Mark 13:24-32 (NRSV)
But in those days, after that suffering,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
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"[Jesus is] in a sense trying to get [the disciples] out of thinking in terms of the times and signals that they thinking about. He's above all trying to get them to get out of conspiracy thinking, not to be moved by the great shocks and tribulations that are to come, but to be able to keep their eye on what is in fact coming in. So that's what the next verses are about.
"Now, at the same time that [...] Mark makes references to Ezekiel, which Jesus was enacting, there are the references to Daniel, another we would call apocalyptic book. But in Daniel the references are to the Son of Man coming - with Ezekiel he's leaving, with Daniel coming - and the whole point is that the two are happening simultaneously in the person of Jesus: the going and the coming are simultaneous in the person of Jesus. Many of the other quotes which Jesus hints at are from the book of Lamentations, again referring to the Lord going and the destruction that is about to come, but at the same time there are also references, not so hidden, to the Song of Songs, which is to do with the Lord being discovered, the Lord coming back and coming to meet his beloved.
"So these are the two that are going on: Ezekiel and Daniel, Lamentations and Song of Songs, both showing simultaneously departure and the arrival. I think that if we read today's Gospel with that dynamic in mind we'll get more out of it.
[...]
"[It's] actually quite a common theme, this notion of the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give it's light and the stars will be falling from heaven. This is the standard way of referring to un-creation, because if you remember, at the beginning of creation first of all there is the light, and that brings everything to being and thereafter order is established and so on. So this is a way that the disciples refer to something so terrible that it's as if the uncreation has happened.
[...]
"So here we have something that will be enacted at the crucifixion - remember that [at] the crucifixion the sun went out - there was no light of sun - and the moon did not give off any light. In other words, this passage was being fulfilled, uncreation actually happened [at the crucifixion]. The breathing out of Jesus' spirit going up to death was the going back outside to before the time of creation, because this was the work of the Creator bringing in the new Creation.
"Then they will see, at exactly that moment, they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Okay, so what did they see? They saw the Son of Man on a cross, and that was reigning from the Cross, as we sing at Easter, and the notion that it was the definitive sacrifice of the great high priest and therefore the clouds of incense were surrounding it. So what they were seeing was the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
"Now of course, at the moment that this happened, the crucifixion, they didn't see that - what they saw was someone being put to death, with the darkness. But of course it was the resurrection that brought out that in fact this was the real thing that had happened, that had been the Son of Man, and that those who'd actually seen the crucifixion had in fact seen the coming [of the Son of Man] without being aware of it.
"In other words, that from something that looked very small, frightening, insignificant and negative, that was in fact the moment of the coming: the going and the coming were the same thing.
[...]
"[...T]alking about the fig tree [...] “its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves.” So once again he's referring to the crucifixion and it's tenderness and it's vulnerability, but the huge effect that is coming behind it, because just as you see [...] the fig leaves becoming tender it's becoming the sign of the very very much bigger, more powerful thing that is in fact behind it, which is 'summer is a-coming in'. So Jesus is saying that what in fact [the disciples are] going to see, the tiny sign that is [him] dead on the cross, behind that there is all the power of the opening up of creation."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 33 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFmAX8nNz_Y)
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"I hope that you see some of the threads of subtlety which are to be found beneath Mark’s text. The so-called apocalyptic discourse of Jesus is nothing other than a brilliant exercise in the subverting from within of the apocalyptic imagination. It has as its end to teach the disciples how to live in the times that are to come, the time which I called ‘of Abel.’
"Above all it seeks to train the disciples with respect to what must be their deepest eschatological attitude: the absolutely flexible state of alert so as to perceive the coming of the Son of Man, the one who is seated at the right hand of God, in the most hidden and subtle forms in which, in fact, he comes. That is, we are dealing with instructions as to how to live with the mind fixed on the things that are above, where Christ is seated with God: not glued to some fantasy, but learning to perceive the comings of the Son of Man in the acts of betrayal, of rejection, of handing-over and of lynching.
"We can compare this with the experience of Elijah on Mount Horeb, who had to learn that God was not in the tempest, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice which passes by unperceived (1 Kings 19:11-13). Well, we’re dealing with a similar experience: Jesus was explaining to the disciples that the state of alert in the face of his coming is a training in the perception, not of that which is bruited abroad, nor of what glistens appealingly, but of the way that all the majesty and splendour of God is to be found in the almost imperceptible victim, on the way out of being."
- James Alison, Raising Abel, pg. 149
[Note that I have chosen to present the Roman Catholic lectionary Gospel reading above. The RCL (Revised Common Lectionary) Gospel text for Proper 28B is Mark 13:1-8. For extensive analysis and discussion of this and the other lectionary texts, and the source of the quote from James Alison's Raising Abel, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper28b/]
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