Read First! Mark 13:24-37
It is an indisputable truth that anything that is smaller than its original is ontologically cuter than said original. Ontologically. In its very essence. In its very nature. I feel very strongly about this. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s smaller, it’s cuter. Fluffy bunnies? Cute. Tiny fluffy baby bunnies? Cuter. Big fat cat? Eh…kinda cute. Mischievous tiny kitten? Way cute. This even works for things that are not naturally cute. Yoda? Eh. I mean, he’s cool with The Force. But Baby Yoda who is cool with the force and smaller? SO cute. This even works for gross, scary things. The smaller they are, the cuter. Giant tarantula? Ew. No thank you. A baby tarantula? Well, maybe? I am even willing to bet cash money that a tiny baby cockroach is immensely cuter than the full grown thing.
And that’s what we have here today. What’s called Mark’s “little apocalypse.” An apocalypse, but smaller. It’s not the full grown thing. It’s not the whole book. This end-of-times prediction doesn’t encapsulate the entire Gospel of Mark, like most of the book of Daniel, or all the Enochs, or the Book of Revelation. It’s not pages after pages of horsemen and fiery pits and desolation and doom. It’s just a little apocalypse. It’s a smaller apocalypse. So much cuter than the full grown kind.
But even though it be small, it’s still pretty mighty. It might be cuter, but only insomuch as a baby anaconda is cuter than the full size thing.
And this is how we begin Advent. This is how we begin our time of waiting for the Christ child to come and be made manifest in our lives once again. We start with a little apocalypse. A baby armageddon.
Like one cell, burrowed deep in the womb, we start in the dark. And like one cell that will be divided and torn and put back together again, all we can do is just sit and wait. There’s all sorts of chaos going on in the beginning creation of a new thing, but usually, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.
And there’s plenty of chaos in our passage today. The sun is darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars are falling from heaven. It’s all darkness.
When things get dark, that’s when we’ll see the Son of Man descending from the clouds with great power and glory. But first, it’s going to be dark. All new, hopeful, good things start in the dark. But first, the powers and principalities that currently run the world must be torn down. The world as we know it will quake and shake and be destroyed. There will be suffering, and then the whole world will go dark. Cute, right? It’s just a little apocalypse. A small one. No big deal, right?
Almost exactly three years ago, I was sitting on my mom’s kitchen floor, drinking too much wine and puking in her trash can. I was just two months outside of a major mental health crisis, I’d made a complete mess of my life, I’d hurt a whole lot of people, and finally, the doctor thought maybe I should consider a change of meds. I’d been on this new med for about a month when I decided to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. The boys were staying with Dan and celebrating with his parents, so I had nowhere else to go but hop in my rusting Jeep and travel the six hours to Indianapolis. My memories are still pretty fuzzy around that time, but I think I walked in the door, hugged my parents, and went straight to the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine. My mom drinks really good wine. She likes it oaky and dark, and although I don’t care as long as it’s red, as I swallowed the smoky thick ruddiness, it came over me in a wave. What have I done? What on earth have I done?
It was like waking up from a dream. Suddenly, I had this brutal awareness of all the missteps and mistakes and thrashing about that I had done in the last ten months. And now I was living alone in a crappy apartment I couldn’t afford, working at a coffee shop making nine dollars an hour, and sitting on my mom’s linoleum floor, crying and hugging her trash can.
In those days, after you’ve already suffered, mind you, then, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven.
It was my tiny apocalypse moment. Cute, right?
I mean, the world wasn’t ending. People weren’t rushing in panic into the streets or driving along crowded highways to suddenly get sucked up from their seats and raptured into heaven. There were no earthquakes or tornados or plagues or locusts. There was just me, on the floor, and the realization, the sudden awakening, the instant awareness of the darkness that had been all around me all along.
I’d turned off the artificial lights. Or they’d been shut off for me. No more fluorescents of distraction. No more bright L.E.D.s of diversion. No more hyper impulsive burning down of the forest of my life. Just me. In the dark. With the realization of all the pain and destruction I had caused. It felt like the end. For me, it was the end. That’s what apocalypses do; they bring our worlds to an end.
And it was just me. And a cold tiled floor.
But, not really.
I had a glass of good wine I could still taste. My mom leaned against the counter and listened. She made sure I didn’t drink alone. She brought the trash can nearby.
An apocalypse is really a revealing, an unveiling, a peeling away. That’s what the word means, “apocalypse” - a revelation. And that’s what was happening to me. A tiny little apocalypse. A cute little unveiling of layers and layers of denial and mental illness and distraction, showing me the truth of who I was, of where I was.
We all get these cute little apocalypses in our lives. A loved one dies. We lose a job. We take the wrong advice. We have an accident. We have to leave the relationship. I mean, the whole world really isn’t destroyed. Others are going along, minding their business, doing the grocery shopping and waiting in traffic and texting their boyfriends, as if nothing has happened. But meanwhile, for you, your whole world is crumbling. You are sitting in the dark with only the realization of the truth of your life. It feels like the end.
Start there, Advent says.
Start in the dark. Start in the waiting. Start with the mess and the truth of your life cradled in your bare hands. Wake up to what is going on around you. And then just sit there. Let the sadness wash over you. Be scared and overwhelmed and hopeless and paralyzed and broken and just sit in the dark with the truth. Because although it feels so hopeless in that apocalyptic moment, that’s actually where the hope begins. That’s where the cell starts to divide and multiply and grow into what very well could be the savior of your world.
God was taking a big pumice stone to my heart and sloughing away all the dead and gross and delusion. And there I was, raw and fragile, and safe, sitting criss cross applesauce on my mom’s kitchen floor.
It was an apocalypse. A revealing. An unveiling. A peeling away.
And then, I got up. Blew my nose and brushed my teeth. And went to bed. I fell asleep.
I’m no better than the disciples after all.
I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was being back home for the first time since all this chaos had started. Maybe it was just that the new meds had finally kicked in. Maybe it was the knowledge that Dan was moving on. But something woke up inside me. And suddenly waking up is jolting. It’s painful. Sudden awareness is hard. It’s a tender, vulnerable place.
But before Christ comes to us on the clouds, before the stars and the camels and the Christmas Pageants and the brass quartets and the boughs of holly and the Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Christ comes to us in the dark. On the kitchen tile. In too much wine. Christ comes to us in the sudden painful awakening of apocalypse - when everything gets unveiled. The distractions and delusions get peeled away until all that is left is us, and Christ, in the dark.
So when the dark comes, let it come. It’ll hurt so bad. You’ll be left with a limp and a shit ton of work to do. It’ll wake you up and shake you and shout at you “what the hell were you thinking?”
We start Advent - this great coming - in the dark. Waiting for the apocalypse. Watching while our whole world is turned upside down. One tiny cell in the dark can make us feel so sick. But it’s the start of something. Don’t shy away from it. Christ is there. Keep awake. Keep alert. Don’t miss it when it comes. Because Christ is in it and through it and around it and on the other side of it. Christ is right there on the kitchen floor with your mom and your tears and whatever wine you can afford and your regrets and your shame and your gut wrenching nausea.
There would be more darkness for me. This was just the beginning. This was just the revealing. This was just thecae little apocalypse. This was just the cell burrowing into the uterine lining.
There was so much more work to do.
But now that I saw the truth of it all, the truth of myself and my life and the darkness all around me, I could hope with a real hope, I could hope with a sort of authentic and exfoliating hope. The kind of hope that bring saviors into the world. The kind of hope that turns clumps of cells into hands and feet and lungs and earlobes. The kind of hope that brings families back together. The kind of hope that introduces the first tastes of resurrection into our lives.
That was three years ago. It seems like such a long time ago. And yet the bile still creeps back up in my throat every time I remember.
This Thanksgiving I made apple pie and Mac and cheese and green bean and sweet potato casseroles and the boys set the table and we lit the candles and we shared what we were thankful for. We took a family selfie. We ate and ate. We toasted to each other with sparkling juice and just one really nice glass of red wine.
But it all started with an apocalypse. That was the beginning of the healing. The rending of my entire world, the sloughing off of the dead skin and the slowly sewing it back together. It all started in the dark. That’s where Christ came first.
Thanks be to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment