Pentecost 24

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church

The Reverend Martha Frances

Year B, Pentecost 24, Proper 28

19 November 2006

Text: Mark 13: 14-23

Other Readings: Daniel 12: 1-4a [5-13]; Psalm 16:5-11; Hebrews 10: 31-39

There’s probably not a collect of the day that I cherish so much as I do today’s: calling us to hear, read, mark, learn, & inwardly digest the scriptures so that we may embrace & hold fast to them. If you’ve been around me very long, you know I consider Bible study a keystone to growing as a disciple of Christ. However, today’s particular set of scriptures present a challenge to proclamation of the good news. Right here at Thanksgiving time, I find it difficult to give thanks in all things—like these scriptures. Even the epistle passage begins “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Did you feel a little queasy when you responded to the readers’ “The word of the Lord” with “Thanks be to God”? Yet we’re called to wrestle with the whole of the canon of scripture, not just the selections which fall comfortably on our ears. So I began my study determined to discover the good news to proclaim today.

Those who first read this gospel heard Mark’s “little apocalypse” as a people suffering grievously from foreign occupation, not only because of the heavy taxation & limited freedom that Rome imposed but also because various rulers set about to break the Jewish spirit by desecrating the greatest symbol of their faith, the Jerusalem temple. A mere 10 years after Jesus’ death, the mad emperor Caligula attempted to have his image erected in the Jerusalem temple & almost provoked a revolt. In fact, by the year 70, the Jerusalem temple had been destroyed & the strength of the Jewish people broken irreparably. In the midst of such radical upheaval, Mark reports Jesus’ severe preaching about the end times.

Today’s gospel echoes Daniel from the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Daniel refers in horror to the sacrilege that Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria, subjected the Jewish people to scarcely 200 years earlier. He had scandalized the Jews by erecting a pagan altar in the Jerusalem temple & sacrificing a pig on it. Further, the Jewish people had the recent history of desolating sacrileges again set up in the temple, causing the people to mourn its being desecrated once again. The end of the world as they knew it was indeed upon them.

What are we modern 21st Century Americans to make of these passages today? Some read such words as “those in Judea must flee to the mountains” & “the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away,” pack up survival kits & head to the Arkansas hills to await the rapture, sure that they & their closest friends & relatives are the only “elect.” Others decide there is no future on this earth & so they fail to plan for tomorrow & oftentimes fail to care for the earth in environmentally-healthy ways. Still others ignore cautions about safe & responsible sexual relations or decide they can get away with improper use of alcohol & other drugs because they might as well eat, drink, & be merry for tomorrow they will die.

Such short-sighted interpretations of what for the first century Christians was a popular form of literature—apocalypse—is like our watching old westerns or police dramas & assuming we can predict the future from them & know how to behave as a result. In fact, Jesus is telling us exactly the opposite in this excerpt from a larger passage. The disciples have just asked him when his predicted passion would take place & what kind of sign to watch for. He responds with a speech which takes up the whole of Chapter 13, only part of which we read today. He really tells them to quit sitting around waiting for life to happen to them & get on with living in such a way that they & others give glory to God & make this world a better place to live.

In our gospel today, Jesus conveys urgency in living as Christ-bearers. He explains that there won’t be time to prepare or get our affairs in order if we haven’t been doing that all along. Jesus tells the disciples not even he knows when the end times will come, nor is it his business to know because God is in charge anyway. Jesus challenges his followers to live each day as if it were their last yet still to prepare for the future since no one knows how long their life will continue.

Jesus’ own caution is not to pay attention to the “false prophets” who will try to interpret signs & omens when not even Jesus can do that, so beware of others who claim such foreknowledge. Jesus says, in effect, “Get out there & start living, sharing my good news, & let God be in charge of when it’s going to end.”

What might this mean to us today? First, it means that we ought to be very careful not to listen to people who want to interpret certain present-day personal crises or more universal happenings like the terrorist attacks on 9-11 to mean that the world is ending. Jesus says that only God the Creator knows when the uncreation will happen. People have been interpreting signs for centuries & will probably continue to do so. From the first century Roman fire blamed on the Christians to the plagues which wiped out whole populations in Europe to the Holocaust, doomsayers have claimed that was the end time. Jesus says only God knows, so where do these folks get off thinking God tells them things God didn’t even tell Jesus?

Secondly, Jesus tells us we need to live our lives with a certain urgency which looks forward to the goodness of life even when the present looks pretty bleak. Even though African-American slaves had few choices in their lives, their attitude toward their lives made much difference in the quality of their living. Remember the spiritual “My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall?” I can just imagine slaves on a southern plantation singing, “You’ll hear the trumpet sound, to wake the nations underground, looking to my God’s right hand, when

The ancestors of some in our congregation saw the perils & plight of their slave life as only temporary compared to the yearned-for eternal life. Spirituals were often code for the next connection on the underground railroad transporting others to freedom in the North. The first singers of these spirituals knew the tension between hope for a better life in the free North & recognition that for some, only life after death would provide release from the travails of their present existence.

The energy of most spirituals proclaims that the slave owners might own their bodies but not their souls & that joy could be found in the midst of sufferings. Just prior to the gospel passage, Jesus tells his disciples a third time that he must undergo suffering & death but that death would not have dominion over him since he would be raised to new life.

When I was vicar at Lord of the Streets, I was often touched by the hopefulness about life which laughs in the face of adversity. Homeless people sharing in Bible study expressed joy at God’s waking them up in the morning & their finding a safe place to celebrate life & to study the Word of God. Although many lacked basics in life, they often found something to give whether it was coins in the collection plate or time volunteering at LOTS. Thanks be to God for those who travel light & teach the rest of us to do so also.

Jesus also tells us that we need to take responsibility for ourselves & for this earth upon which we live. He certainly would join the writer of Hebrews in celebrating responsible activities of the community & maintaining strength to endure. We hear in Hebrews about those subjected to public abuse & persecution urged to be steadfast. Few of us suffer the persecutions many early Christians endured, but sometimes we don’t adequately use the gifts we have been given. We hope you consider prayerfully your own commitment to this community on this stewardship ingathering day & pledge accordingly. Now is the time for Hope to deepen our own spiritual growth & offer a vibrant fellowship to the larger community. What mission outreach is God calling Hope to at present? Strengthening & growing our own St. Michael’s Day School? Providing an after-school program for the teens at Black Middle School? Backing janitors & others in their insistence on minimum wage being high enough to support a family? Providing .7% of our income to help meet the Millennium Development Goals?

Finally, Jesus reminds us in this farewell address in Mark’s gospel that, in the long run, God is in charge & we can rely on that. False messiahs & false prophets will try to distract us from God’s being in charge of our lives, but ultimately, God’s will must be done. Jesus’ upcoming death is certainly a horrible occurrence, but it is not the last word. Jesus has just assured the disciples that he will indeed arise again from the dead. When we are in the midst of difficulties in our lives, we often forget that “this too shall pass,” as we’re told in 12-Step recovery. It will pass because God has the last word. And this is certainly Good News—the Gospel!