“Apocalypse Now?”

Mark 13:3-37

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley

March 16, 2003

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

The 13^th chapter of Mark is known as the mini apocalypse.  Talk about your gloom and doom.  Jesus says that all of the known world will be destroyed.  The old way of life will be no longer.  And he calls us all in the midst of it to be ready.  The 13^th chapter ends with these words, “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  And I say to you what I say to all: Keep awake.” 

The Buddha was asked once if he was a god, the Buddha replied, “no, I am awake.”  There’s something to that.

We are awake these days to the possibility of a coming apocalypse.  We are in the midst of the wars and rumors of wars.  We expect bombing to commence any day now, with or without UN approval, with or without international support, with or without domestic support.  Many of us have opposed this not only because of the seeming injustice of the war with Iraq, but because of what it might unleash.  It might just give more terrorists the excuse they need to launch more attacks on unsuspecting people.  Those mysterious chemical weapons might be unleashed with God knows what results.  Many of the people in the anti-war movement are trying to prevent an apocalypse.

In this day and age, we have people believing that the apocalypse is upon us.  We have leaders that are undergirded by Christian zealots who say that these wars and rumors of wars need to happen before the coming of the apocalyptic messiah depicted in Revelation.  To some of these thinkers, it is in our supernatural interest to foster wars and rumors of wars so that we can help God usher in the millennial reign of Christ (as if God needs our help).

            Am I saying that is what is behind the minds of our leaders?  Not exactly.  But I am saying that there is evidence that starting this war that we are poised to start could unleash a brutal beast that has been seething under our consciousness for too long.  It is fed by religions that believe that God is a violent God who punishes and destroys HIS enemies.  It is what we do when we talk about playing God.  We are deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.  The question is for those of us committed to nonviolence is not so much how to get rid of a brutal Sadaam, but how to save the world from an apocalypse.  That seems to be where we’re heading.

            That’s what I expect to find in today’s scripture.  That’s the hope I need in order to face the world.  But that’s not what I find in Mark 13.  I find nothing about preventing the apocalypse.  I find nothing about taking to the streets and stopping the war, even though I see that as my Christian duty.  No, what I see in this scripture is that we are to stay awake.

Remember, Mark was written at about the time of the 70 AD destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  There were a series of revolts leading up to the destruction of the temple.  There were wars and rumors of wars, most notably a year and a half of respite during a leadership change in Rome which made Jewish people believe that a Davidic Messiah would actually come to, once and for all, defeat the Romans and reestablish Jewish national control of the Temple and Holy lands.  The Davidic Messiah was the one who would take down the desolating sacrilege from the Temple, which is the Roman control of it and give it back to the Jews.  During a time of war and rumor of war, the Messiah was the one who was going to lead the revolt.  We know that Jesus did not see himself as this kind of Messiah.  And his stance was simply to resist the temptation to fight a war that would inevitably take place. 

Let it happen.  Pray, mourn, resist, take to the streets, but in the end it is not your fight, says Jesus.   You may find someone who will fight it.  That would be the false Messiahs that Jesus warned us about.  But nation will rise up, and apocalyptic things will happen, but it is not the end of the world.  That is in God’s hands.  What we need to do its keep awake.

Jesus used the Greek word ODIN to describe the situation of the imminent destruction of the temple and the life of discipleship.  Odin means the pain or sorrow of a woman in labor.  The 8^th verse of the 13^th chapter of Mark 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 up against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.  This is but the beginning of the odin, birthpangs.  The King James translates it “sorrows.”  The Revised Standard uses “sufferings.”  But the new Revised Standard says  “birthpangs.”

            Jesus looked at the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple as an institution and eventually his own death.  In the midst of this apocalypse—this desolation of everything in the known world, Jesus reminds all of us that it is really just the beginning. This is just the birthpangs.  This is all of the stretching, the anticipation, the unsettling and even hopeful changes and the unbearable pain during labor.  That’s what Jesus likened this moment to.  Birthpangs.

            While you are in the birthpangs it takes forever.  It feels like the world might end.  But at the end, you have in your hands something new that will change everything.

            You see Jesus knew that there was something else that was going to happen.  It was not only the coming destruction of the Temple and the shattering of the powers that be.  There would be his own crucifixion, that ugly bloody shameful sacrifice of a great healer in the prime of his life that the leaders thought could topple the movement. 

            But Jesus called all of this the birthpangs.  Because he knew that on the other side of all of that labor; On the other side of that apocalypse; On the other side of that seeming hell that seems like earthquakes and war and famine all rolled into one, there is a new life being born.  There is a new way of looking at the world.  There is a new set of rules.

            It is hell while you are in labor, but everything changes on the other side.  We might not know what it is, but that new life is a powerful force with which to reckon.  Many of you are in labor right now because of a relationship, a dispute, a conflict, a change in your life circumstance.  But if we can change our view to look at the present situation of labor as the birthpangs of a new beginning, then we might receive a different perspective and attain a different sense of our own power.

            As a pastor of a peace-making/justice-seeking church and a would-be peacemaker myself, I find myself wondering what might happen if and when this rumor of war comes to fruition, like it has with so many in the past. I find myself concerned for the lives of those who are in harms way, of course.  But I’m also concerned for those of us who have worked so hard to prevent this seeming apocalypse.  We have been caught up in righteous indignation, with holy fury.  We’ve been frustrated, even enraged.  What’s that bumper sticker say, “If you’re not enraged, then you’re not paying attention”?  In our weaker moments, we have resorted to name-calling and jingoistic generalizations about one side or the other.  But here we are on the precipice, staring into the gaping abyss and we look to Jesus for help to keep us from tumbling to our doom.

            But Jesus doesn’t give us a fighting strategy that will make the violence stop.  Hear what George Williamson said about this very conundrum as he writes about today’s scripture: 

“The truth, the meaning in our little passage, is to be found in Jesus’ behavior even as he was speaking it.  We know full well that he was not alarmed, and we know why.  He was not alarmed because he knew and believed that the end was in God’s hands.  We would not love him so, or so profoundly admire him had he been alarmed…His confident authority and his serenity in the face of impending…injustice, cruelty, hell on earth…is precisely the Gospel.  It was not his calling, not his place to stop the violence.  His vocation, rather, was to make a witness.  And he was saying to us that when we hear of wars and rumors of wars, as we surely will, our vocation is the same as his, to be not-alarmed.  And it is to make a witness.”

He goes on to say, “Our witness may or may not prevent war.  Whether it does or not is beyond our control.  If our witness does have effect it is not because of our cunning, realistic strategy.  I will on rare occasions.  But such a thing is unpredictable, unaccountable, a miracle.  On the other hand we must not be alarmed if we can’t prevent the war.  If the war goes on despite us, as it usually does, God’s promise is that our failed witness, like that of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets, will outlive the war.  God’s promise is that our little witness will be taken up in the movement of history toward God’s good and surely coming end of the world.” (First Baptist Church of Granville, Ohio’s newsletter The Beacon, March 11, 2003)

            Nations fight nations.  It happens all of the time.  People of faith remembering Jesus and the prophets call the leaders to a higher ideal.  Sometimes they listen, but mostly they don’t.  But bearing the faithful witness even in the midst of all of this is in line with Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus said in the midst of his own apocalypse, the impending end of his life, that we must keep awake.  We must pay attention.  What is happening now is just the birthpangs.  Something is gestating and will come in God’s good time. So keep the faithful witness.

This section of scripture talks of the end times.  Jesus is telling the people to be prepared for it.  Live each day of your life like it is in anticipation of the end.  With that much purpose, with that much intentionality, with that much passion, with that much commitment to what you know is right.

            As we live intentionally and bear the faithful witness, what is our truth?  What is our moral core?  How are we to remain awake?

            Remember, our job is to do right, but our calling is to bear the faithful witness and to stay awake.

            So when you hear the wars and rumors of wars, even as we continue to bear the faithful witness in the streets and by using our voices and writing our letters, remember that God is in charge.  This is not the end of the world.  Our alert witness, failed and feeble as it may be, will be used by God to bring to birth something new in the fullness of time.  May we keep awake and alert, always bearing the faithful witness, always clinging to God’s mighty and loving hands.  Amen.