Sermons
March 17, 2024 (5th Sunday in Lent)
“It’s the end of the world as we know it”
Mark 13:1-27
Two years ago, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, and Putin was throwing ominous threats to anybody who dared stop him, somebody posted a message on Twitter for younger folks who were listening to him and scared. The message said, “Go find your nearest GenXer and hold on for dear life.”
That’s because we had experienced ominous threats coming from Moscow when we were younger, and we got through it—although it could be said that many of us arrived at adulthood pretty traumatized by the constant undercurrent of fear that surrounded us throughout our growing-up years.
Now I know my generation wasn’t the only, or even the first, group to have dealt with the threat of nuclear war. Baby Boomers will remember doing “duck-and-cover” drills at school, as though hiding under a school desk would actually protect anybody from a nuclear bomb and the fallout that comes after it.
One of my friends who is in her 60s, so a very late Baby Boomer, lived in the Omaha area while her father was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base there. They told the families around Offutt that if a bomb was coming, the best thing they could do was run toward the base, because Offutt would definitely be a target, and that way they’d die immediately instead of slowly from radiation or being trapped in a fallen building. By the time I and my fellow GenXers came around, nobody thought “duck-and-cover” would do any good at all, so we didn’t bother with that kind of drills.
When the TV movie The Day After was aired, I was a sophomore in high school. My church youth group gathered at our leaders’ house to watch it together and sort of debrief. The next day in biology class, our teacher dispelled a few misconceptions we might have gotten from the movie. The main one was that if a nuclear bomb was dropped on Lawrence, Kansas, like the movie depicted, nobody anywhere near Lawrence would have survived until “the day after.” And furthermore, even though we were about 150 miles south of Lawrence, we wouldn’t have survived either; not only that, but if a bomb were dropped on Lawrence, there was probably another one destined for Wichita, home of McConnell Air Force Base, and Wichita is only 120 miles away.
Awhile back some cable station played The Day After, and I still can’t watch it. I doubt I’m the only one.
So when Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, Millennials and GenZers were encouraged to find one of us, because we understand. We understand the fear that is always in the back of someone’s mind when a tyrant starts throwing around the notion of nuking anybody who tries to resist him.
There are plenty of differences between the Cold War era, which finally came to its end in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and today; but one thing is not different: There is a lot of fear floating around us right now.
I’m sure you can name some of the things that make people afraid; I don’t have to name them for you. Some of them are specific to this moment, but a lot of them are the same things people have always feared: serious and debilitating illness in ourselves or our loved ones, accidents, crime, natural disaster, our children going astray or being harmed.
People are afraid. We are afraid. And there are businesses, movements, politicians, and the like out there who stand to profit from keeping us that way.
When we are afraid, we tend to gravitate toward a fairly predictable set of actions. We find ourselves supporting leaders who promise certainty, especially those who can clearly identify an enemy (possibly more a scapegoat than a true enemy) and offer clear plans for doing away with that enemy. We may even be willing to stop doing things we enjoy doing, maybe even give up some of our freedoms, if it will allow us to feel more secure. We may accept situations we might not accept otherwise—like putting up with an abusive boss if we worry that standing up to them might leave us unemployed and perhaps unable to find another job. We may do things we would not otherwise do, even to the point of violence against whoever has been identified as our “enemy” or scapegoat.
There is also the fear many people have of the way other people are acting because they are afraid.
We’re afraid. People are afraid.
People were afraid in Jesus’ day, too, and our Scripture reading for today addresses that fear. This is part of what scholars call Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.”
A lot of the time when we hear the word apocalypse, we conjure up terrifying images: events out of our control, monstrous violence and disaster that bring about the end of the world. But Jesus in Mark 13 is not trying to make us more fearful. He’s giving us a word of hope.
Yes, really!
We often hear people say—particularly those of us who grew up immersed in a Christian subculture that took a literal understanding of the book of Revelation, and looked for a Rapture (from which you certainly don’t want to be left behind), and a Great Tribulation of Christians—as they look at the latest news from Washington, Israel, Europe, or wherever scary things are happening at the moment, “We are living in the end-times.” And they’ll look at the news and look at the world leaders around us, and wonder if one of those leaders is the Antichrist, wonder what seemingly innocuous thing that is part of our lives is actually the Mark of the Beast that the faithful need to be resisting at all costs. And all that just makes us more afraid.
Now I could probably stand up here for a couple hours explaining how those things don’t entirely line up with what the Bible actually says, but personally I don’t want to talk for that long, and I doubt you want to listen for that long, either. And adding more fear to the mix isn’t what Jesus intended when he spoke of the destruction of the Temple and the wars, famine, and widespread suffering that was to come.[1]
We know this because of one sentence in this passage: “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Birth pangs are not the frightening end of life but the beginning of something wondrous and joyful, a new life. Thus, as we notice the signs of the times around us, we are not looking for gathering darkness but for evidence that spring is coming.
What Jesus is talking about is a new life—the defeat of sin, violence, and death, and the victory of God’s Reign of peace and justice. On the way to that victory, yes, there will be difficulty—after all, Jesus is speaking to his disciples during the very last days before his crucifixion. But the victory is sure, just as the blooming of the daffodils in our yards and the buds on the trees demonstrate that, even if there’s a cold snap or two yet to come, spring’s arrival is sure.
Unlike spring, which is definitely beginning already, we don’t know when the Son of Man will return and the Reign of God will be victorious. Jesus said nobody on earth, not the angels in heaven, not even he, knows when it will happen, and calculations and speculations based on something in todays’ news are a complete waste of time and energy. He tells a little parable to help us understand what we should do instead.
A man goes on an extended trip, and he pots his servants in charge of his household while he’s gone. Each of them has a job to do, and the man expects them to do those jobs as they wait for his return. He doesn’t want them sitting around trying to figure out when he’ll be back; he wants to find them doing their jobs when he finally does come home.
You used to see a bumper sticker here and there that said, “Jesus is coming—Look busy!” That’s really not too far from the truth.
There isn’t any reason to be afraid of what is to come, as long as we’re doing the ministries Jesus has called us to do, as long as we stay awake and expectant. We don’t need to fear violent crime, or the economy, or people who aren’t like us, or anything else; we just need to do our jobs, even if we’re met with resistance or suffer persecution. Then when he comes back and finds us awake and ready for him, he will carry us right along with him as he brings about not the horrifying end of the world but the glorious beginning of the new heaven and new earth, where there won’t be any more suffering, and nothing at all to fear.
[1] Most scholars think Mark’s Gospel was written just after the “Great Revolt” that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in 70 ce, so he may not have been predicting the future as much as interpreting the immediate past and its aftermath.