The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words
out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the
desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a
man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about
it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert
birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking
cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at
last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Lest we fool ourselves into thinking that we are living in
an unprecedented time of chaos and confusion about what the future holds, WB
Yeats speaks to us of the unravelling of society that was World War 1. It
is a dark poem that holds little hope for the redemption of mankind. Instead of the second coming of Christ as
savior Yeats sees a mythical beast - of our own making - draping the world in
shadow. The fact that our world has been
subject to tyranny, hate, oppression and greed on more than one occasion lends
little consolation today for those who live in fear. It will be no
surprise that when such chaos reigns the human spirit searches for some hope,
some promise of a better outcome.
The Gospel of Mark is scholars believe the first of the
surviving Gospels to be written. In Mark we hear the struggle of the
early church that was confronted with daily turmoil from the occupation of Rome
and a world was coming apart at the seams. Mark tells us that Jesus had
tried to teach his followers not to depend on the structures of the world in
which they lived, but rather to trust in the abiding presence of God in their
lives and the promise that God would not abandon them to the chaos. Today
the disciples ask Jesus for the signs that might give them a heads up so that
they might have time to take cover or perhaps prepare for what is to come.
Apocalyptic literature, like these passages about “end
times”, comes from a worldview that believes that everything happening on earth
represents and correlates with a larger, heavenly struggle between good and
evil. It reads into earthly events a kind of cosmic significance
and anticipates future events on earth in light of the coming battle between
the forces of good and evil. And because this literature tends to
be highly symbolic, it’s ripe for reading all kinds of sometimes unhealthy
things into it – like predictions about the end of the world!
But this chapter in Mark – and other passages, – were
not written to ferret out signs of the end. Rather to offer comfort
to believers struggling to make sense of their world and their lives.
Mark’s people were literally caught up in “wars and rumors of war”
and probably found comfort in the belief that Jesus had already anticipated
this and was offering words of encouragement to them through this Gospel.
When it comes to our own day and age, that kind of encouragement is still valuable, for though our wars may be different, we are still harassed at times by a fear that the world is falling apart. If you don’t believe it just turn on the TV. To twenty-first century believers, just as to first century disciples, Jesus says the same “do not fear.”
This Sunday is the last of our year in the Gospel of
Mark. So it is a perfect time to give some thought to what we have
encountered this year and what the take-aways for us might be. Mark
left us breathless as we jumped from encounter to encounter, but over and over
we hear Mark telling us that even in the midst of despair Jesus is present and
that the world is moving toward a new era of healing, liberation, and
love. God is at work turning the world upside down, serving all,
restoring health, freeing captives, doing justice. Our job is to keep watch, to
stay alert for God’s coming, take heart — and come! Be a
part of the movement!
While Yeats offers a bleak vision of the future of
humankind, one which presents morality as a kind of collective dream that is
now turning into a nightmare, Mark is inviting us to move our eyes away from
the Beast slouching toward Bethlehem and to remember Jesus’ promise that God
will be with us even in the muck that is our world, even when all of our
technology fails to reveal God’s presence. Jesus contends that God
is on the move, even and especially where all hope seems lost. For sure
the movement is elusive at times… hard
to identify in the midst of exploding bombs, hunger, and hurting neighbors. But it
is my experience that God’s love is often revealed in deeply hidden and
unexpected ways, surprising, shocking even, and yet reassuring.
This Gospel of Mark from beginning to end is about real
people, real problems, real relationships, real responsibilities, real
decisions. The first story Mark tells is
how Jesus goes out into the wilderness to be baptized by John – a reorienting of
his life around the work that God is asking him to do. By verse 14 in that first chapter Mark tells
us that Jesus returns to Galilee with a message for all that God has come near
and they are all welcomed at God’s Table.
What follows in Mark is healing, teaching, gathering, feeding – all in
the midst of a society where such blessings were rare. One of the great things about Mark is that he
makes no bones about Jesus’ disdain for the oppressive rulers around him and
for the injustice that he sees. Now right
before Mark’s Passion Gospel begins Jesus reassures us that the despair we feel
when our world comes caving in is not all that there is. Good things are coming, thanks be to God. And
precisely because of this, all of us are called to be watchful and alert,
cultivating a mindful attentiveness so that we will recognize and be in awe of
God in our world. Mark reminds us over
and over to notice the signs of hope and wonder all around us every day. Jesus does not make empty promises. Jesus sets out a way to live that does not
focus on either the crumbling of the stones of the temple or on the unrelenting
approach of the “rough beast slouching” into our lives. Jesus offers life….
For sure things may seem like they are falling apart and it’s really hard to find that nugget of hope. But the message of this short Gospel is that the center will hold because God is at the center and that in this wobbly future there is much faithful work for us to do. Amen
