"Be alert; I have already told you everything" (Mk 13:23).

The days are growing shorter; the world is growing darker. In these weeks of visible and sensible change in the world around us we bring the Church year to an end and begins another. The next two weeks will see the end of the season we began after Pentecost and return us once again to Advent, and the annual recalling of the work of Christ which stretches from Advent to the Easter season.

It is over these next few weeks, with the shortening and darkening of days, that our attention is drawn (appropriately enough) to the coming of Christ at the end of time. Not only are the days shorter, but the "time is short"; not only is the world darker, but so is the message. "For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be" (Mk 13:19). Some of you will have read the "Left Behind" novels, which cover this future territory in popular form. In our Gospel, Jesus shares with a chosen group of disciples the terrible events that will precede the final deliverance, as the Son of Man comes to establish the kingdom. There will be events of persecution, and of cosmic disruption; earthquakes, famine, and war. False messiahs will appear, and there will be great uncertainty among the faithful.

It is in this context that Jesus tells the chosen band to "keep awake" (Mk 13:37), to "beware" (Mk 13:33), to "keep alert" (Mk 13:33): words which serve to punctuate the thirteenth chapter of Mark as effectively as its commas and periods. There are actually two Greek words here that are behind the various English words of this and other translations: a word which is rooted in "wakefulness", and another which is rooted in "vision". Jesus command to the disciples in our reading today, to "keep alert", is from the word which is rooted in the notion of vision, but which more properly means "look out" or "beware".

That is the theme of Jesus’ teaching, stressing not only vigilance, but even suspicion, as the time draws near. Suspicion is a dangerous thing because it slides so easily into paranoia, but there is something here, worth Jesus’ repetition. It was so vivid to the early Christians (most of them, of course, Jews) because of the People’s experience of living in the hotly contested Roman province of Palestine. The details of the discourse reflect that experience, and the earlier experience of Jews living under Greek occupation (which is reflected in the prophecy from Daniel in our first reading). Christians, also, were persecuted in their own right; another good ground for regarding the outside world with suspicion.

I’ve already alerted you to the dangers of suspicion in general; and suspicion of the world and human culture in particular are something that some religious people are prone to. Christians ought not to reject these things out of hand; they need more careful examination, so that we don’t forget that God is the source of these things too. They are not the creation of the devil, who really cannot (properly speaking) make anything.

Yet it is my experience that mainstream church people hardly need to be discouraged from this sort of rejection. We are not likely to be pulled in that direction. Our temptation is the opposite one, which is to be completely undiscerning and accepting when it comes to the world and human culture. Except in sectarian and marginalized religious groups, the memory of persecution by "worldly" authority has long ago faded away. None of us wants to be considered some kind of nut! Yet here is Jesus, telling us to "look out", to "beware", when it comes to the world around us. Jesus advocates vigilance, attention, even a little suspicion, when it comes to the environment in which the Church lives. That world not only contains some spiritual "hairy monsters", false "messiahs" galore; it is also a world which is passing away.

It is time for our yearly reminder to pay attention, to be discerning, and to expect the coming of Christ in glory and majesty. The hope of the Gospel is not for a world rejected or destroyed, but for a world transformed through the Son of Man. Yet in this time, when the old is passing away and the new is coming, modern church people may need to remember that vigilance, discernment, and even some suspicion, may not be an altogether bad thing.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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