Son Of God In Power, But When?

Second Sunday of Advent 2023

We hear today the first words of the Gospel of St. Mark, which is really, using the title of a recent popular book, The Memoirs of St. Peter. St. Peter was Mark’s mentor after St. Paul sent the young disciple home. They just didn’t get along. Those of you who have trouble relating to one or the other fellow Christian will empathize.

The first line of the Gospel summarizes the whole brief book: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark teaches the fundamental truth of our faith. Jesus Christ, son of Mary, a real human being, is a divine person, Son of the Father, “God from God, Light from Light, very God of very God.” We’ll see during Holy Week that the climax of Mark’s Gospel, uttered just after the death of Jesus, was the centurion witness declaring, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" Everything between those two appearances of Mark’s testimony was written to document that Truth. Jesus Christ was truly the Son of God, and continues to be so as King of the Universe.

The prophet Isaiah sees this from a distant past, but gets it right–the Lord God comes with power. But it was not really clear just how that would happen, because when this came to be written down, later, Jerusalem had been besieged, captured, and destroyed. The people had been exiled to Babylon and lived there as slaves or indentured servants. They surely needed to hear the words, “her warfare has ended.” But that’s only because the kingdom of the Jews was dead, her people dispersed. So Isaiah’s words, his disciples’ record of those words, would need later fulfillment. We, looking at the prophecy from a two-millennia perspective, realize that the words come true with the Resurrection of Christ, and establishment of His Church on earth, but that they will reach final fulfillment only in the general Resurrection at the end of time when even death yields up the dead and all the saints are with the Lord forever.

St. Peter’s second letter looks ahead and sees that second coming of Christ in power, transforming the earth according to the original intent of the Creator. And the psalmist gives us the powerful image of the Incarnation, with fidelity springing up from the earth, and righteousness coming down from the heavens. God becoming man; what an awesome surprise from a loving God!

St. Peter also uses a biblical image to help his readers cope with the reality that the second coming of Christ wasn’t happening in the first century. That was disappointing to the young Church, because it meant their earthly travail was going to continue. So he tells us that in the Lord’s calendar, one day is equivalent to our thousand years. So I’ve often said, if the Resurrection happened on Sunday, then it’s barely Tuesday morning in the Church’s first “week.”

So let’s be patient. We come together each Sunday as a kind of mini-celebration of the Pascha, of Easter. Our gathering is a kind of window looking into the great banquet feast eternally going on in the presence of the Trinity. Our gathering today looks forward to our celebration of the revelation of Jesus to the shepherds of Bethlehem and the Gentile kings at the Epiphany. So we smile, no matter what is going on outside this church building, no matter what anxieties await us on Monday morning, because we know the fundamental truth. We believe that Jesus Christ is Son of Mary. Jesus Christ is Son of God and our Savior.