November 27, 2011
O Lord, What a Morning - Mark 13:24-37
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI was listening to the radio one morning on the way to work, and they were interviewing one of the congressmen on this super committee that failed to find a compromise on the budget. I was very pleased earlier this week when my three year old and five year old were arguing over a coloring book, and, lo and behold, they compromised over it without either of their parents having to get involved. Maybe we ought to elect them to congress. They could not do any worse than what we’re already getting. After this congressman defended his position in not being able to compromise, Diane Reem, the lady conducting the interview, had one more question. “You’re about to go home, congressman, for Thanksgiving and you will face your constituents. Just so you know, they are furious. What are you going to tell them?”
She’s right, isn’t she? They are mad. I am mad. You could tell that just by the sarcasm in my voice. There are two movements in US politics that are both picking up lots of steam, and they are both built on the same thing. They may have different solutions, but both the tea party and occupy movements are built entirely around anger. If you take anger out of the equation, then those two movements, in my opinion, go away. At the very least, Americans are angry today.
Mark 13 is often called the “Little Apocalypse.” Matthew 24 and Luke 17 are very similar. Those three chapters, Revelation, Daniel, and 1st Thessalonians comprise the apocalyptic literature in the Bible. For the exception of 1st Thessalonians, all of those accounts have a great deal of anger. Everybody’s angry. God is angry (or at least depicted to be angry), we are angry, our enemies are angry. Many scholars believe that Jesus largely refers in Mark 13 to Rome’s occupation and destruction of Jerusalem around AD 70, right after Mark was written. You can imagine the anger and riots and persecution. There’s civil strife, there’s war, and bloodshed. Old established institutions, like the Temple, get sacked and destroyed. It’s a hard, hard time to be alive. Jesus tells his disciples earlier in Mark 13 that they will be dragged into courts and thrown into jail. Some of them would even lose their lives. It’s not just Jew versus Gentile, it’s even Jew versus Jew. It’s brother versus brother, father versus son. It’s awful, and there’s lots and lots and lots of anger…. Merry Christmas.
The thing is, though, at least in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus never told us to participate in the anger. We would be recipients of other people’s anger. We would be forced to defend ourselves of things that we never did. But never did Jesus tell us to go to war, or to pack suicide bombs, or retaliate. He just told us to hang on. In fact, if you read Mark closely, Jesus didn’t even say that the end was near when these bad things would happen. The end is near only when the stars start to fall and the sun doesn’t shine anymore. That’s it. Nobody knows the end, not even Jesus himself according to verse 32. Hard times and all the anger that accompany hard times, well, it’s part of life. We can’t control any of that. What we can control, however, is ourselves, our decisions and actions.
I’ll have to confess to you that I’m not a big fan of apocalyptic stuff. It’s a huge thing in our culture, especially in the Christian culture. Volumes and volumes of books have been written on it. I’ve heard it called the “doom and gloom industry.” I think maybe the thing that bothers me the most about it is that it pits us versus them. Or at least we use it in a way that pits us versus them. The whole idea is that God is going to come and rescue me, and “get” them. In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned? God will rescue me, and the rest of you evil people will have to suffer down here. We’ve used Mark 13 as a weapon. We’ve use it as a way to exclude people who we don’t like. I don’t think it was ever intended for that, but that’s what we’ve done. It has become another weapon in the war against them, when Jesus specifically came for them, and he called to be for them, too.
It’s not about them getting what’s coming to them. It’s about being ready ourselves. It’s like if you’re house sitting for somebody and the guy comes home earlier than you thought. If you’re trashing his house, then you’re in real trouble. Jesus tells us in Matthew that he’s coming like a thief in the night, whenever we least expect it. I read a newspaper column years ago in Texas. The columnist told the story that when he was fifteen, he told his parents that he was going to his best friend’s house to spend the night. What he did not tell his parents was that his friend’s parents were not going to be there. So sure enough, they let him go, and he did go, and all those 14-15 year old guys sat around that house drinking beer. It was the first time, he said, that he ever drank. Suddenly the phone rang, and the friend picked it up, and it was the boy’s mother. She told him that he needed to come home, that she was going to come pick him up. He told her no, that they had agreed that he could spend the night at his friend’s house. She said that they had agreed to that, but “you don’t understand,” she said. “Your father has just had a massive heart attack, and he’s at the hospital and we’ve to go see him before he dies. And so she came by and picked him up, and they went to the hospital, and the fifteen year old boy had to tell his father a permanent goodbye with beer on his breath.
Maybe that’s what Jesus warns us against. He doesn’t want us to be taken by surprise. He does not want us to have regrets. I heard a story recently about St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century Catholic theologian. He was working in his garden once, and someone asked him what he would be doing if he knew that Jesus was coming back today. He thought for a minute and said, “I’d be working in my garden.” And then he went back to work. What would you be doing? I don’t when that’s going to happen, or how it’s going to happen, but we Christians do believe that it’s going to happen. Christians either work too hard to predict Jesus’ return, or we completely ignore it. Most of us Presbyterian types ignore it. But we can’t. Even if the world does not end in our lifetimes, then our lives certainly will. They may well be over by the end of the week. We have no idea. Do you have idea how much heartache you can leave behind, not only if you’re not ready, but if you’re not doing what you were called to do? You don’t get to relive that. I’m the father of three, young children. They’ll never be young again. I probably ought to take advantage of that. If Jesus came while I was playing with my children, then I’d be doing pretty much what I think the good Lord wants me to do.
Jesus was very clear that we would have hard times, that we would not always agree, that we would not always be accepted. Sometimes Christians get ignored, and sometimes they get crucified. We can’t control that. But we can if not control, then certainly influence is us. When I wake up tomorrow morning, what is God calling me to do with my time? One day, we’ll be held accountable for that question. So is that a scary question? I used to be petrified of the end times. All the anger and mayhem and bloodshed scared me. But I think it’s pretty simple, really. World history is full of bloodshed. But it’s also full of the Glory of God. After all of the dust settles, Christians belief fully that God will win the day. So whose side are you on?
