The First Sunday of Advent – December 3, 2023
The thirteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel is a strange place to begin Advent. Today’s passage comes right before Jesus’s passion, and the marking of the nightwatch hours foreshadows what comes next: evening when Jesus foretells his betrayal; midnight when he finds his disciples asleep; Peter’s denial at cockcrow; and Jesus’s arrest at morn. Earlier in the same chapter, Jesus notes the grand buildings around the temple and remarks that a sign of the end will be their dismantling, stone by stone.
Hour by hour and brick by brick—isn’t that often how we create situations we don’t want to be in? Not by one momentous event or calamitous blow but by a series of missed opportunities, micro-aggressions, and small acts of indifference and inattention.
Perhaps instead of insulating ourselves with an undisturbed quiet in hushed tones and candlelit spaces, we would do better to follow the Gospel this Advent if we turned on all the lights, blared trumpets, and shook one another awake.
A string of moments like these that go unnoticed can destroy a life, a relationship, a community at any given hour. Likewise, staying awake and watching, minute by minute, for every opportunity to do Christ’s work can only lead, step by step, to the peace of God’s reign whenever and wherever it appears.
Perhaps instead of insulating ourselves with an undisturbed quiet in hushed tones and candlelit spaces, we would do better to follow the Gospel this Advent if we turned on all the lights, blared trumpets, and shook one another awake: Be watchful! Be alert! Don’t be caught sleeping! Watch!
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