There is a phenomenon in the Judeo-Christian faith that every 500 years or so, “the church” undergoes major systemic change. We can look back at this pattern to around 450, when they hashed out the idea that Jesus is both fully God and fully human, clearing up some theological drama of the time. Then to about 1050, when the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches split over disagreements to do with theology, power, and bread. Then, in 1517, Martin Luther called out the Catholic Church for it’s flaws and so began Protestant Christianity. And here we are, about 500 years out, and believe in or not, in the midst of another, perhaps less defined, transformation.
Some of the things that can be recognized about this contemporary “emergence” as some have called it, is that it is very Jesus-centered, communal, focused deeply on the inclusion of a broader variety of voices to tell the story of faith, and looks back to the early days of Christianity, the smallness, the radical nature, the lack of ties to systems of power, to find it’s rootedness. Thinking about these movements within the church, about this time of transformation, might help us to consider the Gospel passage we receive today.
In these last weeks of November, as our liturgical year winds down and we begin to turn towards the new year beginning in Advent, we receive readings that are often referred to as “doom and gloom” readings. They are apocalyptic in nature—a category of Scripture that Episcopalians don’t always love to engage with. Other denominations of Christianity dwell in these texts more than we do, but often in a way that uses the text out of fear as a way for believers to fall in line, or threaten with punishment if we don’t live our life a certain way. The things in the texts we are called to be prepared for—rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, famine, earthquakes— don’t sound like what we would expect to receive from an all-loving God. And because we rarely engage with apocalyptic scripture, our understanding of what is actually occuring in the text, or how it is being used, becomes misguided and surface level. When thinking about apocalyptic scripture we might imagine something along the lines of the end of a Marvel movie: destruction, desolation, war-torn and hungry, maybe some robots or zombie like creatures thrown in there.. you get my drift.
Our Gospel today is sometimes called Mark’s little apocalypse, and picks up where I mentioned last week that it would: with the disciples, exiting the Temple and taking in the size and scope of the building itself. One of the disciples comments on how large the building is, how large the stones are. What they notice about this structure, this building is the size, the permanence of this place they hold as their religious home. We might say similar things when walk into this space, our beautiful building. Jesus asks the disciples if they see these buildings—and just a small nerdy note, the word used for ‘see’ is also translated, in other sentences in this passage, as beware. Beware, be alert, pay attention (to borrow from last week’s sermon) for these stones, he says to them, these buildings will be thrown down. Destroyed. I wonder how that feels if we were to look around our building and hear those same words.
Perhaps feeling some of the same things we would feel, a few of the disciples ask Jesus—how are we supposed to know that these things are happening or are going to happen? Jesus then shares that there will be prophets, claiming to come in Jesus’ name, earthquakes, famines, wars—here is what we recognize as the apocalyptic predictions from Jesus. He names that these things must happen, that things will get worse before they get better, for these are just the birth pangs before God overturns the order of the world.
There are two things for us to consider as we think about this kind of scripture: One, that it—and most all of scripture—was written by and for the oppressed, for the marginalized, who lived under the struggle of empire, power, greed, who bore the weight of an unjust world. I imagine in first hearing Jesus say these words about the temple, and about war and earthquakes, more struggle and pain, the disciples may have felt as we feel when initially hearing them: Confused, hurt, overwhelmed. What does this say about the goodness of God? We are in the midst of so much struggle already, must there really be more? But, as Bishop Loya of Minnesota wrote earlier this week, for those who wrote this passage, for those who first heard or read this story—“God’s promise to overturn the world order and set the scales of injustice right was good news indeed. The apocalyptic writings in the Bible we so often disdain were actually written to provide comfort and reassurance for God’s people who faced a world that was falling apart in fear and vulnerability.”
And perhaps, for many, this fear and vulnerability are felt more deeply than they were even one month ago. For immigrants, and women, and people of color, and the queer community, and the sick, and the disenfranchised, our world feels scarier than it did even one month ago. So the idea of a God who can overturn that grief and fear, that some of the things happening around us might be a part of those birth pangs, that God stands with the marginalized and hurting, that God’s arc bends towards the restoration and healing of this hurting world, could feel like unexpected good news.
The second thing for us to consider about apocalyptic scripture is rooted simply in the word itself. If you were to look up the English version of the word, apocalypse means something like world-ending destruction, but the Greek word it is rooted in actually means to uncover or reveal. As one of my favorite writers puts it, “To experience an apocalypse is to experience fresh sight.” In inviting the disciples to really look, really see, the Temple building, he is inviting them to recognize that God cannot be contained within one building. God is not bound by walls. Do not be alarmed, Jesus tells them and us today—God’s hope for us is bigger than the tragedy, bigger than the natural disasters, bigger than the conflict, bigger than the fear and the hate.
The reason I opened this sermon today with the reflection on how the church is in the midst of this 500 hundred year transformation, is because I deeply feel that Jesus’ words here speak to this moment in time particularly clearly. Things may get more challenging before they get better, particularly for the marginalized in our world. In times like these, as the church is transforming, trying to find our way in the world anew—may we return to the words and actions of Jesus, turn towards the strength of our local communities, welcome a diversity of voices and experiences to impact our understanding of our faith, find comfort in the nimbleness of smallness, embrace the truly radical calling of Jesus, and continue to untangle ourselves from systems of hierarchy and power. In the face of things that may feel apocalyptic around us, our calling is this: hold on to one another, deeply, closely, with great love as the grief and truth of the world are revealed; allow the walls of our buildings to come crashing down so that we may be free to go out and practice our love, to LIVE our love, in the world; make space for transformation, allow God to use us for transformation; breathe with one another through the birth pangs, in preparation for a birth that is more glorious and healing than we can even begin to imagine. Amen.
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