Gospel Reflection: No One Knows the Hour

Danby, Apocalypse

Jesus said to his disciples:
"In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

"And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds'
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

"Learn a lesson from the fig tree.
When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves,
you know that summer is near.
In the same way, when you see these things happening,
know that he is near, at the gates.
Amen, I say to you,
this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken place.
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.

"But of that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

--Mark 13: 24-32

There are several obvious problems with this passage.

Most notably, Jesus promises that these things—the end of time—will take place before “this generation” passes away. Obviously, the generation that first heard these words is now long dead.

He says that nobody knows the time of the end, including the Son; only the Father. Yet the Son is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, of one being with the Father—how can he not know, if the Father knows?

He describes the end of the world in terms that make no sense scientifically: the sun and moon might become darkened, by an eclipse, but the stars cannot fall from the sky.

And how can both heaven and earth pass away, yet his words continue?

And isn’t it a bit odd, a bit jarring, a bit off register, to describe the violent events of the end of the world in terms of the gradual budding of a fig tree in spring?

There is one simple answer to all of this. I hesitate to say it, because I have been talking so much about death here recently that I suppose I risk losing the few regular readers this blog has.

But I believe he is talking not about the End of the World in a cosmic sense, but individual death.

Or rather, the one is functionally the same as the other. Consider the nature of eternity. I say it is not an infinite forward progression of time. It is multidimensional time. Each moment in time is equidistant and immediately accessible from eternity. Accordingly, the instant one dies and enters eternity, one is indeed at the end of time. Therefore, “this generation will not pass away” is accurate, as is Jesus’s promise at the crucifixion to meet with the Good Thief that same evening in paradise, despite his upcoming three days harrowing Hell. “This generation will not pass away” thus refers, not only to the generation that first heard these words, but to every generation after it, including our present generation. Therefore, too, “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

This also makes sense of the reference to spring, a recurring, natural event—individual death is, on the cosmic scale, a recurring, natural event. In part, Jesus is advising us not to fear it, any more than we fear spring’s coming.

And there is a reason why, although God the Father necessarily knows the time of our death, Jesus would not. If he knew when he was going to die, he would not fully share the human experience. His sacrifice on the cross would not then have been complete. Therefore, in order to be fully human as well as fully divine, his innate omniscience would have had to be veiled on this point. He could not have known in advance.

The stars, of course, will not literally fall from the sky. Jesus is describing a subjective experience near the point of death, not an objective, scientific event.

To be clear, there will be a literal end of the world. There has to be, logically and scientifically. But if you think about it, it is silly to concern ourselves with that. It’s a fool’s game. What difference does it make whether it comes in our generation or another, given that we are all going to die regardless, and the instant we do, we will have access to that time as well?

Accordingly, rightly, Jesus advises his followers not to concern themselves about it.

Nor should we.