"Pray That Your Flight Will Not Fall in Winter"

I. The Stones

Evening is coming on when He walks out of the temple. That is how those last days went: by day He taught in the temple, and the nights He spent outside, on the mountain called the Mount of Olives.1 The city behind Him, through the valley, up the slope — every evening the same road.

His disciples come up to Him to show Him the buildings of the temple.2 That is what it says, and it is a strange scene: men pointing out the temple to someone who has just walked out of it. But anyone who has ever stood under those walls in the last light understands. In Mark it is one voice, saying what they are all thinking:

"Teacher, look — what stones, and what buildings."3

And He answers:

"Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another that will not be torn down."4

Among the men on that road walks Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. He belongs to the first hour. He was already following John the Baptist, and the first thing he did after spending an afternoon with Jesus was to look for his own brother: "We have found the Messiah" — and he brought him there.5

That is how he stayed. Wherever Andrew turns up in the stories, he brings someone along: the little boy with the five barley loaves was pointed out by him, and when there were Greeks who wanted to see Jesus, they ended up with Andrew, and Andrew went to tell it.6 A man of the second row, who helps others into the first row.

Tonight he walks through the valley with a sentence in his ears that is too big for the valley. Not one stone upon another. Less than an hour ago he was pointing out those stones. At the foot of the slope he begins to climb.

II. The Fourth Name

On the slope He sits down, opposite the temple.7 The house of God straight in front of Him, across the valley, with the last light on it — and between Him and that house the word that none of them has shaken off yet.

Then four men come and sit with Him apart. Mark names all four: Peter and James and John and Andrew.8

Three times this gospel takes only three along. In the house of Jairus, at the bed of a dead girl, no one may go in except Peter, James and John. On the high mountain, where his appearance is changed, the same three stand. And soon, further on in this week, in a garden at the foot of this same mountain, He again takes Peter, James and John with Him.9

Each time Andrew stands on the other side of the door — the man who brings everyone to Jesus himself stays outside. Once he is there, and that is here: on this slope, on this evening, in the line-up of four.

They are no strangers to one another, these four. They come from the same water — two pairs of brothers, fishermen, called away from their nets — and the house in Capernaum where it all began was the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John going in with them.10 Now they sit above Jerusalem, and they ask the question together:

"Tell us, when will these things be?"11

Matthew also keeps the second half of the question: and what is the sign of your coming, and of the completion of the age. But the first word is "when". Four men want a date, and Andrew sits there and waits for the answer.

III. Life and Death

The answer is long, and it is dark. He speaks of deceivers who will come, of wars and rumors of wars, of birth pains that are only a beginning. Then a sign is mentioned, and immediately after it comes the sentence in which everything is set to run:12

"Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."13

The man on the roof takes the outside stairs; the woman in the field does not turn around.14

Then this evening gets its prayer:

"But pray that your flight will not fall in winter, nor on a sabbath."15

Mark has the same sentence, with a soberer ending: pray that your flight will not fall in winter.16 No one prays like that about a little trip. That is how a person prays about a flight that is a matter of life and death.

Andrew sits with his face toward the city, and what he learns tonight is to pray about the weather.

IV. The Fourth Time

Outside the prayer He taught us, He says four times in advance what must be prayed.17 Once it is about the harvest: ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. Twice it is about the one praying: pray that you do not enter into testing — and: ask that you may be counted worthy to escape and to stand. And once, here, it is about the weather and the calendar.

That does not make this verse smaller. It makes it stranger.

The order is this. The flight itself is fixed. He did not predict it but commanded it, in the imperative: let them flee. So He does not say: pray that the flight will not come. The flight is coming. What is not fixed is the season — and it is precisely there that He points the prayer.18

So there is room for prayer within a decision. That is the discovery of this evening on the slope, and it is bigger than it looks. As if a father said to his children: that we must make this journey is settled, you need not bring that up again — but about when, anything may be said at the table.

And there is something more underneath, and it is the tenderest thing in this whole verse: whoever says what must be prayed about a night that has not yet fallen has already thought about that night. The winter was considered before there was a single refugee. The sabbath was considered. Before anyone at all is running, the season has already been talked over at home.19

Andrew gets no date tonight. He takes something else with him down the mountain: words for the road, laid ready by someone who has already thought the night through.

V. The Address

Further on in the same discourse — the same evening, the same four faces — He says what becomes of the "when" of their question:

"But about that day and that hour no one knows anything, not even the angels of heaven — only my Father."20

Side by side, from one mouth, on one slope: pray about the season — and: the day belongs to my Father.21 The four get no date, and it is not a refusal: it is an address. To the question "when" He answers with where the answer lives.

And right next to the command to pray stands another such sentence, and it makes the same movement:

"And if those days were not cut short, no flesh would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short."22

Someone cuts the days short, and it happens for the sake of people who have to go through them. Within what is fixed, account is taken of those who walk in it — in the season of the flight, and in the length of the days. Twice in one discourse what is fixed bends around people.23

When He has finished all these words, He says to them: you know that after two days it is the Passover — and that the Son of Man is handed over to be crucified.24 Passover: the feast in the month of ripening barley. Around them on the slope it is spring.25

The winter for which He has just given them words stands on no calendar they can look at — but the night that does stand on the calendar, two days from now, is his. For their flight He gave a prayer; He himself stayed.26

Then they go down the mountain, into the valley, where it is already night. Four men, and one of them is the man who all his life brought people to Jesus — his brother, a little boy with loaves, Greeks from far away. Now Andrew carries something the other way: away from Jesus, out into the world, for whoever will ever need it. No date. Words.