Since I’m deaf as a post, an alarm clock does me no good whatsoever. However, I can count on it waking Marie, who elbows me into a foggy state of awareness. I suppose that I represent most of the known world, at least America, which is too sleepy or deaf to hear the alarms all around. Scripture read this upcoming weekend gives three occasions for waking earth “from its haunted sleep”–reminding sleepers then and now that God’s Presence is all around.
Our Hebrew experience is a quixotic tale of “Jonah”, the Good Jew who didn’t want to go to the sewer called Nineveh–the Assyrian capital–and so he ran the other way. Unsuccessfully. After his fishy adventure, God told him to get on with it; and so we find Jonah (3:1-5) in the streets of Nineveh shouting God’s message: “40 days until calamity!” Now here’s the miracle: the Ninevites BELIEVED Jonah! This unwilling prophet turned out to be the Assyrian alarm clock: they repented, and God didn’t destroy them! I guess that Divine Will includes for us to talk to our “enemies”…
St. Paul cuts right to the chase with the Corinthians (I, 7:29-31). “The appointed time has grown short….For the present form of this world is passing away.” Some have read this as an invitation to expect an immediate advent of Christ, the escahaton. Many generations later, I’d rather think that God has already re-worked Creation daily to move past our human scrambles for power & prestige, to announce that there’s already a new system in place if only people would wake up and participate in it! Paul is reminding the church to put aside earthly customs in order to prioritize Christ’s mission and to concentrate their vision on a new horizon quietly unfolding. In fact, Paul says, the present system just doesn’t work any more.
Near the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, 1;14-20, we hear Jesus’ call to discipleship, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near”. Another alarm. The Old is past, and the New has come–Happy New Year! “The King is Dead; Long Live the King!” Simon, Andrew, James & John all follow him “immediately” (Mark’s operative time-frame) Their allegiance to the family business and support has changed to participating in this new system of the kingdom of God. Theirs was a holy moment (Aha! an Epiphany!) of recognizing eternal values, even if this was a game-changer. Did they remember this holy heartburn during the hard times of being persecuted, reviled and martyred? What will happen to people who get caught up in the awareness that the kingdom of God system is really working?
These Scripture lessons could degenerate into theological speculation, or a nostalgic trip into Antiquity. Yet they’re fresh as this morning’s donuts to people who’ve caught the gleam of the Kingdom, those who’re on the brink of re-arranging their lives and priorities to defer to Eternity in our midst. Isaac S. Villegas reminds us that “the question for us is how we will love our neighbors as the present order passes away.” (SOJOURNERS, January ’21:49)
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