26 Pentecost B 28 November 18, 2018
Lectionary Link
Today we've read some apocalyptic portions of the the Gospel of Mark. This Gospel was written in dire times for Jerusalem and its inhabitants. In the year 70, Jerusalem was destroyed and the Temple was gone, thus changing a significant institution in Judaism and in the early Jesus Movement forever.
A destroyed Jerusalem and Temple would be shocking to all those who held these holy places to be crucial to their personal and spiritual identities. How can we survive without Jerusalem and the Temple as a central focus? Did not God reside in Jerusalem and in the Temple in a way so special that to lose access to these places would force major shifts in religious focus and identity?
Hence, we have apocalyptic pronouncements to imagine answers and meanings as to why it seems as though God no longer protected Jerusalem or the Temple. What was God saying to the world, to the Jews and to the early Church in the occurrence of such a catastrophic events?
Catastrophic events are not limited to Jerusalem and the Temple. They happen all of the time. Some are natural events and some are caused by war and human atrocity but the world has never been exempt the all kinds of catastrophic events. Persons in Paradise, California find the loss their entire town and all their homes as equally catastrophic. Lots of people are caught in a state of questioning: Why us? And what will we do now that this has happen? Lord, have mercy upon us.
All of us can identify with apocalyptic thinking on the large catastrophic scale and on the personal level. The death of each one of us is the eventual personal catastrophic event, and before we arrive there we can experience many events of loss, pain and failure. What do events of disaster or disease do to us? Catastrophic events make us feel singled out and victimized. And when we are in the throes of loss we can protest in words which are strikingly different than when everything is more comfortable. One of things that we can do is to generalize from personal and local events to the entire world: "If this is happening to me, then the entire world and everyone else should be suffering in a like manner as a way to recognize our suffering." If this is happening to us "God's people" in Jerusalem who have worshiped at the Temple, then the entire world should pay for this terrible injustice. Because our world is being brought to an end, then this should signal the end to the entire world too. If we have to suffer such loss then the entire world should suffer a complete loss too. Suffering can make us selfishly think that the whole world should suffer in the same way.
For many apocalyptic people, they see the trouble of the world as reason to place the entire world on hospice care as we wait for the end of the world as we know it. If my preaching hasn't convince the world to follow and join our community, then let me imagine a future Jesus as King to return to this earth and establish our views as the right views for the entire world. The most literal apocalyptic preachers actually use the future coming of Jesus as a way to proclaim that Jesus will rubber stamp the views of their own community as God's preferred view. Many religious people essentially say, "I am he, or I am the one who best understands the end of the world and when Jesus will return." They all believe that the future Jesus will come to prove that their view of the world was the best. I know something of the apocalyptic worldview because I grew up with apocalyptic believers who had the future world figured out and of course they all believed that they were part of the special elect who would be spared the Great Tribulation in their temporary rapture from the earth.
One way to understand the apocalyptic discourse is to proclaim the world to be on Hospice Care, and we attend to the world waiting for the termination of life as we know.
I like another vision and interpretation found in the oracle words of Jesus within the church which produced the Gospel of Mark. The words include a metaphor of an event that neither Jesus nor I will ever be able to experience; we only can be told about them. What about understanding the apocalypse as birth pangs rather than being on hospice care? That is quite a different but a more inclusive metaphor of meaning. Labor pains are inclusive of suffering but suffering with a wonderful outcome.
Neither Jesus nor I ever have known birth pangs or labor pains, but we've heard about them. I have walked for 40 plus hours with a woman who experienced them before the birth of our children. Can we hold a birthing mother to everything that she has said during those poignant hours of child birth? A delivering mother can say some interesting things during the duress of delivery.
And how quickly the words can change after birth occurs. The birth pang state is not forgotten but it is surpassed by a better state of being. So the dooming and stormy words of delivery can suddenly become the beaming words of gratitude for the gift of a new child in one's life.
Let us today receive the apocalyptic words in the Bible as "birth pangs" discourse; they are the prologue to new life.
What happened after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple? Both Jews and members of early Jesus Movement were forced out their Palestine center to become holy temples of people in synagogues and house churches in the cities of the Roman Empire. The mission of Jews and Christians changed after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The Jews needed to re-group in their synagogues and filter the Gentile influences out of their tradition while the followers of Jesus dispensed with purity codes of Judaism to invite the large Gentile populace of the Roman Empire into the Christian experience.
The birth pangs of destruction gave birth to new missions for Jews and Christians. So rather than viewing the apocalypse as the final ending of the world as they knew it; the apocalyptic was the language of the birth pangs which came before the proliferation of the message of the Risen Christ throughout the Roman World. And what a birth that was!
Every community goes through birth pangs and we can interpret the pains as a reason to place our community on hospice care or we can look for the birth of what is to come beyond the liminal phase of the painful birthing process.
Personally and as a community, I believe that the Gospel words of Jesus invite us to interpret the distresses of our lives as birth pangs of something new, and not a reason to place our lives upon hospice care.
The birth pang metaphor is honest to the real pain and losses of life, but it is also honest to hope and anticipation for what will yet be born.
Let us always be ready to be hopeful and be ready for that which will be born out of our distress. The apocalyptic words of Jesus in the early church remind us that birth pangs are painful, but hopeful. Let ever remain hopeful with faith to believe that birth pangs will eventually bring something new. Amen.
Daniel 12: 1-3 Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25 Mark 13:1-8
Today we've read some apocalyptic portions of the the Gospel of Mark. This Gospel was written in dire times for Jerusalem and its inhabitants. In the year 70, Jerusalem was destroyed and the Temple was gone, thus changing a significant institution in Judaism and in the early Jesus Movement forever.
A destroyed Jerusalem and Temple would be shocking to all those who held these holy places to be crucial to their personal and spiritual identities. How can we survive without Jerusalem and the Temple as a central focus? Did not God reside in Jerusalem and in the Temple in a way so special that to lose access to these places would force major shifts in religious focus and identity?
Hence, we have apocalyptic pronouncements to imagine answers and meanings as to why it seems as though God no longer protected Jerusalem or the Temple. What was God saying to the world, to the Jews and to the early Church in the occurrence of such a catastrophic events?
Catastrophic events are not limited to Jerusalem and the Temple. They happen all of the time. Some are natural events and some are caused by war and human atrocity but the world has never been exempt the all kinds of catastrophic events. Persons in Paradise, California find the loss their entire town and all their homes as equally catastrophic. Lots of people are caught in a state of questioning: Why us? And what will we do now that this has happen? Lord, have mercy upon us.
All of us can identify with apocalyptic thinking on the large catastrophic scale and on the personal level. The death of each one of us is the eventual personal catastrophic event, and before we arrive there we can experience many events of loss, pain and failure. What do events of disaster or disease do to us? Catastrophic events make us feel singled out and victimized. And when we are in the throes of loss we can protest in words which are strikingly different than when everything is more comfortable. One of things that we can do is to generalize from personal and local events to the entire world: "If this is happening to me, then the entire world and everyone else should be suffering in a like manner as a way to recognize our suffering." If this is happening to us "God's people" in Jerusalem who have worshiped at the Temple, then the entire world should pay for this terrible injustice. Because our world is being brought to an end, then this should signal the end to the entire world too. If we have to suffer such loss then the entire world should suffer a complete loss too. Suffering can make us selfishly think that the whole world should suffer in the same way.
For many apocalyptic people, they see the trouble of the world as reason to place the entire world on hospice care as we wait for the end of the world as we know it. If my preaching hasn't convince the world to follow and join our community, then let me imagine a future Jesus as King to return to this earth and establish our views as the right views for the entire world. The most literal apocalyptic preachers actually use the future coming of Jesus as a way to proclaim that Jesus will rubber stamp the views of their own community as God's preferred view. Many religious people essentially say, "I am he, or I am the one who best understands the end of the world and when Jesus will return." They all believe that the future Jesus will come to prove that their view of the world was the best. I know something of the apocalyptic worldview because I grew up with apocalyptic believers who had the future world figured out and of course they all believed that they were part of the special elect who would be spared the Great Tribulation in their temporary rapture from the earth.
One way to understand the apocalyptic discourse is to proclaim the world to be on Hospice Care, and we attend to the world waiting for the termination of life as we know.
I like another vision and interpretation found in the oracle words of Jesus within the church which produced the Gospel of Mark. The words include a metaphor of an event that neither Jesus nor I will ever be able to experience; we only can be told about them. What about understanding the apocalypse as birth pangs rather than being on hospice care? That is quite a different but a more inclusive metaphor of meaning. Labor pains are inclusive of suffering but suffering with a wonderful outcome.
Neither Jesus nor I ever have known birth pangs or labor pains, but we've heard about them. I have walked for 40 plus hours with a woman who experienced them before the birth of our children. Can we hold a birthing mother to everything that she has said during those poignant hours of child birth? A delivering mother can say some interesting things during the duress of delivery.
And how quickly the words can change after birth occurs. The birth pang state is not forgotten but it is surpassed by a better state of being. So the dooming and stormy words of delivery can suddenly become the beaming words of gratitude for the gift of a new child in one's life.
Let us today receive the apocalyptic words in the Bible as "birth pangs" discourse; they are the prologue to new life.
What happened after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple? Both Jews and members of early Jesus Movement were forced out their Palestine center to become holy temples of people in synagogues and house churches in the cities of the Roman Empire. The mission of Jews and Christians changed after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The Jews needed to re-group in their synagogues and filter the Gentile influences out of their tradition while the followers of Jesus dispensed with purity codes of Judaism to invite the large Gentile populace of the Roman Empire into the Christian experience.
The birth pangs of destruction gave birth to new missions for Jews and Christians. So rather than viewing the apocalypse as the final ending of the world as they knew it; the apocalyptic was the language of the birth pangs which came before the proliferation of the message of the Risen Christ throughout the Roman World. And what a birth that was!
Every community goes through birth pangs and we can interpret the pains as a reason to place our community on hospice care or we can look for the birth of what is to come beyond the liminal phase of the painful birthing process.
Personally and as a community, I believe that the Gospel words of Jesus invite us to interpret the distresses of our lives as birth pangs of something new, and not a reason to place our lives upon hospice care.
The birth pang metaphor is honest to the real pain and losses of life, but it is also honest to hope and anticipation for what will yet be born.
Let us always be ready to be hopeful and be ready for that which will be born out of our distress. The apocalyptic words of Jesus in the early church remind us that birth pangs are painful, but hopeful. Let ever remain hopeful with faith to believe that birth pangs will eventually bring something new. Amen.
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