26 Pentecost Proper 28
Based on Mark 13:1-8
17 Nov 2024
Read all of Mark’s Gospel in one sitting some time. This is how it would have first been presented, not in the snippets we get. He begins as Jesus starts his ministry and ends with the empty tomb. No childhood or birth stories, no genealogy, and no post resurrection stories. (Later authors added a chapter; apparently the Good News wasn’t good enough for them.) We are in Chapter 13; Jesus is nearing the end of his ministry and very much aware of his impending death. Last week we watched with him as the rich and famous put money in the temple coffers, money that they could easily spare, and condemns them for the rather routine defrauding widows of their property so that the woman who put in the copper coins had nothing else left to her name. Nothing because she had been defrauded. After this observation, he and his followers get up and leave. Instead of commenting on the injustice done to the widow, one of the followers seems more interested in the beauty and grandeur of the temple itself. Jesus, however, knows nothing stands forever and predicts that the temple will be destroyed. That gets all the disciples bent out of shape. I suspect they were worried that their own lives would be impacted and wanted to know how to tell what is happening and when. They still do not know what they signed up for. And they get an earful from Jesus! We continue to get an earful. How many pundits claim to know “when the world will end?” The world has ended many times. The Black Death destroyed much of medieval Europe. In Africa there were numerous kingdoms that rose and fell. Same with China, with invasions and dynasty after dynasty. In the Americas we have evidence for civilizations that came and then vanished. It seems to be a cycle of rinse and repeat for the world’s empires and many civilizations. And so it was to be with the Jewish temple.
Jesus was certainly sad, but by now he knew what his own destiny was to be and was resigned to it. He needs and wants to communicate to his followers what to expect and tell them what they are to do, for he will not be there to help them. What did those followers believe about end times? It seems they believed it would be soon, in their lifetimes. The absolute end of the world has been predicted with great certainty many times and it has yet to happen. There certainly have been many wars and famines but the world is still here
Yet the reading ends in a very strange way. Birth pangs. No woman who has had a child would ever tell you it was a joy ride. But the end is not the end, it is the beginning. Something new coming into the world and something beautiful. Maybe we have this end of the world thing wrong. Maybe the end is the real beginning, just as the end of labor is the beginning of new life.
The people who first heard these words of Mark were Jews living in the time of the destruction of the temple and the brutal repression of the Jewish rebellion. There was no reason to hope, yet these are words of promise! Something good is coming. The realm of God is coming, and the Good News must be preached.
Sometimes I think we expect life to get better. Advertising would make us think life will get better if we have just the right stuff. All stuff brings is debt and an insatiable hunger for more. The Enlightenment said that we would have better living through chemistry. That brought us the horrors of modern weapons and war and the impending disaster of climate change.
But as Christians, real Christians, we know that is not the goal. The goal is not to have a comfortable life or even the idea if we believe in Jesus we will have a great afterlife. Our job is to tell the good news despite every bad thing that has happened, is happening, and will happen. It is about the here and now, the almost but not just yet.
God’s reign is happening here and now, with us. It is happening when we stand with our brothers and sisters who are in pain and who are suffering. It happens when we have Eucharist and remember the body and blood given for us and share that with one another.
I fear the next several years will not bring good things for many people and that we will need to step up and step in to help and to be a voice for those who have no voice.
A movie about Dietrich Bonhoeffer is coming out in a week or so. I think the timing could not be better. Here was a man who saw evil and how it infected his neighbors and the immense moral failings that led to the horror that was WWII. We must raise our own voices against the evils we see. The reign of God is not Christian Nationalism, for God favors no nation, but rather that the poor and the marginalized have a seat at the banquet table beside the rich and the famous. If we don’t stand up, who will?
Friends, life for human beings has never been easy. I believe Jesus is saying that as long as we continue to turn against one another, literally to “other” those we wish to de-humanize, we will not see the realm of God. When we instead turn and practice what Jesus taught and preach the good news, then and only then will we see what we hope for.
Not that many years ago, the now Archbishop Samuel Peni of South Sudan was in Dubuque attending seminary. He spoke to one of our priests during the Gulf War and said that every day in Sudan was 911. Yet what I also heard, and still hear, is the amazing caring and faith of the Christian community there. In the midst of the unspeakable, they live out the Good News. Why is it we seem to rise to our best as Christians when times are the worst?
I am leaving you with a question: if the birth pangs are starting, just what is it you want to give birth to?
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