First Sunday of Advent 2005

Well Here We Are: What Now?

Mark 13:1-32

By

Litton J. Logan

Mark 13:1-32 (TMNT)

As he walked away from the Temple, one of his disciples said, “Teacher, look at that stonework! Those buildings!”

Jesus said, “You’re impressed by this grandiose architecture? There’s not a stone in the whole works that is not going to end up in a heap of rubble.”

Later, as he was sitting on Mount Olives in full view of the Temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew got him off by himself and asked, “Tell us, when is this going to happen? What sign will we get that things are coming to a head?”

Jesus began, “Watch out for doomsday deceivers. Many leaders are going to show up with forged identities claiming, ‘I’m the One.’ They will deceive a lot of people. When you hear of wars and rumored wars, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history, and no sign of the end. Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. But these things are nothing compared to what’s coming.

“And watch out! They’re going to drag you into court. And then it will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, everyone at your throat because you carry my name. You’re placed there as sentinels to truth. The Message has to be preached all across the world.

“When they bring you, betrayed, into court, don’t worry about what you’ll say. When the time comes, say what’s on your heart—the Holy Spirit will make his witness in and through you.

“It’s going to be brother killing brother, father killing child, children killing parents. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me.

“Stay with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.

Run for the Hills

“But be ready to run for it when you see the monster of desecration set up where it should never be. You who can read, make sure you understand what I’m talking about. If you’re living in Judea at the time, run for the hills; if you’re working in the yard, don’t go back to the house to get anything; if you’re out in the field, don’t go back to get your coat. Pregnant and nursing mothers will have it especially hard. Hope and pray this won’t happen in the middle of winter.

“These are going to be hard days—nothing like it from the time God made the world right up to the present. And there’ll be nothing like it again. If he let the days of trouble run their course, nobody would make it. But because of God’s chosen people, those he personally chose, he has already intervened.

No One Knows the Day or Hour

“If anyone tries to flag you down, calling out, ‘Here’s the Messiah!’ or points, ‘There he is!’ don’t fall for it. Fake Messiahs and lying preachers are going to pop up everywhere. Their impressive credentials and dazzling performances will pull the wool over the eyes of even those who ought to know better. So watch out. I’ve given you fair warning.

“Following those hard times,

‘Sun will fade out,

moon cloud over,

Stars fall out of the sky,

cosmic powers tremble.’

“And then they’ll see the Son of Man enter in grand style, his Arrival filling the sky—no one will miss it! He’ll dispatch the angels; they will pull in the chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.

“Take a lesson from the fig tree. From the moment you notice its buds form, the merest hint of green, you know summer’s just around the corner. And so it is with you. When you see all these things, you know he is at the door. Don’t take this lightly. I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too—these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.

“But the exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven’s angels, not even the Son. Only the Father. So keep a sharp lookout, for you don’t know the timetable. It’s like a man who takes a trip, leaving home and putting his servants in charge, each assigned a task, and commanding the gatekeeper to stand watch. So, stay at your post, watching. You have no idea when the homeowner is returning, whether evening, midnight, cockcrow, or morning. You don’t want him showing up unannounced, with you asleep on the job. I say it to you, and I’m saying it to all: Stay at your post. Keep watch.”

The Message: New Testament

First

NavPress Publishing Group

Colorado Springs, Colorado

♦

        When I was around five years old, my mother had to go to Arkansas and be with her mother, who was sick.  Mom left on a Greyhound bus, I remember that day so well—the crowds, the donut and milk at the bus station lunch counter, the piles of baggage on carts, the smell of diesel, and all those little punched out pieces of  ticket paper lying on the pavement.  I remember being scared, confused, and not understanding what could be so important that mother would leave me.

          I see the bus pull out, I am trying to be mother’s big boy, but the lump in my throat floods my eyes with tears, and I start to yell for my mother to come back to me.  I could see mom through the bus window and she was crying also.

          I didn’t understand such notions as my mother having to take care of her mother, or grasp the concept of a week or two.  All I knew was I wanted my mother, now!  I want the safety and security of her presence and our life back.

          Each evening Dad and I would go to my grandmother’s house for dinner.  Grand mother lived near a cross roads where all the buses came into town.  Each evening after dinner, I would set on the curb out front of my grandparent’s house waiting from my mother to come back to me on a Greyhound bus.  Each time I spotted a bus coming up the street  for those minutes it took the bus to reach where I was setting my little heart lived in the joy of anticipation.  I could just see in my little mind’s eye, my mother waving to me through the window and we would go to the bus station and pick her up.  As each bus passed with no mom, my heart fell.  Once as I sat there the bus pulled to the curb just down from grandmother’s house.  I knew it, I knew it, my mother was on that bus, and she had seen me and was getting off.  Oh, what joy!  Instead, of mother getting of the bus an elderly man got off, with a card board box, tied with string and ambled down the street to his home.  The driver had let him off near his home so he wouldn’t have to walk the distance from the bus station to his home.  Finally, each evening for what seemed an eternity, I would be called in, and dad and I would go home.

          Eventually mother came home in the middle of the night on a Greyhound bus.  I couldn’t stay awake to go with dad to pick her up or to greet her when she got home, but there she was the next morning waking me up, hugging me, and telling me how much she missed me.

          To this day, fifty-eight years later, when I see a Greyhound bus it evokes feelings of a dreadful sadness, hope, and joy all in an instant.  It is ironic that a Greyhound bus has become an Advent symbol for me—a symbol of loss, a symbol of hope, and a symbol of joy in my life.  Funny, huh?  Maybe not.

Today’s New Testament Lectionary Scriptures come from Mark 13, a chapter known as the little apocalypse—a chapter about the end times and Christians being steadfast in the faith as they wait for the return of the Christ--God only knew when. 

This kind of dreadful, joyful, literature proliferates, and receives increased reading and exposure during times of great danger, uncertainty, and persecution.  At the heart of all apocalyptic literature across recorded human history is the idea that people are to hold on to the good, watch out for deception, cling to the true faith, and trust that God will see them through the bad times and bring them into better times. 

Mark’s time was definitely a time of uncertainty, threat, and persecution.  It is a time when people were experiencing loss, dread, and uncertain days.  It is believed that Mark writes shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the ongoing Roman suppression of the rebellious Jews, which the people of the Way of Jesus would have been included.  As Mark writes, he draws on oral traditions from within his community of faith that interprets certain teachings of Jesus in an apocalyptic vein.  Furthermore, these scriptures may also serve as a clear explanation for who Jesus truly was and is in light of his failure to be the Warrior-King Messiah, Son of David, of Jewish apocalyptic expectation.  This thirteenth chapter of Mark is a dreadful narrative of about loss, destruction, hope, and Joy.

I have talked to many people over the years, who see the demise of the moral fiber of our society and culture today as well as the wars and rumors of wars, famines, natural disasters, etc., as sure signs that the end is near.  My grandmother believed she was living in the later days as did my dad.  

There have been many predictions about the end of the world across 3,500 years of oral and written human history.  Yet, here we are.  The world is turning on its axis, we still set our alarm clocks at night; we still plan vacations; we still invest in retirement accounts, buy homes, have babies, etc.,  just as if we had an assured future.

Christians from the beginning have believed that the end times where upon them.  Jesus would return very soon.  When this didn’t happen, they poured over every word he said and the words of the prophets looking for a clue as to when Jesus would return and establish God’s kingdom on earth and balance the scales of justice.  As we read our New Testament, we can see the evolution of Christian thinking about the return of Jesus and the end of this world understood as he is coming very soon, he is coming later, to his coming sometime in the distant future.  We even see a transformation of Jesus from the prophet of love into the apocalyptic Judging Son of Man as depicted in the seventh chapter of the OT book of Daniel, which the writer of Revelation borrows for his apocalyptic visions.

I am amazed at people’s morbid fascination with the end times, especially in light of all the solid biblical scholarship and good science on the matter.  I am equally amazed at the number of people who are deceived by doomsday prophets.  Some say our end-time psychology finds its source in our hope to escape death by being caught up in the rapture.  Others say that it is a way for people to come to grips with violent change and finding hope when people feel helpless or powerless to stop emerging or violent change.  It appears that things that can be categorized or explained are less intense and gives us the power of knowing in an otherwise powerless situation.

I don’t know for sure what lies at the heart of our fascination and preoccupation with the end times, I just know that it is there and seems to have been with us from the beginning. 

          However, be all this as it may, what is Mark saying to his audience and to us.  What does Mark’s Gospel say to those people who run around predicting the end of the world?  What does Mark say to us and to all Christians across the ages, who live in a world fraught with change, violence, corruptions, evil, and uncertainty?

     Mark tells us that when ever we hear people caught up in the fever of Adventism and predicting the end, we are to … “Watch out for doomsday deceivers”.  (The Message, Mark 13)  Take heed, be suspicious of such people.  

Watch out for so called prophets, who bring us the promise of hope through their dreadful interpretations and so-called prophetic insights, which are frequently more about their fears, lack of faith, and ignorance of scripture than prophecy.  Or, worse yet, they are motivated by their greed and need for power and status.  Such people whatever their reasons are irresponsible in inciting false fear and hope in people’s lives. 

          To those who fix dates and read signs Mark 13:32 tells us that not even Jesus or the angels in heaven know the day or the hour.  Yet, we are sure; Mark understood this to mean a day or hour with in his near future.

          I think an adaptation of an illustration from Dr. Eugene Boring’s audio course on the book of Revelation will give us the best insight to what Mark is trying to tell his audience, to tell us, and to tell future Christians.

          A man was walking a long the edge of a cliff one day when the cliff gave way and he fell.  As he fell, he grabbed a little tree growing out of the side of the cliff and stopped his plunged to certain death.  He started yelling, “Help, help, help!”  Soon a man peered over the cliff and told the man hanging to the little tree that he had to go to town and get a rope, it would take him a day to go and come, but hang on.  Soon the man hanging there gave in; he knew he could hang on for a whole day.  Soon he tired and turned loose and fell to this death.

Same story, different ending:

A man was walking a long the edge of a cliff one day when the cliff gave way and he fell.  As he fell, he grabbed a little tree growing out of the side of the cliff and stopped his plunged to certain death.  He started yelling, “Help, help, help!”  Soon a man peered over the cliff and told the man hanging to the little tree that he had to go to town and get a rope, hang on I’ll be right back.  When the man returned with the rope at the end of the day the man was still hanging on.

          Christians have been hanging on for two-thousand years.  In addition, the faithful will hang on.

          To those who would sweep these passages under the rugs of religious modernity and irrelevancy, I say, “Careful, careful”.  Scripture tells us we may not know when, but it will occur. 

To those who live their lives by the facts of science and statistics, I say there are too many things about this universe that we live in that we don’t know and can’t explain for us to become comfortable in so called scientific certitude.  

To those who capitalize on the routine-ness of our world to exploit and corrupt, I say this chapter tells us that God does intervene in human history to judge the times and ways of human beings and to bring about the end to those ages of the evil, corrupt, and immoral.  History bares all this out.  Look at the fall of all the so called great empires that used force, violence, and treated people as simple means to the ends of those people in power rather than as holy ends unto themselves.  Where are those empires with all they promised and hoped?

To those who place their hope and faith in human institutions whether secular or religious, I say be very cautious.  Let me remind us that Mark cites the destruction of the Great Temple in Jerusalem as a way of saying that we are not to put our faith in political or religious institutions or institutional theology either.  

Well here we are; what now?  We can’t control the future, we can’t predict the future, and so what do we do.  Simple, we are to go about the business of living our lives with all its uncertainty, giving meaning to our lives, against the back drop of our own eventual demise just as Christ taught us.  Moreover, we are to proclaim by word and deed the Good News of God in Jesus Christ to the entire world.  We are to be so caught up in doing such things that the end is irrelevant.

What if we knew that the end of the world would come next week Tuesday at 12:00 noon.  What difference would it make to our life and us?  Would we spend the next few days confessing and praying?  Would we tell that friend or loved one about Jesus Christ in hopes of saving them?  Would we go about alleviating the suffering of others?  Would we feel smug and safe in our faith?  Alternatively, would we in the final moments have to face that day and time with nothing but our faith in God’s goodness, mercy, and compassion?  Just as Christ did.

I tell you that the very notion of rummaging around in scripture with an eye upon predicting the end times is a blasphemous testimony to people’s unwillingness to live as people of faith.  Preoccupation with Adventism is one more example of Adam’s and Eve’s sin of human pride in its quest for the wisdom or knowledge to be as God, because God alone knows the truth of the beginning and end.

¹¹He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  ¹²I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; (Eccl. 3:11-12 NRSV)

So, here we are: what now?

Well I don’t know about you but I am going to strive to be actively engaged in life and not retreat in fear of doomsday.  I am going to enjoy my life, I am going to try to contribute, comfort, heal, and proclaim the power and presence of the Living Christ in word and deed midst change of all kinds.

However, in the evening of my life, after dinner, I’ll sit and wait with longing and hope for a Greyhound bus.  I may not be able to stay wake for Christ’s arrival, but O what joy when he awakens me and tells me how much he loves me and how much he has missed me, and I finally have a life of eternal joy.