Month: July 2018

Mark 13:33

“See that you are on the watch; for you do not know when the time will be.

so far
time keeps
everything from
piling up together
cosmic comic crash

in time
time decays
every thing
stored for tomorrow
gray smoke

time lulls
time lies
sneaks past
the wokest watcher
coyote tricked

awake to time
and sidestep time
turn a blind eye
to flow and function
rise to this moment

A Reader can see how each apocalyptic phrase has a reversal that brings an assurance of hope closer. Wars and rumors of wars—Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t the end; Earthquake and famine—Only the beginning of birthpangs; Betrayal of friends and family to their death—Enduring in mercy will bring healing; and Tribulation beyond tribulation—A time of suffering will be shortened.

Sabin164sees in these reversals what is not explicitly stated:

What is perhaps even more striking is what the Markan Jesus is notdoing: he is not pointing to these disasters as punishment for sin; he is not telling his disciples that if they are virtuous they will avoid them. Rather his warnings to his disciples are directed elsewhere: against being led astray by imposters of him (vv. 5–6); against being anxious at the moment of trial (v. 11); against being deceived by false prophets and false messiahs (vv.21–22). Jesus’ warnings, in other words, are not directed toward the issues of nation or cosmos but aimed at the psyche—its vulnerability, its desire to be in control, its susceptibility to deceit.

Specifically about “watching”, Sabin1161–162remarks,

Covenantal theology tends to be linear, looking to the past and future. Creation theology tends to be circular, aware of repeating patterns. Wisdom theology, springing from the latter, is focused on the present. The urgency of Wisdom’s watchfulness, therefore, is not to be confused with the urgency of eschatological hope. The alternating time-frames in Mark permit both kinds of expectations, but the  prevailing emphasis is on Wisdom’s here and now…. It is a wisdom linked to an acceptance of the vastness of the divine mystery. Jesus as a teacher of Wisdom does not impart knowledge or “secrets” of the future but calls his disciples to a profound “wakefulness” to the mystery of the present moment.

Mark 13:32

“But about that day, or the hour, no one knows – not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son – but only the Father.

hope remains
a horizon away

hope against hope
rises again yet again

hope begets hope
deeper wider higher

hope’s night
never ends

hope’s day
never arrives

hope unknowable
is all we know

we hope
hope remains

Precision is not a gift of the future. We can talk a bit about the past, but even there one generation interprets it differently than another. Attempts to know ourself in the present brings their own difficulties.

There is a sense in which it would be comforting to know that someone knows what’s going down, has omniscience. This would keep us off the hook of being a participant in the events of our life. We might even go so far as to say we are not responsible for the consequences of unmerciful decision—it is G*D’s election of us that ordained our decisions.

To have G*D at some remove from us, becomes a trap reinforcing our alienation from G*D and Neighb*r, not to mention S*lf.

Imagine the difference if this last phrase was not a declarative sentence, but a continuation of the denial of knowing the future as separate from our present work. This would bring us closer to working out what it takes to operate holistically and responsibly to surprise our ancestors and delight our descendants. This would reveal the surprise of a growth beyond their sight and delight in a greater harvest than we can currently recognize as possible—more hundred-foldly than thirty.

Back in 13:4 there was a question of what sign will let us know we have to get serious about life. Since then Jesus has been speaking in

clichés of the period, common ways of expressing a general fear that the world is getting worse. If one is aware of this fact, one cannot read them as literal prophecy of the end of the world or as some special “apocalyptic” message of Jesus. ~ Sabin163

Here in 13:32 the response to the question is that there is no day or time or sign to look to as authorization to grow up and act mercifully—no matter the consequence. We are, simply, in this together.

Mark 13:31

The heavens and the earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

oh my goodness
my beautiful intention
delicious in foretaste

this good word
scatters belovedness
upon every thing

every where is here
reveling in revealing
it is good

this and that and all
vibrates in and out
here gone not gone

yet a good word
graciously gently
goes to a good night

to dream strongly enough
to smile in the dark
and so go well anew

This assertion that Jesus’ teaching/healing will not pass away or get lost in time—“my words will never stop being strong, dependable prophecy”— also has a positive presentation available—Jesus’ presence will have lasting validity, “my words will always have their power”.

Tracking words backward is nearly always an exercise in intersectionality. More and more connections get made and turn the dullest of comments into poetry. They also have the effect of calling into question such assertions as this one.

Taking the first word, οὐρανός (ouranos, “the vaulted expanse of the sky”), here translated as “heaven” we can begin to peek behind whatever may not fade away. Sky is the better translation and it still carries overtones of a three-story creation with the overarching firmament above us that is a boundary of what has been too easily named and too poorly defined—heaven.

Oὐρανός can be traced back to ὄρος (oros, raise or rear) as in mountain climbing or raising a young one. In the first place, to raise up, connects us with the rising Jesus talks about that comes after suffering and death. The temporalities of suffering and death find their lasting quality of rising, skying. There are suggestions here of elevating, as in pulling up a fish from below. Again, the task of disciples both every where and every when.

In the second place, to rear, we have the image of a bird rising, but that bird is grounded in what we call a hen or rooster. Hens are brood animals. In Matthew 23:37–39 Jesus calls himself a hen weeping over Jerusalem. Roosters announce a new day. It won’t be long before Mark has Jesus warn Peter about betrayal before a new day.

Mark 13:30

I tell you that even the present generation will not pass away, until all these things have taken place.

this generation
this creation
continued
age upon age
continues

yesterday choices
enforced today
continually
block new vision
connection

slough caught
leg weary
consumed
while struggling on
continuously

tomorrow’s seed
grows unseen
contemptuous
of prior restraints
controls

The phrase “all these things” again leads to a question of its limits. What will the generation of Jesus see?

Of greatest import is whether it will only see the disappointment of systems harming people as well as one person harming another. Will it also see the cosmological disasters? Or will it also see a Jesus-bearing cloud reversing all labor pains into new life?

To this point we still have wars and rumors of wars and increasing global responses to the rape of its resources for a questionable value of increased profits for a few.

Undoubtedly there are numbers of people who have glimpsed a moment of resolution, but, as undoubtedly, no one has experienced the end of travail for all of creation.

This assurance that has not been borne out raises for some a question: Was verse 27 the original end of the apocalyptically-styled section? If it was, we are now in a commentary section upon the sequence from suffering at the hands of humans (vss. 14–23), to death in the midst of creation falling apart (vss. 24–25), and then rising with the coming of a cloud of glory (vss. 26–27).

Such a commentary would see a reversal of human harm through the reversal of a curse upon a fig tree (vs. 28). It would show the end of stars and moons to be a gateway to a new creation (vs. 29). The cloud of glory would expect to be present in the present (vs. 30).

The last time we heard this sort of assurance (9:1) it led to a time of Transfiguration, a confirmation of belovedness. Readers alert to Mark’s repetitions might well wonder what will be coming from this assurance. In that previous time the mountain-top experience was immediately followed by holding it as a secret and immediately going back to work when an attempt at curing doesn’t lead to a positive resolution. Will that pattern follow an anti-Transfiguration?

Mark 13:29

And so may you, as soon as you see these things happening, know that he is at your doors.

coming consequence
seen from afar
unmysterious

prediction is a strength
action based on it
sketchy

an intention to control
pushing another’s buttons
natural

plausible deniability
our causing effects
popular

it won’t be long
our sowing
reaped

In its indefiniteness “these things” are a bit mysterious and cannot be pinned down.

Is Mark referring to signs of rising like sap rising in a fig tree? The cosmic travail of verses 24–27? The human disasters of verses 14–23? The sequence of suffering, death, and rising? Healings? Baptismal and Transfigurational Belovedness?

Bratcher419notes, “At the very gates may be quite meaningless in some languages, for it has no possible relationship to a temporal context.” This cultural reality requires translators to go beyond holding to a literal one-for-one basis for their work.

This door indicates that we are not dealing with a rigid apocalypse but an ironic reversal mocking it—becoming a source of good news. The resolution for our problems is not an ending, but a beginning. Our troubles are not to resolve themselves by coming to some final, horrible end. Rather, troubles are to begin seeing a wonderful, excellent, very good way of partnering with one another and all of creation.

All the images of shutting down eventually come around to their paradoxical other side. Stars fall and an old, old cloud rises to fertilize the land with rain. The dissolving of our old creation is the door through which a new creation arrives even as the water of baptism arrives as our heart is changed. The revelation of a changed presence can turn an unending plain into a mountain-top experience from which we return changed, able to engage in active prayer beyond directing G*D to do our bidding.

The Revised Common Lectionary has this section (13:24–37) as a reading for the First Sunday in Advent. It is time to recognize G*D’s Presence has not arrived. Clear troubles can clear our heart.

Mark 13:28

“Learn the lesson taught by the fig-tree. As soon as its branches are full of sap, and it is bursting into leaf, you know that summer is near.

seasonal trees
appear barren
some seasons
blossomed fruited
some seasons

a large clue
is given all
by attending both
joy of eating
satisfaction of planting

just when we thought
all had withered away
we turn to look
and find new life
in a tasty taste

All politics is local can be paralleled with all writing being local. The details of any locale are sometimes very difficult to describe in another setting. What might seem as an easy picture of “summer” is extremely difficult in large portions of the world where the major markers are not the length of day and thus of heat and cold, but are the tropical seasons of wet and dry.

This is part of the difficulty of translation. Even in temperate climes there are growing zones where a plant will or will not grow. Adding to the difficulty is the climate change that is currently going on where the zones are quickly changing. Who knows what will grow where anymore?

Regardless of what the particulars are, we can understand seasons and know that there are local markers of change. We are asked to apply our particular skill set(s) to the issue of change. Every employee knows different things than their employer does. They can see needed changes before the employer. Repair technicians could teach engineers a thing or two about whatever they are designing. Teachers could help politicians with the value of a lesson plan that builds toward something rather than piecemealing legislation.

When red-wing blackbirds show up or morels poke up or leaves turn color or a harvest shows itself—we know where we are. An unseen growth has been happening. It is time to attend to this season and begin preparing for the next while letting a previous season go, particularly the season before that. It is this movement of a moment into a next moment that will lead out of the chaos of darkness in which a north star has been lost.

The curse of a fig tree out of season, the travail of time out of joint, can now be seen as reversed. A broken Jerusalem can, again, have a flowing river of life. A rising of sap is a rising, nonetheless.

Mark 13:27

and then he will send the angels, and gather his people from the four winds, from one end of the world to the other.

G*D’s eyesight is shot
used to be G*D could see
a partner from a mile off

now a scene must be cleared
of riff and raff to see
what’s under G*D’s nose

what’s not shaken or blown away
must be what G*D’s looking for
an honest broker way off there

Mark has many translational problems. This verse is one of them.

Jesus has been talking about his rising for some time. This is the first time he has put forward that his disciples, his followers, will have their own rising. The condition here is their election or having been chosen. These qualifiers play against the way Jesus has participated in the first part of Mark—healing prodigally. Even those who would seem to be unchoosen or the unelect have their condition changed through their having been healed.

It is the second half of Mark that highlights the unchoosen—Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, Herodians, High Priests (but not all of them). This may be a later understanding important to Mark’s telling but of less import to Jesus accepting the consequences of his challenge of tradition and power.

The Greek speaks of “four winds”. Not every language has four winds or uses wind to speak directionally. Even for those who can use the idiom of winds to mean west, east, south, and north, there is something lost if it fails to bring to mind the travails being spoken of—people who are blown away from their place(s) of security, scattered to see what soil they’ll end up in.

The third difficulty has to do with the ends of earth and heaven. The word ἄκρον(akron, farthest bound, extreme) can be connected with a previous cosmology of a three-story universe—

It can be read horizontally, directionally, as from one end of earth to the opposite end of heaven. It has also been understood vertically from the lowest part of earth to the highest point of the sky.

The promise points to additional risings. The question for the reader is how universal that rising is, will all creation be “raised”?

Mark 13:26

Then will be seen the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory;

son of adam
son of Adam
Son of Adam
adam’s Image
whatever the orthography
a presence
is implied
without the aid
of earthquake wind or fire
to reveal
said presence
all of which
is easier
without
confused titles
dependent relationships
but simply eaarth child

It is in a cosmic darkness that adam’s Image has enough distraction removed that it becomes visible as the background of all else, as presence. Such presence reminds us of Brother Lawrence and his thin book, The Practice of the Presence of God.

It is this background presence that removes the apocalyptic sense from the traditionally apocalyptic words and images being used. This was tricky, dangerous business for Mark to try to pull off as it trusts that people will have ears to hear beyond the surface of his story. It is, though, in keeping with the way in which Jesus continues to be a mystery, an unrevealed secret, to his very disciples, even the Twelve.

Bratcher415, talks about the construction of this verse:

The occurrence of the ”pivot construction,” in which the Son of man serves as the object of one verb, namely, see, and as subject of another, namely, coming, may require two clauses, paratactically combined: ‘the people will see the Son of man; he will be coming in clouds…’ Strictly speaking, the object of the verb see is not merely the Son of man, but the entire following dependent clause the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory, for what is seen is not just a person, but the entire event.

Just as “Watch Out!” acted as a transition from that which we are currently experiencing to that which ups the ante to a creation-wide event, so “adam’s Image” returns us to a creative garden and prophetically advances us to a new garden, a new Jerusalem, a new eaarth (read Bill McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet).

Parables and apocalyptic language are both intended to riddle us into a new awareness. Koan-like language and images are present in the traditional tales and poetry of every religious tradition (see Rumi as an example). It is a familiar way to be opened beyond the fragility of denotation attempting to describe ineffable experience.

Mark 13:25

the stars will be falling from the heavens, and the forces that are in the heavens will be convulsed.

in a time
of reckoning delayed

guiding stars
will wander afar

guardian angels
lose their way

the oh so sturdy earth
fall apart center outward

so comes every innovative shift
bringing chaos in its wake

grieve now all future loss
every foundation shaken

mountaintops and green pastures
await such a next opening

The stars in our eyes will turn from a gleam to burning until only a socket is left. Our fondest dream will appear as nothing more than Ecclesiastes’ smoke. Such vanity is what we have lived and on which we have staked our lives.

Our firmest beliefs will shake in their surety until they fall apart, not even a component part will be worth its weight in anything.

Those we have trusted as mentors, as guides, will be seen as infants needing nurture instead of the breast of sustenance seeing us into independence.

One image after another will crash like wild waves over us, dashing us to pieces on sharp rocks. What was just the beginning of the labor pains has grown exponentially into tides of impossibility in any transition to any thing of value. We have to ask about this being a part of some larger Mercy that cuts all of this darkness short. Have we been deceived? Are we left alone?

To meditate will pay dividends, but nothing you can put in a bank or add to your resume as an honor. Any renewed promise we gather here will come as a mere wisp, if that. We will hesitate to name any meaning as more than momentary.

These images of the sky, of some upward direction of a heaven, bring us back to earth as simple clay. There is a remolding standing ahead that rips blinders from our eyes, spits in our eye, and leads to a slow blinking awareness of life around to be partnered with rather than to claim dominion over (whether animals of the field or G*D’s Wisdom). A tentative presence begins to waver into a view of wider wakefulness.

Mark 13:24

“In those days, after that time of distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give her light,

the darkness of depression
blocks strong brother sun
obscures gentle sister moon
puts a basket
over a little candle

the brilliance of ecstasy
outshines the largest sun
is crazier than any full moon
shapes everything
in its own image

a depressed ecstasy
rises to fail
fails to rise
settling into habit
addicted to everything

such is clear enough now
about past patterns
it will still take awhile
to repent today
to respect tomorrow

Here is the next deeper circle of Dante’s despair, after the all too usual sufferings at the hand of those seeking power over—an age of darkness questioning and denying every trust you have placed.

Creation will appear to walk backward. The outward expansion of what we know as Universe will seem as though it were collapsing back into a Small Whimper. We will be so distant from stars they will appear to go out. That which we had set our lives by will waver; there will be no more North.

There will be no sign flickering in the dark.

Readers would do well to come to grips with Swanson’s80attempt to see this part of Mark as a “true story”:

Perhaps Mark’s story comments, with bitter irony, on the likelihood that lost and scattered Israel will ever come home. If so, a storyteller would do well to figure out how this bitter irony shapes the rest of Mark’s story, and then apply these discoveries to playing this scene.

To “play this scene” is to allow it to shape our actions and reactions to our what we find or don’t find in our everyday experience, which, holographically, is creation writ small.

When our personal dark night is found to be one shard of many lying all about, none of which can encourage another to “Watch Out!”, it is as though the sun blinked out before our expectation of its doing so. This is more than a facing of the unsurprising troubles of an abuse of power taking the little the poor have from them (under the guise of helping them become responsible) or one genocide or another on any of the continents in any year.