This coming Sunday is the 1st Sunday of Advent in the new Liturgical Year. In the movement from the readings at the end of Lectionary Cycle A (Matthew) to the Markan Advent readings in Cycle B, it is noteworthy that the “end time” tone of the readings continue. The final course of Matthean Sunday gospels have the themes of vigilance, preparation, and the coming judgment.

• 32nd Sunday: The Wise and Foolish Maidens (Mt 25:1-13)
• 33rd Sunday: The Parable of the Talents (25:14-30)
• Christ the King: The Great Judgment (25:31-46)

Our Markan Advent gospel reading is the final verses of the larger “Olivet Discourse” in Mark 13:1-37. It is a passage that has many challenging features for Markan scholars in the form and content of the chapter and its relationship to the whole of Mark’s Gospel. Unlike the rest of Mark, the Olivet discourse is rather lengthy. It is the longest uninterrupted discourse recorded by Mark and the only time Mark records Jesus’ words at length.

The Olivet discourse provides the bridge between Jesus’ public ministry, culminating in the conflict with the Temple authorities (Chs. 11:11–12:12), and the Passion Narrative (Ch. 14). The prediction of the Temple destruction is in the discourse and appears again in the context of Jesus’ trial and execution, thereby connecting judgment upon Jerusalem implied in the discourse and the death of Jesus. But at its core, the discourse is a farewell address and exhortation concerning the conduct of the disciples in the period when Jesus will no longer be with them.

While many include Mark 13 as part of an end-time puzzle to be unraveled, the purpose of Mark 13 is not to provide secreted information to the insightful but to promote faith and obedience in a time of distress and upheaval. Jesus was preparing the disciples and the Church for a future period in which persecution and mission would be the norm. This chapter echoes Mark 8:31 and the verses that follow: “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.” As Mark 8 continues Jesus addresses the conditions and mission of discipleship.

Most scholars agree that Mark was written for the Christians of Rome, harassed by persecution and disturbed by the rumors of the developments in Palestine in the decade before the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The inclusion of the endtimes discourse in the Gospel was motivated by the same pastoral concern that had prompted Jesus’ teaching. Mark cautions his readers that the community is to find its authentic discipleship not in apocalyptic fervor but in obedience to Jesus’ call to cross-bearing and evangelism in the confidence that this is the will of God which must be fulfilled before the parousia (“2nd coming”). Jesus’ words provided a bed-rock for Christian hope that looks through the current persecution (for Jesus in his time and the Romans 30 years later) but also looks forward to the triumphant Son of Man whose appearance represents the one event in light of which the present is illumined. It is on this promise that Mark encourages the Romans to face the crisis of the sixties with realism and hope.

William Lane outlines Mark 13 as follows:

• Jesus’ Prophecy of Impending Destruction. Ch. 13:1–4
• Warning Against Deception. Ch. 13:5–8
• A Call to Steadfastness Under Persecution. Ch. 13:9–13
• The Appalling Sacrilege and the Necessity for Flight. Ch. 13:14–23
• The Triumph of the Son of Man. Ch. 13:24–27
• The Lesson of the Fig Tree. Ch. 13:28–31
• The Call to Vigilance. Ch. 13:30–37 ~ the 1st Advent Sunday Gospel begins at v.32

Image credit: Christ taking leave of the Apostles, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1381| Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain US