Mark 13:24-37
So, I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which means that as the hours of darkness increase, my brain tells me it’s time to sleep. Maybe I was a bear in a past life. Coincidentally, sleep is also what my brain tells me to do when my stress increases, when my emotional darkness increases, if you will. It’s how my brain protects me from being overwhelmed by all of the stresses and anxieties that exist, or that I can imagine. I’m guessing you can guess how desperately I constantly want to be sleeping these days. And you might understand how irritated I am by Jesus’ words to us that, in the middle of the night, in the midst of the darkness, we are supposed to “Keep awake.” I’m trying to pull the covers over my head and hide away from everything, not keep awake.
Although I may be alone in my need for so much sleep, I know I’m not alone in experiencing this time as one of increasing darkness and stress, and something that we want to get away from. I’ve stopped asking people I haven’t seen in a while “what’s new?” because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer. We are tired of hearing bad news, we are tired of hearing about death, we are deep-in-our-souls tired of whatever dreadfulness 2020 is going to throw at us next.
And our Gospel reading for today isn’t helping. It’s almost as if it’s written to generate fear and anxiety - from the sun and the moon and stars growing dim, to Jesus’ words “Beware!”, it doesn’t initially seem to be a very reassuring text. This is no lullaby. The light of the celestial objects going out isn’t meant to bring a comforting end to the day’s business, but to tell us that the world is becoming unglued. It’s not meant to bring that calming “hush” that descends on a summer evening as we enjoy a drink on the patio, but a gasp as the power cuts out in the middle of eating supper when it’s dark in November. I hear in Jesus’ words a foreboding darkness; a darkness that seems to me to presage death. A darkness and a death I would rather just sleep through.
And yet… I can’t help but wonder if the darkness is as dreadful and fearful as I make it out to be. The dimming of the sun and moon and stars in the Gospel of Mark was actually a good thing for Mark’s audience. These stellar objects represented Rome’s emperors from Caligula in 37 CE all the way through to the end of the Flavian dynasty in 96 CE. The emperors frequently utilized the image of the sun in the heavens to represent themselves, to lend themselves divine stature, and these were the same emperors who presided over the destruction of the Israelite people and their Temple in 70 CE. That their brightness and their power should dim was indeed a sign that the world was ending, but a world that had brought pain and suffering to Jesus’ people. The lights of the Roman Empire going out was not a time of fear for the Israelites, but a time for rejoicing. Who among the children of Israel would want to sleep through those lights being extinguished?
We Christians have our own moment of darkness that is meant not to be feared, but to be celebrated, and that is the darkness of Holy Saturday. After Jesus was crucified, after the sun grew dim, he was placed in the tomb and the stone rolled across the doorway blocking all light, engulfing his body in complete darkness, in the darkness of death. And yet I don’t think it would occur to any of us to want to sleep through Holy Saturday as it transitions into Resurrection Sunday. We welcome those sunrise services, we welcome the sun emerging from the darkness, we welcome the Son of God emerging from the tomb. We don’t want to sleep through the darkness of Holy Saturday, because we would entirely msiss the glorious dawn of Easter! No one among us wants to sleep through the birth of new life!
The most stirring articulation of this transformation in how we perceive the darkness that I have ever heard comes from Valerie Kaur. Kaur is from the Sikh religion, and is an activist in the States on issues of racism and gender inclusion, amongst other justice issues. Almost four years ago exactly, two months after Trump was elected, she delivered what I would call a sermon, at an interfaith New Year’s Eve service in New York City. She described how dark the world had become for her, particularly as she contemplated the world her children would live in. She talked about her fear about what the darkness seemed to be bringing, and then she paused and she said, “what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”
What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? As Christians, we get this. We know this. The tomb, the place of death on Holy Saturday, the dimming of the Roman Empire––yes, these were moments of death, of the tomb, but they were also moments of the womb, of the entrance into new life, into the light of the true Son, not to be slept through, but to be joyfully anticipated. To watch out for, to keep awake for, so that we don’t miss its arrival.
This emergence from the womb, this new birth is actually what we anticipate in the season of Advent. We’re not retroactively anticipating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago, we’re not going back in time. We are actually going forward, to Easter, to the resurrection of Christ, and anticipating that time when that resurrection will come to the whole world, when the kingdom of God, rather than the kingdoms of the current empires, will reign. We are waiting for this current suffering to end, for these current empires to grow dim, we are waiting for the One who gathers people from all the corners of the earth under his wings, as a hen gathers her brood, to come into the world again. This is what keeps us awake at night, not waiting through the darkness of the tomb, that would shut us into death forever, but waiting through the darkness of the womb, that will open to the light of God, bringing new life and new light to its darkest recesses.
‘“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.’ It is like a woman going into labour, when she leaves the main room and puts her servants in charge, each with her works, and commands the midwife to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake––for you do not know when the baby of the house will be born, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else the new baby may find you asleep when they come suddenly. And what I say to you, I say to all: Keep awake.”
The powers of death are dimming; new life is coming. May the reminder that Advent brings not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb keep you awake in joyful anticipation. Thanks be to God, Amen.
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