Oh, No! Apocalyptic Again! Reflections on Mark 13:24-37, First Sunday of Advent, Year B
by john C. Holbert on Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Nothing will drive a preacher toward an alternative text faster than a full-blown apocalyptic. So, here we preachers are, gazing in terror at Mark 13, wondering what in the world, or elsewhere, we are to say to a 21st-century modern and rational congregation about such wild stuff. It is more than enough to force a more careful look at the Hebrew Bible offering for the day—no bad thing for those of us who love the Hebrew Bible! But, still, it is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the anticipatory season that longs for the birth of Jesus. The New Testament stands as the basis of the season, we imagine, so we surely must reckon with this strange and forbidding text.
How we approach such material is crucial. There are only two extended apocalyptic texts in our Bible: the second half of the 2nd-century BCE book of Daniel and the familiar, if “weird,” final book of the canon, Revelation. Of course, snippets of such literature are to be found sprinkled throughout many of the Bible’s books, and some of those snippets are referenced in this Markan so-called “Little Apocalypse,” to distinguish it from the “Great Apocalypse” that constitutes the book of Revelation.
I suggest three elements in a helpful approach to this sort of literature. First, the word “apocalypse” means a revealing, an unveiling of events and ideas that were once hidden but are now to be made plain. Such events or ideas may have already occurred, may occur in the future, or may be occurring now, though few are able to discern their existence. What apocalypses do is reuse older images and myths, here in Mark found in the Hebrew Bible, and place them in a new context that points to the unfolding of the plan of God.
Second, we must understand the historical circumstances that led to the composition of the apocalypse. Those circumstances are often dangerous persecutions of those who are attempting to follow the hard path of Jesus (or the path of God in Daniel), persons who are regularly among the dispossessed of the community, who stand over against the great powers of the day, in opposition to the majority of the powerful, the Greek Antiochus Epiphanes IV in Daniel, or the Roman Empire, aided by certain Judean collaborators, in Mark. These have suffered or will suffer persecution for their unwillingness to conform to what the powers of the time demand of them.
Third, it is important for any reader to seek to discern the theological significance of the apocalypse, to look through the odd language to find what the author is portraying to the reader as crucial theological ideas that add to the particular and special picture of Jesus that Mark wishes his readers to grasp.
I suggest that Mark has one special claim, among several others, to make by his employment of his little apocalypse: many false guides will appear, making claims about the course of the future, demanding allegiance to all sorts of notions, ideologies, and activities, supposedly as signs of following the path of Jesus (Mark 13:5-13). And even more directly: “And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah! Look, there!’ Do not believe him. For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders so as to lead astray the elect, if possible. But you, take heed. I have told you everything beforehand” (Mark 13: 21-23). Fanning the flames of apocalyptic scenarios is an ancient game, played by many in order to gain notice or to make money. Our own time has produced a plethora of such mountebanks.
Mark makes it overtly plain that such knowledge of the details of the plans of God are simply not available to any human being! Listen to his stark warnings of 13:32: “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Not even the Son of God, so named by the Roman centurion at the cross of Jesus, knows the ultimate plan of God or any of its details. This startling claim has caused considerable trouble for those who believe that Jesus is the second person of the divine Trinity, and thus is surely privy to what the Father knows. But Mark’s claim is straightforward—the Son does not know, and thus neither does anyone else save God alone.
Because no one may know finally what God’s plan and consummation may be, Mark ends with the ethical demand, stated more than once and in several ways, to “watch,” to “be alert,” since the Human One (the “Son of Man” in the traditional formulation) may come at any time, even in the dangerous night’s four Roman watches—“late or midnight or cock crow or early” (Mark 13:36). “What I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mark 13: 37). So, as we begin again our waiting for the birth of the Christ child at Bethlehem, Mark announces to us, “Watch.” “Be alert.” It could well be that the birth of a baby, born to an unmarried very young peasant woman, in a cattle stall, in a tiny village in an unlikely province of a vast Roman empire may be somehow, impossibly, a crucial part of the plan of God for the redemption and renewing of the earth.