Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Dec. 18, 2018
Scripture: Mark 13:1-8
When I say
“apocalypse” what do you think of? If
you are anything like me, I know that my brain tends to jump straight to movies
featuring zombies with blank stares, post-nuclear wastelands, and warring
factions; or to books like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or just about anything
written by Margaret Atwood. What seems
to tie them together is a sense of pervading fear and violence, and a plot that
features one person or a small group fighting against the rest of the world.
Post-apocalyptic
dystopias in fiction and movies seem to have been increasing in popularity in
the past decade and a half, and many people have linked this trend to what’s
going on in the world around us. Wars
leading to unfathomable numbers of refugees.
Climate change leading to changing weather patterns with more powerful
storms than we have known in the past.
Rapid changes in technology that is almost impossible to keep up
with. Just this week, we have been
flooded with images of fires in California leaving behind landscapes that are
almost impossible to imagine in their total devastation. Is it any wonder that this apocalyptic genre
resonates with us and has been gaining popularity in books and movies?
But apocalyptic
literature isn’t a new genre to this century.
We find it as far back as parts of the Old and New Testament. The best-known examples are probably the
books of Daniel and Revelation; but we also find shorter passages scattered throughout,
including the one that we read this morning from Mark’s gospel.
On the surface, this
biblical apocalyptic literature contains some scary images. In today’s reading from Mark, we have mention
of earthquakes and famines and wars, and a prediction that the temple, the
heart of the culture in which Jesus lived, was going to be destroyed.
But the origins of the
word apocalypse don’t have anything to do with fear, or even with the end of
the world. It means something more like
an unveiling, revealing something that has been hidden.
We see a bit of that
unveiling in today’s reading. Jesus and
his disciples are leaving the temple, and one of his disciples pauses, in awe,
at the sight of the temple. And the temple
was surely an awe-inspiring sight – each stone that made the walls was 12m
long, 4m high, and 5½m deep. It was by
far the biggest building in Jerusalem, the biggest building that anyone had
ever seen, almost impossible to fathom and as solid a building as you could
imagine. And the disciple, lost in awe,
wants to share that awe with Jesus.
“What large stones, and what large buildings!” But Jesus, looking with unveiled eyes,
doesn’t see something to be in awe of.
Jesus sees a building that is built with human hands, and that will
eventually crumble just as everything that humans build crumbles. With Jesus’ unveiled eyes, the only thing
that can inspire awe is God.
And I think that this
is the key to reading the apocalyptic books in the bible. We need to keep God at the centre of our reading. We need to have our eyes unveiled so that we
can keep them fixed on God.
I think that one of
the things that the apocalyptic books and passages in the bible tell us is that
scary things happen in every generation.
When Jesus and his disciples were standing outside the temple, they were
living under the rule of the Roman Empire – a rule that didn’t allow for any
questioning or opposition, or else you might end up nailed to a cross. 30 or 40 years later when the Gospel of Mark
was being written down, the community that recorded these stories of Jesus’
life was still living under Roman oppression, but now they were in the middle
of a full-blown war that eventually caused the destruction of Jerusalem
including the temple that the disciple was in awe of. And today?
Well, today we still have scary things in our world. We still have wars, we have people displaced
from their homes, we are destroying the world that God created.
But the thing that the
apocalyptic stories in the bible give us that we don’t usually find in popular
culture apocalyptic stories is the reassurance, the confidence that God is with
us. Bad things are going to happen in
every generation, but God is with us. We
might be tempted to feel fear in the moment, but God is with us and so we don’t
need to feel afraid.
Baptism is given to us
as a sign that God is with us always. We
baptized Jack this morning, and while common sense tells us that life won’t
always be smooth sailing and rainbows and unicorns for Jack and his parents; we
can be assured that God is with them. We
can be confident that God is with them when things are good, and we can be
confident that God is with them even when things are tough and scary.
Today’s passage from
Mark’s gospel hints at this re-assurance.
As Jesus is describing wars and famines and earthquakes, Jesus tells us
that this isn’t the end of the story – the end is yet to come – the end where
God is fully present and all of these bad and scary things will end. Jesus goes on to use a childbirth image. While I have never given birth myself, I’m
told that it is a painful and sometimes scary thing to go through, but at the
end, a new life has begun. And with God
as midwife, what a birthing it will be as God’s vision for the world is
revealed!
And this is the source
of our hope. God is with us in every
generation when things are good and when things are bad; God is with us in the
here and now; and God will be with us in the future when this unveiling, this
revelation, this apocalypse is complete and God’s dream for the world is fully
realized.
I want to end with a
quote from Adrienne Maree Brown, an author and Black activist. Two and a half years ago, in the middle of
the Black Lives Matter movement, days after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile
had been killed, she tweeted the following:
“things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. we must hold each other tight & continue
to pull back the veil.”
And so when we are
tempted to fear, instead let us hold each other close, and let us work together to pull
back the veil so that God’s vision for the world can be revealed.
May it be so.
Amen.
What popular culture associates with "apocalypse"
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