There are just some passages from scripture that at the end it’s a little hard to say, this is the good news of Jesus Christ, or even this is the word of God for the people of God. And the passage we heard from Mark today, and even to a degree from Daniel, is one of those passages. Pain, war, destruction, suffering, “yea, God.” Or as I overheard one of the choir members say one time, if that’s the good news, what’s the bad news. That passage we heard from Mark is known as Mark’s little apocalypse, although it’s not technically an apocalypse at all. But a little prelude and postlude for this story so that we can better understand not just what Jesus is saying, but also what Mark is doing with this story it its construction. Last week we heard Jesus’ third passion prediction which was given as he and the disciples and others were making their way to Jerusalem. Mark then has the story of the transfiguration, which we will come back to next week, then Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday. The Jesus spends a few days in and around the Temple grounds, which is where the passage we heard picks up as he is leaving the Temple. But, Jesus is not just being a tourist there, he’s also engaging with the religious leaders on various questions, and then he makes a judgment against the Temple its leaders.
When we looked at the Parable of the Sower, I said that New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert said that there were two parables which described not Jesus’ ministry and mission, but also the entirety of Mark’s gospel. One of them, and the most important was the parable of the sower, and the second is that of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. In that Parable, which comes at the beginning of chapter 12, we are told that a man plants a vineyard, and builds a watchtower, and prepares everything then leases it out to tenants. Then, when the time comes for the landowner to collect what’s do to him he sends servants, but they are rejected and beaten, and insulted and some are killed, and so finally he decides to send his beloved son, his only son, and they too kill him so they can claim the land. So what does the landowner do? He comes and destroys the tenants and gives the vineyard to others. And so this parable we should be hearing the owner as God, the tenants as the religious leaders, and a watchtower is a common metaphor used for the Temple, and of course the son is Jesus. And so really this could be seen as a potential fourth passion prediction, although the purpose is to make judgment against the leaders of the Temple.
And we are told that the chief priests and scribes knew this
was about them, and that’s also true because this parable has a parallel in the
5th chapter of Isaiah known as the song of the unfruitful vineyard, which I
also made reference to when we talked about the parable of the sower. But there
is a significant difference between these two and that is that in Isaiah, the
owner destroys the vineyard and starts again. Here it is simply that the
tenants are removed and new tenants are brought in. and then to complete the
judgment, we again have in Mark stories that bookend another story in order for
us to see the point. Immediately before they leave the Temple, Jesus denounces
the scribes for, among other things, “devouring widow’s houses”, and then as we
heard in the introduction he sees the widow put in her two coins, giving of her
abundance to a system, a building that will be destroyed. And then at the
beginning of chapter 14, after Jesus talks about this destruction, we have the
anointing at Bethany, in which a woman, giving out of her abundance, anoints
Jesus with costly ointment, remembering that Messiah literally means anointed
one. And so the widow gives out of abundance to support the Temple which will
be destroyed and not raised back up, because they are not doing the will of
God, and the other woman anoints Jesus in preparation for his destruction and
resurrection, as doing the will of God. And I hope that if you get nothing else
out of this series on Mark, you will at least see how Mark has constructed his
story and, in my opinion, his literary genius in writing this gospel.
And so as they are leaving the Temple, the disciples are
amazed at size of the Temple, and the stones used to construct it, and they
should. The Temple was reconstructed by Herod the Great to be one of the great
buildings of the Roman Empire, and it was, but the disciples are focused on the
wrong things. When Jesus rebukes Peter after his confession, he tells Peter
that he is focused on the things of the world, not the things of God, or
focused on power and glory as James and John were in last week’s passage. Here
too, even though the Temple is said to be the home of God, they are focused on
the outward appearances of the kingdom of man, not appropriately on the kingdom
of God, and so Jesus tells them not to put their trust in the things of the
world because they will all come to an end. Don’t put your treasure in things
here on earth where moth and rust will consume them, instead store up treasures
in heaven Jesus says. Especially since it’s clear that judgment has been made
on the Temple, and then Jesus makes it even clearer that the Temple is going to
be destroyed, and then they leave the Temple and go across to the Mount of
Olives, outside of Jerusalem, so thinking again about this being another spot
of wilderness for Mark, outside of the city, outside of the established power
structures, and then the disciples ask when all this is going to happen.
Now this is a perennial question, before the time of Jesus, and certainly after. One of the questions I’ve gotten a lot over the last 18 months or so is if I thought that COVID was a sign of the end. And my answer is no, and the reasons come from this passage. The first is because what Jesus says is the signs that everyone is looking for, and keeping asking Jesus for, these are merely the beginning. They are the start of the labor pains, and as all our mothers know, the start of labor pains does not mean the babies coming right away, it could take a while. And according to a report from the news service Reuters, the longest labor in recorded history was 75 days. A woman in Poland went into labor in the fifth month, and delivered one of triplets prematurely, and then doctors were able to stop the delivery of the other two, and she spent the next 75 days lying in bed with her feet higher than her head. But, the beginning of the labor is just the start, and it also means that things will get worse before they get better.
And so as we have been talking about all
along, Mark is about the cost of discipleship, and so Jesus is saying, if you
want to be my follower, it’s going to take hard work. That’s why he doesn’t say
grab your croissant and your venti salted caramel mocha frappucino. Instead, he
says pick up your cross and follow. And so Jesus tells the disciples and the
early church that they are going to undergo suffering, that families will be
broken apart, that betrayal will happen, and what is the message? Endure.
Remain faithful, and “the one who endures to the end will be saved.” If you
endure, good things will happen, because what Jesus is telling us, what
apocalyptic literature tells us, is that we know how it all ends. Suffering,
pain and evil will not be the last word – the one who stands at the end of
history is the same who stood at the beginning of history, and, Jesus says, “The
elect will be gathered” in and welcomed home.
And what the vast majority of scholars believe is that the
gospel of Mark is being written sometime around the year 70, which is during
the time of the Jewish Revolt. And so it’s possible that it was written before
the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, or perhaps shortly thereafter, so
this is not just some theoretical postulating that the first readers or hearers
of the gospel are dealing with. This is the reality of their life, and so there
is a strong need not just for a call to faithfulness in the midst of all of
this, to know that it’s all worthwhile, but to know that God has them and is
with them throughout all of this. And notice in this passage that it is both
the religious, in bring brought into synagogues, and also the government, in
being brought before councils, who are persecuting followers of Jesus, because
power is power, regardless of who is wielding it, and the call to the new age,
where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, is a threat. But
stand firm, Jesus urges us, and hold tight to the faith and cling to hope,
because this is but the beginning of the birth pains, and they could last a
while. And yet, what happens when the birth pains end? A new baby is there, a
new hope is born. I’ve read that in France, when a woman becomes pregnant,
people will greet her with the saying “I congratulate you on your hope.” It’s
not yet hope fulfilled, but its hope promised. That is true for us as well, it
is hope that we hang on to. And so our job is not to be concerned with the end
and what happens, but simply to endure, and most importantly to continue to
proclaim the gospel message, to be witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ.
And in fact, Jesus tells us not to even think about what the
end will be, and all the people who say they know, guess what, they don’t. And
of course we see this time and time again. To name just a few in our own day,
Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson said the end was coming in 1980, and then 1982,
1985, 1988 and then 2007, and of course there have been many more failed
predictions since then. But, according to Jesus, they never should have been
making predictions at all, and in doing so were only serving as false prophet’s
intent on leading people astray. And so we need to stop listening to such end
of time mongers telling us they have insider knowledge, because Jesus says they
are all wrong.
And so Jesus says, “When you hear of wars and rumors of
wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to
come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.” Now, since
the time that Jesus said this, and Mark wrote it down, has there ever been a
time when these things haven’t been taking place? No, and Jesus does not say
that this marks the end, but instead he says that this is but the beginning of
the birth pangs. And so from an apocalyptic perspective, and just as an aside
that doesn’t mean what we typically think it means now of dealing with the end
of times, but simply means a revealing, because an apocalyptic perspective says
that we live in this in-between time. Christ has already come, and yet we are
still waiting as well. That becomes even more obvious in a few weeks as we
begin Advent, a time of preparation for the coming again of Christ. Although
Hallmark started showing their Christmas movies this week, which makes me very
happy. But, we live in this in-between time, the already and not quite yet. The
Kingdom has come near, but it’s also not fully realized. We live in this
in-between time, and so we see the signs of the times, but they only tell us
that the labor pains have begun, not when the new age will be realized. So,
what are we to do?
First, we are to remain faithful, and to continue to
proclaim the good news, despite everything that is happening, and that good
news is not to try and work to bring about the end, especially through the acts
of violence, or to listen to the promise that armed struggle will put an end to
the old order, or that we should celebrate environmental destruction because it
means the end is near that God will have to save us. Second, we are not to worry about when things
might be completed, because even the son and the angels don’t know when that
will happen, so don’t worry about it, and don’t listen to what anyone else says
when they claim they do know, because they are wrong. Third, do the job that
you were called to do, remain faithful and stay vigilant and stay awake. This
has precursor to the passion story, because what do the disciples do when they
go to the Garden of Gethsemane, even when Jesus tells them to stay awake? They
fall asleep. And the fourth point is to have hope because even in the midst of
pain and suffering, turmoil and tragedy, we know how it all will end.
And this is true not just for faith, but for ourselves as
well, because there are many things like the Temple in our lives,
relationships, jobs, health, that can all come crumbling down leaving us
wondering what just happened because they seemed too big to fall or fail, and
yet they did. And so we too, like the disciples, should be hearing Jesus say to
us, be faithful. Trust in God, and cling to the hope of promises of God,
because as I have said many times, we don’t need hope in the sunlight, we need
it in the darkness, and we were not given Christ because everything was great,
but because the world was broken, and so we needed the healing and wholeness of
Christ, we need the hope of Christ.
A story is told of a meeting of state legislators in colonial New England that descended into darkness because of an unpredicted solar eclipse. Some people panicked and called for an adjournment of the meeting. Then one of them said, “Mr. Speaker, if it is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear to be fools. If it is the end of the world, I should choose to be found doing my duty. I move you sir that candles be brought in.” I think that means, and I think what Jesus is telling us, is to be focused on things that we can control. We cannot control how people will respond to us, how we will be treated, but we are warned that when we work for the Kingdom and seek to live into the Kingdom that there will be costs. And what we also know is that we don’t know what the future will bring, we are not promised anything, and not even Jesus knows the time in which we shall all celebrate at God’s heavenly banquet. But here is what we do know, some day we will all meet God face to face. It could be in ten minutes or ten days or ten thousand days, and we hope to hear God say “well done my good and faithful servant,” but to do that we have to keep watch by being faithful and we have to stay awake by doing the job that we are called to do, which is to proclaim the good news, not just with what we say, but more importantly by what we do, or to answer the old question, “If you were to be put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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