As preached by Sister Rebecca
October 15, 2017
Holy Wisdom Church
We have just heard from the Gospel: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branches become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things, you know that he is here at the gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place.
What is Jesus talking about when he says twice: these things. What ARE these things Jesus is referring to? To understand what this we need to go back to what precedes today’s gospel.
Jesus is sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives and begins a long discourse of what is to happen in their lifetime. In short, Jesus is predicting: There will be false prophets pretending to be the Messiah, lawlessness will reign, hearts will grow cold. “Jesus goes into detail about the coming of the horrors and the chaos: at that time there will be great suffering such as not been from the beginning of the world until now and never will be. In the midst, though, of all this chaos the good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed.
These are the things that Jesus is telling his disciples and us today. They are to see in these things the Presence of the glorified Christ. But Jesus is telling them they need to stay awake, to be watchful, vigilant. Jesus is urging them to ‘wake up’: be mindful and behold with their inner eyes the Kingdom of God’s time, the Eternal time NOW even in the midst of oppression from the powers that be: the Roman occupation. They are not to have recourse to violence: “whomever takes up the sword (read weapons) will perish by the sword.” However, their minds are still locked into an image of the Kingdom of God as a tangible political kingdom that is going to free Israel from suffering the Roman occupation. The disciples inquire: when is this going to happen? What is the time frame? Jesus contrasts chromos time and kairos time. Chronos time is time as one moment after another, calendar time. Kairos time is deep time. It is the time when suddenly an insight breaks through: Oh! I get it. The dots connect. There is a sense of time coming to fullness right now in this moment. It is seeing with the inner eyes, and there is deep meaning in what is happening in chronos time now. The awakened mind beholds what is hidden from one’s ordinary mind.
In today’s passage Jesus goes on to warn his disciples that life is more than making merry, pursuing happiness in things that pass. He is not saying that they should stop taking seriously the things of life or enjoying them or taking care of ones needs such as eating and drinking, getting married, and so on. These things yes, but at the same time all of this will pass-and to deeply realize this. Then one doesn’t get so engrossed in how things turn out, success or failure, feeling good or not feeling good about this or that, or worrying about the future. God’s presence is here and now. Often we can get so wrapped up in everyday life that we don’t heed the reality of God’s presence until something drastic happens. Then we are shocked into awareness of our need for God. It is like an event when the rug is pulled out from under our feet. Suffering has an awakening aspect to it. Let us now recall the Beatitudes: The Kingdom of God Jesus proclaims is encapsulated in the Beatitudes. God’s time, time of true peace, harmony and happiness lies in the NOW where God is perceived in the daily no matter what it looks like. Yet chronos time is important. And there is a sacred dimension to everything that happens. Stay in the present moment and everything has the possibility of leading to new life, to the Kingdom of God Jesus is striving to awaken us to and it is right now in our present moment. Treat everything that happens in chronos time – in this very moment, in the light of kairos time.
The challenge today for us is to go inward in our troubled times. We look at the front page of the newspaper or the latest news on TV and we see what a mess we are in. We need to wake up. We live in a time where authentic leadership has never been more urgent or confused. When everything is in flux and old institutions are dying and so many misguided leaders lend their energy only to resist rather than light the way down a new road; when moral standards have been uncertain and the loss of integrity blurs vision. This is because more energy is being channeled into what is transitory, crumbling, and dying instead of giving soul energy to the ’what’ the direction the Spirit of Christ is beckoning us toward.
This morning a prayer from Teilard de Chardin comes to my attention that seems an apropos ending to our reflection on today’s Gospel and applies to our times to seeing God in every aspect of life. He writes in a historical era whose traumatic upheavels foreshadow our own. His prayer is: “As, you know it yourself, Lord, through having borne the anguish on certain days the world seems a terrifying thing: huge, blind, and brutal. . . . At any moment the vast and horrible thing may break in through the cracks—the thing which we try hard to forget is always there, separated from us by a flimsy partition: fire, pestilence, storms, earthquakes, or the unleashing of dark moral forces—these callously sweep away in one moment what we had laboriously built up and beautified with all our intelligence and all our love. Since my human dignity, O God, forbids me to close my eyes to this . . . teach me to see you concealed within it.
