Jesus said to his disciples: "Be constantly on the watch. Stay awake. You do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own task, and he orders the man at the gate to watch with a sharp eye. Look around you. You do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether at dusk, at midnight, when the cock crows, or at early dawn. Do not let him come suddenly and catch you asleep. What I say to you, I say to all, be on guard." (Mark 13:33-37)

It might help us to understand better the Gospel passage from Mark this morning if we place it in its context. The disciples and Jesus are outside Jerusalem, on the hillside opposite Jerusalem, and in particular opposite the Temple. And they look upon the Temple, with its facade encrusted with gold and other precious items and they refer to the Temple and tell Jesus, "Doesn't it look wonderful! Isn't it magnificent!" The Temple, which was always at the heart of every Jew, the center of their life, the center of their culture, the center of their society, and even the center of their politics. And they felt very strongly about it. Perhaps you and I do not feel as strongly about any particular building or any particular place as the Jews felt toward the Temple, or even as they still to this day feel toward the Temple in all of their desire to go to the Wailing Wall and to pray. But in the course of their praising the Temple and bringing it to Jesus' attention, Jesus said something to them which shocked them. In fact, it came as a great surprise as well as a shock: "It is all going to be destroyed." Everything of the Temple will disappear. It will be torn down." And after the first moment of their kind of shock they say, "When, Lord, will this come?" And He said, "Be vigilant. Be watchful. You don't know exactly when it's going to come. But it will come. And when it does come, be ready for it. Be mindful that I have told you about it so that you can be ready for when it comes. So that you will not be caught off guard."

You might say it's a strange passage to use on the first Sunday of Advent. What are we to be watchful about; what are we to look forward to? Jesus has already come in history. He's already been born, he's already done his work, he has already ascended to the Father. So what is there that you and I should be expecting, awaiting, anticipating? What is there that you and I should be vigilant about?

I think that in our passage we get kind of pointers, pointers to Chapters 14, 15, and 16. And one of the pointers is so obvious that it falls like the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes of the Missouri mule. Whether at dusk, or at midnight, when the cock crows, or at early dawn. Whenever God's visitation comes, then be alert, then be vigilant, then be watchful. But what kind of visitation of God? Definitely Jesus is referring to his own passion, his own death, and his own Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. And we can ask the questions, the answers to which every one of us knows: Were the disciples vigilant at dusk? Were they vigilant at midnight when the went out to the Garden of Gethsemane? In Chapter 14 Jesus has to say to them four times in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Watch! Stay awake! Do not be caught! Be vigilant. Could you not pray with me for one hour?" Certainly they were not vigilant, they were not watchful at midnight in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the cock crows, Peter, you will deny me thrice before the cock crows. "I will go to the death with you!" "No, Peter, you will deny me; you will deny that you know me. You will turn your back on me." And the cock crowed, and Peter remembered what Jesus had said, and Peter cried.

And at early dawn, looking forward to Chapter 16, verse 2, when the women at early dawn go out to the tomb, and they are going to see the gatekeeper at the door of the tomb. What are they looking for? They're looking for the body of Jesus. They have come to do everything that they could not do to prepare Jesus' body for burial. But they are not vigilant for what they find. They are not watchful for what they find: a risen Lord, a changed Lord, a Lord who comes to them in a different guise, in a different pose. In fact, John's gospel tells us that Mary Magdalene wants to grab on to Jesus, she wants to keep him as he was, because he is familiar to her that way. She can easily recognize him that way.

But you might say, yes, that is all very true, but all of that is spoken to the disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the others. But what does that have to do with you and with me? In what way are we to be vigilant? I would say in the very same ways. In fact, perhaps we should even be more vigilant than were Peter, James, John, Andrew, Thomas, and the other disciples. They were closer to it, they were closer to the person of Jesus, but we are more distant from the person of Jesus, because of history, because Jesus is no longer personally among us in the way in which he was among them. But how vigilant are we to his coming?

You might say, "Why should I be vigilant? He's already come into my life in baptism, in confirmation, in the Holy Eucharist?" That is true, but how often do we miss him? How often do we recognize his presence in suffering, in disappointment, in frustration, in failure. How often do we miss Jesus because we simply are not vigilant, are not alert, or we do not expect him to come in the ways that he does come, or that we expect him to come in ways in which he would never come into our lives. The disciples didn't expect Jesus to come in suffering, in degradation, in failure. And yet that is exactly how Jesus came. What Jesus I think is alerting us to come into is that our faith has to be in a person, our faith has to be in someone, not in something or some place. You know, Eisenhower said in the Second World War, it makes no difference what one believes in, but one just simply has to believe. You might say that Eisenhower was a great general--I won't argue with that; you might even say he was a passable president--I won't argue with that; but a great theologian? Oh no, Mr. Eisenhower, you're a terrible theologian. It makes a great deal of difference in whom we believe, in what we believe. There are many in faith who have been duped, who have believed in very evil men, in very evil ways, and great havoc, great ruination and great deprivation, even the deprivation of life has resulted because of it.

And so Jesus is saying, "Be watchful for me. Be watchful for me in the many ways in which I come into your life. And I will tell you," says Jesus, "that I will come in ways in which you least expect me. I come in suffering. I come in failure. I come in death. I come in pain. Oh yes, I come at times in jubilation and gladness, but you expect it in those ways. But you don't expect it in depression, in sadness, in failure."

One of the things that I think we find hardest to believe as believers, among many other things, is the fact that with God success is failure, glory is humiliation, degradation is really to be a success. It doesn't mean that we go out looking for them; it doesn't even mean that we seek them in life. Like Jesus--he didn't seek them; he was naturally repelled by them. But he accepted them when they came. He saw the will of the Father in them, and therefore he openly, willingly accepted them. He came to realize that was exactly how the Father was going to conquer death--by going through death. And what Jesus came into the world and did was simply turn our human value system topsy-turvy, upside down. It's like the sandglass, the hourglass; he simply turns it upside down. And all the things that humanity, that the world holds as values, as success, as greatness, Jesus says, look again. Because in the eyes of God, it's just the opposite.

Are you watchful? Are you vigilant? Are you alert?

I think one of the other things that you and I have difficulty grasping is to be a disciple, is that to be a disciple, to be a follower of Jesus means we have His very life within us. We catholics always refer to sanctifying grace, but sanctifying grace, pure and simple, is divine life. And for some reason or other we have an aversion to believing that we can become divine. The early fathers of the church, the early theologians used to always refer to it as our becoming "divinized"--not because it is ours by nature, not because we can earn it or demand it, but because it is a gift. But we kind of fail, we can't quite grasp the fact that this really is God's plan for us, that we share his life, that we become in that sense gods, as his gift. And it is for that that Jesus wants us to be alert, to be vigilant, to let it happen, and when it does happen to accept it and be grateful for it.

I think the whole thing can be summed up so beautifully in that prayer that the priest says during mass when he pours that little bit of water in the wine in the chalice: "Through the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity." And that's what Jesus wanted the disciples to be alert and vigilant about, and that's what he wants every one of us to be alert, vigilant about. How do we begin to work with Jesus to put on the divinity of Christ? To put on Christ? To have the mind of Christ? And the best thing that we can do in Advent is to ask ourselves every day, what are the ways in which Jesus is coming into my life to make us divine, to make us sons and daughters of God? Not the ordinary ways we think of, but the unusual ways, even the ways that to human thought are sometimes mystifying, sometimes foreboding, and oftentimes overlooked.