THIS Sunday is the last Gospel from Mark in this church year (Year B). Next week, Christ the King draws its Gospel from John. The week after that, a new church year begins. So, although Mark 13.1-8 is the focus, I will also glance at the rest of chapter 13. After this, two years must pass before we walk with Mark again.

I noticed a word pattern. It concludes with a verse from the Advent Sunday Gospel in lectionary Year B, which was read on 3 December 2023 as the first Gospel of the Marcan year: “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come” (13.33).

Five times in chapter 13, Jesus uses this word (blepo: vv. 2, 5, 9, 23, 33). The first instance is physical: “Look!” he tells his disciples, and it means no more than “Observe this object before you.” In the four examples that follow, he uses the word figuratively, telling his disciples to “Look out!” or “Be alert.” It is used on only ten occasions in the whole of the rest of his Gospel (and three of those are quotations). Thus Mark conveys Jesus’s sense of urgency.

From this moment, Jesus is done with the temple. He never returns. This suggests that, although he acknowledges its magnificence, he sees no place for it in the coming Kingdom. Christians went on to speak of a lesser-seeming temple, which in reality was infinitely greater. John makes it explicit: “He was speaking of the temple of his body” (2.21). The temple that is the body has meaning for all who profess and call themselves Christian (1 Corinthians 6.19).

More apologetic ink has been spilled on chapter 13 than on any other in Mark; for it makes us ask “Was Jesus wrong about the future?” Various strategies have been put forward to defend Jesus’s prophecy — perhaps by looking for evidence that later hands have introduced errors into the text, or that the meanings of words such as “generation” need to be re-calibrated.

The problem is this: Jesus states that the temple will fall. He does so with characteristic hyperbole (“Not one stone will be left here upon another”). The survival of the Western Wall (formerly known as the Wailing Wall) proves that his words are not meant literally. Nearly 40 years after the crucifixion, in AD 70, Gospel prediction became reality when the temple was destroyed.

So far, so good. But, a little later (13.30), Jesus says that “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” “All these things” embraces not only the razing of the temple, but also the “abomination of desolation” or “desolating sacrilege”. That term draws on Jewish prophecy and history, including the desecration of the altar of burnt offering (Daniel 7-12; 1 Maccabees 1.54, 59). But, for Jesus, it is also something yet to come. No one can know for sure what that is, but everyone can tell that it is not good; for, when the stones of the temple walls crumble, so do bonds of blood and faith (13.9-13).

We are still awaiting the coming of the Son of Man in his glory. Yet, all those who heard the prophecy have gone to their long home, vanished into the past. Did Jesus expect, wrongly, that those people would be alive to witness his coming on the clouds of heaven? Or did he mean something else?

Perhaps, when he says “this generation”, he is referring to the whole of humankind throughout history. Or perhaps he is thinking outside the context of time itself; for he is the Word who abides in an eternal now. Clear answers, obvious solutions, elude us. Sometimes, it is realism, not defeat, to take refuge in faith and mystery.

Jesus’s apocalyptic words reveal the painful truth that peace will not prevail upon the earth until time and history end, at the coming of the Son of Man. Upheaval, destruction, and suffering have all persisted from his day to ours. In ancient Rome, the gates of the temple of Janus were opened in time of war, closed in time of peace; but peace, for the Romans, meant only that their enemies were beaten. We Christians hope for something better, but, if we had gates like theirs, we would never have shut them yet.