Abstract
What a difference a few days can make. Life goes on, week after week, with little changing. The seasons come, the seasons go, life has its ups and downs, and small changes here and there might occasionally mean the daily routine has to evolve. But basically, things go on much as before, until suddenly, perhaps unexpectedly, something happens to change everything. It could be a birth, a death, a new job or retirement, a breakdown in a relationship or the making of a new one. But I guess most of us had had that experience of recognising the moment when we know that life can never be the same again.
It happened to us twice last year. Our son, Peter, belonged to the ‘boomerang generation’ who went off to university and then come back to live with us as he settled down to life as a regular commuter. Then suddenly he was taken ill and, on New Year’s Day 2017, was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. As we started to adjust to his new condition, it got worse. First, a biopsy showed he had advanced cancer; then he needed further substantial surgery in preparation for chemotherapy. Then slowly, as the weeks progressed, it became clear that the chemotherapy was not working, and the trips back to hospital for increasingly involved treatment became more and more frequent.
Then last November, almost exactly a year ago, he died. Again, our routine was shattered. The daily round of work and leisure which had been fundamentally reshaped around his treatment and care was radically reshaped yet again. We joined the thousands of other families up and down the country and across the world who struggle to make sense of an overwhelming sense of grief. The empty bedroom, the constant reminders of the huge gap that now exists at the centre of our lives, the quiet tears which even the huge wave of compassion and care from friends and from the Church can never quite touch. My God, we miss him.
Once again, our routine had to change. Life can never be the same again. Already, things are moving on, and we have much to celebrate in the arrival of the two new grandchildren who speak of hope and of a new future starting to open out. But that aching void of bereavement still remains.
What do we learn from such experiences? Much, to be sure. We have learnt how much advanced medical science is still such a hit-and-miss affair, and how even the most senior specialists struggle to make sense of it all. We have learnt not just about the extraordinary commitment and professionalism of the nursing staff, but also their overwhelming commitment to care. We have learnt how important friends and family inside and outside the Church are, those who are simply there when you need them. But we have also learnt about some of those profoundly pressing challenges to faith which hit you so unexpectedly.
A bit like Hannah in that first reading from 1 Samuel: her family routine is pretty much established, as, year after year, she goes up with Elkanah and Peninnah to Shiloh to worship God—and presumably gets on with the daily routine in between. We hear about some of the powerful dynamics and power relations which seem to have governed life in that heavily patriarchal society of ancient Israel, as wives compete for the family honour of producing specifically male children. And we ponder some of the troubling social and moral questions posed by the unquestioned assumptions embedded in this text.
But then we see Hannah struggling with prayer, pleading with God for resolution to a situation she finds intolerable. We can certainly identify with that: the bargaining with God as we try to strike a deal: this, Lord, is what we will do if you simply answer our prayer. I certainly had that conversation a few times last year as we pleaded with God for the life of our son. I do not know how many others joined in that great wave of intercessory prayer focused on him, but it must have been hundreds: friends, colleagues and whole congregations across the denominations and even abroad. In answer to her prayer, Hannah received the gift of her firstborn son. In answer to our prayer, we lost ours. As the psalmist so powerfully demands, ‘where now is your God?’ Or as Hannah more chillingly puts it in her song of thanksgiving ‘The Lord kills and brings to life, he brings down to Sheol and he raises up’. God, it appears, has more than one way of answering prayer, as Hannah, Eli, Hophni and Phineas all found out in different ways. The answer to Hannah’s prayer has profound consequences for Eli the priest at Shiloh, and for his family.
That idea of being ready to experience the unexpected is picked up again in that gospel reading from Mark 13. Jesus has already been remembered earlier in this gospel as the one who turns expectations upside down and disrupts the daily routine we take for granted. To follow Christ in this gospel means to abandon family, friends, work, and every social obligation simply to take up a commitment to crucifixion. And this, we are told, is the good news. The radical reshaping of reality which runs through Hannah’s song and is echoed in Mary’s Magnificat, is now spelled out in this Marcan Apocalypse. The planning so beloved of our bishops and senior church leaders is shown to be as irrelevant as it is useless: God, the sovereign Lord of life and death, calls the shots and decides on the when and where. No one knows the day or the hour, so do not be fooled by appearances. Like the temple in Jerusalem which literally looks rock solid, everything can change in a moment. There may be plenty of clues that ‘all these things are about to be accomplished’, but they even these are potentially deceptive. Everything happens in God’s good time, not ours.
I continue to struggle with prayer, because ultimately the only prayer that can be answered is ‘thy will be done on earth as in heaven’. And that divine purpose may or may not be to our liking, as Eli, Hophni, Phineas, and countless others have discovered over the generations. But the Jesus of Mark’s gospel teaches those who would be his disciples to learn to trust God in good times and in bad, when trusting is easy and when it is not. That snippet of the Marcan apocalypse in the gospel today is but the prelude to the crucifixion and resurrection. The connection is clear: leave the planning to God, and know that however unlikely it might seem, however confused we are by the unexpected, we are safe in God’s keeping. For the rest, Advent begins to pull us forward, calling us not to the future we had planned, but to the turning upside down of our expectations in the truth of Christ crucified and risen.