Sermon on Mark 13:24-32by Karen B. Johnson Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple with Peter, James, John, and Andrew just days before his crucifixion when he speaks the words reported in today's gospel reading. He has told them that the great buildings of the temple will be destroyed and the disciples have asked him what warning signs will alert them to this coming disaster. Jesus minces no words in describing the havoc constituting such signs: wars, earthquakes, famines, the faithful beaten in their own shrines and tried before threatening councils; family members betraying one another even unto death; generalized suffering unseen since the beginning of time; and false prophets trying to lead astray the remaining faithful remnant. His remarks continue in today's portion of the text when he adds that the celestial spheres themselves will erupt in upheaval: the sun will darken, the moon not glow, the stars will fall, the heavenly powers shake. All this will be sign that the temple is about to tumble. But then will happen what all creation awaits. The Son of Man will come with power and great glory and dispatch angels to help in gathering the chosen from wherever they may be. Jesus is urging his disciples to interpret the coming disaster not as death throes threatening ultimate doom, but as birth pangs heralding incredible new life. And lest his disciples doubt the dependability of his words, Jesus reminds them of how utterly reliable they know the fig tree is in predicting the arrival of summer. When its branches become tender and put forth shoots, the warm season is near. His words, he assures, are even more trustworthy than the fig tree. They have an everlasting truth which nothing can imperil. Heaven and earth may even pass away, but his words will not pass away. It is an astonishing promise Jesus is making: devastating chaos is not to be interpreted as the knock out blow of evil, but rather as the precursor of a saving goodness that eclipses even the most sweeping ruin. He is insistent that even when hell seems to have sucked earth and heaven into its whirlpool of torment, there will come a deliverance capable of rescuing the elect. And lest we get caught up here in the controversial subject of who the elect are and what happens to everyone else, let's remember that in Biblical usage, the 'elect' describes not a people set apart for special favor, but a people called to share in God's mission of saving the whole created order. One implication of the elect being rescued is that they then can continue their mission of extending this deliverance to the whole created order. When Mark wrote down these words, about thirty years had passed since Jesus had spoken them. And although the heavens had not yet lost their light, just about everything else Jesus had predicted had happened. As one writer has described it, The headlines were as bad then as they are now. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The temple was destroyed. The emperor's favorite pastime was thinking up inventive new ways for Christians to die and there was fighting among the Christians themselves, with whole families being torn apart by their conflicting loyalties. False messiahs were setting themselves up on every street corner, each of them claiming exclusive access to the mind of God. Everything was falling apart, and those who had believed in Jesus must have wondered if they had been fooled. These were the prevailing conditions when Mark put ink to paper and secured the memory of Jesus' promise not just to oral transmission, but also to written record. By writing it down, Mark was safeguarding Jesus' words so disciples in any generation might endure aching woe without succumbing to crippling fear, cynicism, or despair. For these are words which hold a key to trust that the nightmares of life, whenever, wherever, however they happen, will never have the last word. For there is another realm beyond what eye can see or ear can hear that breathes all around and within, whose victory is sure and certain. To lean into such confidence is to be in a sanctuary against which even the gates of hell cannot prevail. When Jesus sat on that mountain with his four disciples he gave instructions about how to dwell in such a sanctuary. He said: do not be alarmed; be watchful; do not worry; flee violence; be alert; keep awake. They boil down to three basic commands: be not afraid, don't look away, and refuse to participate in any violence. The hell that is breaking loose will not end in doom, but in deliverance from which no one will want to be excluded. So pay attention lest you miss out. It seems foolhardy, doesn't it, to believe this stuff? As one writer notes: If you ask me, this is a major fork in the road of human belief, with God's ways going off in one direction and the ways of the world going off in another. It is the hardest decision any of us will ever make - to stick with our own interpretation of events or to open ourselves up to God's interpretation. Or as another puts it: [It]…does not seem to relate to the real world in which we live. Does it not require a fair measure of lunacy to listen to the Looney tunes of the…gospel? Yes! It does. As Zorba the Greek said to his employer, "It's difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do it; folly, do you see?" … In the final analysis, discipleship is a life of sublime madness. And in another place, the same author writes this kind of perspective: …is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus' cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployment, loneliness, depression, the loss of a loved one; when we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain; when the world around us seems a hostile, menacing, place - at those times we may cry out in anguish, "How could a loving God permit this to happen?" To remain hopeful in such circumstances is, this author claims, heroic. But whether we think it hard decision, lunacy, or heroism, trusting Jesus' word is what we are to do. And his word is that what is happening in catastrophic calamity is not death throes pointing to the triumph of misery, but birth pangs heralding the coming of the kingdom. We may worry that this kind of trust could undermine the work of peace and justice by promoting a sort of grin and bear it attitude since a blessed outcome is guaranteed. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, for trusting in love's triumph does not generate resignation to the status quo. Love begets love, not indifference. It survives not by protecting itself, but by spending itself. It says no to violent means, but yes to active resistance against every evil. We may also worry that this perspective runs the danger of preaching a Pollyanna-ish optimism easily debunked by the concrete evidence of simple fact. There is much in our particular lives and the annals of history that remains bewildering, tragic, and unredeemed. But just as our interpretation of events is not God's, neither is our timetable. In fact I confess to an aching pessimism about our country, the Church, and some personal matters, none of which I expect to be reversed in my lifetime. But I still trust that in God's own time - in which a thousand years are like a day - that grace will win the hour whether I am still on this side of heaven or on the other. A third difficulty with such trust is to draw the inference - the erroneous inference - that evil somehow is God's doing to bring about a greater good. That of course is heresy, but one which we do fall prey to in our desperate attempts to make sense out of the senseless. It's what lies behind the perverse logic of statements intended to comfort that end up compounding another's grief - such as that I heard a well meaning adult speak to a second grader mourning the death of his father: "God must have needed your Dad for some special mission in heaven." We shudder. For trust that upheaval is the precursor to the inbreaking of unimaginable blessing is not to say that God wills the suffering to serve a greater purpose. But it is to say that God does not waste it and will not fail to redeem it. A fourth danger is to presume such trust will spare the faithful any suffering. To the contrary…it is a virtual guarantee to put the disciple more directly in suffering's path. Faithful trust did not spare Jesus his cross and it will not spare his followers theirs. But it will provide them with the means of endurance…the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen, the confidence that these are not death throes but birth pangs. And that endurance of the elect will contribute to the saving grace which finally will win even the hearts of those who crucify them when, with Jesus, they can whisper from the cross words of forgiveness. Although such trust is not something we can manufacture by either grit or determination, but a gift of sheer grace, there are never-the-less practices we can adopt to cultivate a receptive disposition…a ready willingness to receive the gift. Two we have in our Dayspring community which I find particularly encouraging are the weekly lighting of our peace and justice candle and the tradition of story telling in School of Christian Living reflection papers, spiritual autobiographies, worship occasions, how we end retreats, Wellspring offerings, and countless other occasions. We've already been encouraged with (N.'s) lighting of the peace and justice candle. Let me close with a story that I hope can provide evidence of the trustworthiness of Jesus' claim that catastrophes are not portents of final doom but harbingers of saving grace. For more than three years the latest conflict between Israel and Palestine has claimed nearly 3500 lives…2500 Palestinians, and 900 Israelis and foreigners. Harriet has kept us poignantly aware and given of herself in the most personal and thorough way to a peaceful resolution to this conflict, though I know if she were telling the story she would report that it has been not so much a giving as a receiving. The atrocities of both sides regularly are front page news. The latest Israeli tactic of the 400 mile fence around the heart of the West Bank intended, supposedly, to halt terrorist incursions into Israel, is of course (like our insane war with Iraq), spawning exactly the opposite effect…increasing hatred, destabilizing even further an already volatile situation, causing misery of such magnitude that minds buckle and faith bends in its wake. But on Friday a published interview of the remarks of four former chiefs of Israel's domestic security service hint that the catastrophic proportions of this conflict are not death throes but birth pangs. Their comments include the following: We must once and for all admit that there is another side, that it has feelings, and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully. Yes there is no other word for it: disgracefully. … We have turned into a people of petty fighters using the wrong tools. If something doesn't happen here, we will continue to live by the sword, … to wallow in the mud, …and destroy ourselves. Hard decision, lunacy, or heroism…trusting Jesus' word is what we are to do. It's a trust we cannot self generate, but a gift Jesus promises to those who decline to panic, won't look away, and refuse to make war any more. Jesus says, "Do not be alarmed. Be watchful. Lay down your arms. Do not worry. Be alert. Keep awake." We know the reliability of the fig tree. His words are even more trustworthy. Heaven and earth may even pass away; but his words bear an everlasting truth that nothing can ever imperil. |