Last week we were in a familiar world of poor people and rich people, all with our individual struggles and decisions. This week it seems like we’ve moved to a different planet – there are vague “tribulations” and strange cosmic events. (Mk 13:24-32)
When we listen to the words of Jesus we are doing so with ears that are conditioned by 2000 years of history. When we hear of the sun going dark and someone coming on the clouds, we hear this overlaid by all those years, everything from the medieval pictorial imagination to the latest sci-fi – which with movies like Dune, Foundation, and such like, seems to be coming right back into fashion – plenty of cosmic drama there.
When the evangelists reported the words of Jesus they were building on a previous 1000 years of scripture and experience of God working amongst his people. The type of language in today’s gospel reading was widely recognized from the book of Daniel (as illustrated from the first reading – Dan 12:1-3). That was a fairly recent set of writings at the time of Jesus, but almost identical imagery is in Isaiah, Ezekiel and other prophets.
For all those prophets the descriptions of strange celestial phenomena are a prelude to the demonstration of God’s power. God’s control of the heavens is a reminder of his power in this world. No one doubted the power of God (or gods) in regard of the heavens – that was pretty much the definition of a god. The question that was open was whether the gods cared about anything on earth and if so what they expected. Of course the Jews had their own very particular answer on this point.
Jesus, and the three gospel writers who chose to pass on these ideas, is looking to position himself in relation to this perspective. The new element is the idea of ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’. The connection of God with clouds was familiar – remember Moses entering the cloud, into the presence of God, and there are many examples of God speaking from the clouds, in the Old and New Testaments. The phrase or title ‘Son of Man’ was also well known. But before the gospels it is always used as a generic term – ‘a Son of Man’ – not ‘THE Son of Man’. Jesus calls himself ‘the Son of Man’ more than any other title, or description – he is The Man. But the key here is that he, the Son of Man, Jesus, is now the one coming in the clouds – he has taken the place of God.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He says “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Jesus is pointing out that in the end (literally), all this stuff about signs in the heavens and on earth isn’t what matters. All of this is passing. Just as the Word is present from the beginning of time (as John tells as at the very start of his gospel – “In the beginning was the Word”), so it is what remains at the end of time. Jesus is present for all time and beyond time in his words. We are people whose belief in not based on feelings, on instincts, or even cosmic signs – it is based on words. So we do well to study those words, to let them work within us, to chew on them! As Jesus also said: “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). The words coming from the mouth of God are Jesus’ words. Those are the words that give us life.