Sermon for November 17, 2024 - the 25th Sunday after Pentecost
Growing up in Boston, MA I was privileged to visit, what I like to call “the Greatest Place on Earth,” Fenway Park, or in my native Boston accent, “Fenway Pahk.” Being the home of the beloved baseball team the Red Sox, it is a beautiful red brick historic park, that oozes history, and will continue to tell the stories of heartbreak and utter joy for generations to come. I would usually take the train into the game and when I exited the station, I would join the throngs of people making their way across a highway overpass to the park. And every time I made that pilgrimage to Fenway, standing in the middle of this pedestrian walkway was a man proclaiming the imminent coming of God. He had with him a cardboard cutout displaying apocalyptic images and he handed out scriptural tracts. As a person of faith, I would politely take his literature and keep walking along the roadway now littered with those tracts, to throw it out at the first trashcan I saw. Most everyone else would ignore this man. While I did not agree or ascribe to his theology nor his eschatological vision, I did admire him for his commitment to being present each game day to share his message.
What do you do when you see someone standing on the sidewalk preaching about the end of the world? What do you think when someone comes knocking on your front door proclaiming the coming of the kingdom? Maybe that doesn’t happen here in Canada, but plenty of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witness missionaries have knocked on my door over the years.
Do you regard such messages as core to your religious beliefs, or do you casually cross to the other side of the street to avoid any interaction with these types of texts?
Our passage this morning from Mark 13 introduces us to a fully apocalyptic Jesus, providing content that today we might most appropriately look at dubiously, or even interpret this a purely metaphorically. We might go so far as to say, “Well, that’s not my Jesus” or “that’s not the Jesus I know.” Yet, this is Mark's Jesus, who pronounced from the very beginning the imminent reign of God, who grapples with demons and countless challenges of other-worldly origin throughout the text; and who, in this chapter, gives his longest discourse of the entire gospel in full apocalyptic mode.
The content of Jesus' teaching suggests that things are about to get really bad, especially once he, Jesus, is gone. Being led astray will be a danger. There will be wars, earthquakes, famines. And this will only be the beginning. This is where our story this morning ends, although Jesus will go on to flesh out some more of the details of this suffering throughout the rest of the chapter.
But, much of what is stated here in the text is apocalyptic boilerplate. Jewish apocalyptic literature had been working with such themes and imagery for several centuries leading up to the time of Jesus and Mark in the first century. Daniel, a prominent apocalyptic Jewish text, and others like it helped to provide the imagery Jesus uses to talk with the disciples. One wonders, why is a full apocalyptic discourse necessary?
This passage and others like it conjured fear. They have been used throughout Christian history to call people to repentance and even lead people to conversion. At the same time, this apocalyptic literature brought a sense of peace and security. Now, we might wonder why would a passage that stirs such fear, also convey peace and security? I believe that the peace and security gleaned from this apocalyptic literature resulted from the belief that there was something better coming than the present hardship lived by so many in the world.
We must keep in mind that when Jesus was asked: “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” and he answers, “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” He had already said in the previous passages that this wondrous building had been built off the sweat and exploitation of widows and the poor. It was for this reason that, although it looked magnificent and pure, it was truly rotten inside. Therefore, the destruction of this magnificent edifice might be troubling for those who maintained their power and prestige in its survival; who wants to lose that power and authority over others once they have had a taste? The Romans, King Herod, the High Priest, and others wielding authority are all spokes on a wheel of power. This ones on top, then that ones on top, and on and on it spins crushing those on the ground upon whose backs they build their legacies in stone and blood. For them, the destruction of the Temple means an end to their power.
But this is not so for the common people. For them, for all who are crushed under the wheel of institutional systematic oppression, the destruction of the Temple would mean something else entirely. The apocalyptic message of Jesus means hope…hope that things can change, that things will change. The disciples did not seem to internalize what Jesus had said about the widow and that temple, as can be seen from their continued exaltation of it. Their focus on the product and not how it was made requires Jesus to help them refocus, to retrain their thoughts and actions to reflect a different way of viewing the world.
One of the challenges for us in the 21st century and living in one of the most affluent countries in the world, is that we cannot truly relate to what Jesus is saying. Jesus is suggesting that there is “sin” in our world and that a complete apocalyptic transformation is therefore required. The challenge for us is that “sin” has become a non-contextual spiritual construction with no relevance to our real lives. However, for Jesus “sin” is very contextual -- it means oppression, exploitation, abuse of the widow, orphan, migrant, transgender people. Therefore, the system that has been built from evil must be destroyed and made anew.
This vision of a radical restructuring to our world was meant to bring encouragement to the marginalized then and now, and with it a real hope that the oppressive structures of society would be destroyed. Let us remember that Jesus said things will be difficult: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.” For the marginalized the chaos is experienced both on a micro and macro level, as they are also burdened by the chaos evident in our larger world, in addition to their individual local sinfully oppressive realities that make day to day life a struggle, if not next to impossible.
But, in the midst of this apparent chaos and destruction, Jesus brings words of hope: “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” It is easy to forget that the narrative does not end with gloom and doom. Although too often this narrative has been used to portray a hopeless and catastrophic situation, in reality, Jesus seems to be speaking about a hopeful and salvific future. We all know, and some have experienced, the physical pain that women endure while giving birth. However, after the most powerful forces of pain take place, birth is the result, and the new life is then celebrated.
Therefore, it seems that the apocalyptic words of Jesus were meant to bring a message of hope especially to the subjugated of his society and ours. The description and verbiage used to explain what was to occur in the future is not even hyperbolic in nature. The changes will be radical and disruptive to the status quo. The structures that will collapse might not be physical ones, they might be the stones and walls that have kept and continue to restrict peoples’ access to community and to the sacraments of God. We must seek ways to break down the walls that would otherwise separate us. The walls of fear and anger that are built up in our hearts must also be dismantled, over time; brick by brick.
So it is, that we too must do the difficult work of examining our current era, our current culture and society, and holdfast to this hope in a radical transformation for our world that Jesus offers us through his apocalyptic prophesy. We must examine our hearts and discern how we might be more open to others. I have stood on the spot where that very Temple once stood, and Jesus was right, “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” All that is left is a relatively small section of an exterior retaining wall. That is it. As we head forth out into the world, where else do we need an apocalyptic transformation? How might you might you share that message of hope with others?
