24th Sunday after Pentecost

November 15, 2009

“Apocalypse How?”

Reverend Michael D. Powell

 Mark 13:1-8  

                                                                                                                                   

 

            Chalice, Shawn and I went to watch the end of the world on Friday the 13th!  I’m glad it was only a movie.  It’s pretty much the ultimate action flick but I don’t think the director, Roland Emmerich, who has gotten filthy rich destroying things that have powerful symbolic associations, like the White House, the Sistine Chapel, the Washington Monument and the giant statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro, is going to be able to follow it up with much. He’s pretty much done everything there is to do to destroy civilization as we know it. It was definitely exciting, and the ending is positively biblical in its hopefulness, but I’m not packing my bags yet.  I think there are more serious things to worry about than what might happen on December 21, 2012.

 

            The Fort Hood massacre was altogether too close to home.  And there are real disasters enough for me in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.  The ozone hole grows larger.  Global warming is blamed for the thinning ice cap and rainforests are being destroyed at alarming rate. Whole species are dying out. We live in a world of terror and uncertainty.  Roland Emmerich is right about one thing, these are apocalyptic times!  

 

            Even the gospel story this morning is getting into the act.  This morning’s reading from Mark takes us into the world of terror as it existed in the First Century.  The Jewish/Christian world was in chaos.  The historian, Josephus, describes the times:  “The story Josephus tells . . . is one of famine, social unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and the scattering of Judeans throughout Palestine.... During the years of the siege of Jerusalem (66-70 C.E.), stories spread of popular messiahs, prophets crying out woes on the city and temple, mock trials, and crowds creating tumults at the times of pilgrimage. There were wars and rumors of wars for the better part of ten years.”  [Mack, A Myth of Innocence]

 

            These were the years during which the Gospel of Mark was written. Those who had known Jesus personally were being martyred.  Popular revolutionary leaders were leading people in suicide missions against the Romans, claiming that these were the end times.  In his book, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, Ched Myers states that Mark was written during the Jewish revolt against Rome, and that Mark is encouraging his community not to participate in the rebel’s revolt.  The ‘false prophets’ are those zealots who claim that their victory over Rome will usher in the new age.  But for Mark the war is not a sign of the end, but only the beginning.

 

            “Apocalyptic,” means uncovering, or revealing.  What’s being revealed are supposedly the disastrous events, the wars, fires, floods, earthquakes and famines that will usher in the end of the age.  Believe it or not, apocalyptic literature wasn’t just high budget, Hollywood pyrotechnic entertainment, it was actually written in an attempt to comfort and reassure true believers during periods of great uncertainty and suffering.   It’s against this background that we read the reassuring words of Jesus, “Watch out that no one deceives you.  Many will come in my name [but] when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed . . . These are the beginning of birth pangs.”  It’s a word of hope and affirmation.  Isn’t that a word we need to hear in this age as well?

 

            We live in a time of terror and uncertainty, but we have to be careful about how we read the Bible.  It cannot be made to give simplistic answers for today.  There have always been wars and rumors of war.  The Gospels are saturated with the expectation of both the imminent return of Christ and some sort of final judgment.  But it didn’t happen in the literal, historical way they expected, and that very fact became the foremost problem of the New Testament. 

 

            So, we can take the apocalyptic words of the bible literally, mix them with the ancient Mayan calendar and join ranks with the likes of director Roland Emmerich, who has become rich depicting the end of the world in super graphic, scary and hyper-exciting terms.  Or we could also side with the Left Behind novelists Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, who have also gotten rich, preaching about the Second Coming of Christ in scary, super graphic, hyper-exciting terms.

 

            Another alternative, which I prefer, is to cast our lot with more progressive theologians who interpret apocalyptic, symbolic literature in more personal, existential terms, as allegory for the tenacity of hope.  The question may be apocalypse then, apocalypse now, or even apocalypse how?  I’ll let you chose your own way to look at things. 

 

            History demonstrates that when times are bad, apocalyptic answers present an attractive alternative to “the long hard slog.”  It’s easy to understand why many people long for some sort of judgment day.  Mark Twain once said, “The human experiment is either unfinished or hopeless.”    If the meek are to inherit anything more than crushing debt and a dead planet, justice seems to demand that there be more to life than the chaos and injustice we see at first glance.  Don’t we ask the same question that the disciples of Jesus asked?  When is this going to end?  How long do these so-called “birth pangs” last?  There must be some way to think outside the apocalyptic box. 

 

            I was tempted to call this sermon, “It’s All Good,” or perhaps “Everything Is Going to Be All Right.” Those are words we long to hear and yet, even if at some level they’re true, I don’t want to be flip, like “Don’t worry, be happy.”  That seems like the kind of denial that releases us from our own sense of responsibility, and it’s not that simple. 

 

            Here’s an example of what I mean.  A parent tells a sobbing child who has fallen down and scraped a knee, “Everything is going to be all right.”  In cosmic terms that may be true.  I do believe that God, our heavenly parent, is in control and that goodness, mercy and truth will win in the end.  But, just because we have faith that, ultimately speaking, everything will be all right, that doesn’t mean that we sit back and passively let the world go to hell in a hand-basket.  

 

            The world is wounded, and in the case of the child with the skinned knee, even as the parent offers the reassurance that everything is going to be all right, there may very well be a fast trip to the emergency room.  There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet.  As parents we do all that’s in our power to make sure that everything will be all right for our suffering children.  God loves us, but God has empowered us to be responsible for doing everything in our power to work for peace and justice, to accept the challenge of being environmentally responsible and to bind up the wounds and to care for the suffering of the world. 

 

            Consider this. Some of the people who heard the apocalyptic promise of Jesus, “Endure to the end and you will be saved,” were in fact put to a horrible death.  Sometimes “Everything will be all right” indicates the promise of healing in this life. But at other times it is a statement of faith that death is not the end, that there’s a better life ahead in spite of a bitter end to this one.  None of us knows what will happen tomorrow.  But the Word of promise concerning the possibility of a literal, historical apocalypse then is the same Living Word we receive in the case of our own personal, inevitable apocalypse now!  I’ll close with this:     

    

            “Will there be life on this planet in another hundred or thousand years?”

                                     “Everything will be all right,” says the One who created the planet.

 

             “I’m having surgery tomorrow, and I’m scared.”

                                    “Everything will be all right,” is God’s promise.

 

             “The tests for cancer came back positive.”

                                     “Everything will be all right.”

 

              “My son was just sent to Iraq.”

                        “Everything will be all right.”

 

               “My mother (father, son or daughter) has just died.”

                        “Everything will be all right.”  (Brian Stoffregen)

 

            Thanks be to God, for the promise of Loving, Comforting, Healing and Reassuring Presence, both now and forever, world without end.   Amen.