the heart… a baby is born, someone unforgivable
is forgiven, love and mercy prevail over judgement and pharisaism, someone
discovers how to change their mind, people find peace and meaning, and a way of
faith. Isaiah is the prophet who speaks for
Advent: In returning and rest you
will be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.[2]
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