A sermon preached at the Sunday worship service at Church in the Highlands in White Plains, NY, on November 14, 2021.
Scripture readings:
I wonder if any among you, if asked to name your favorite Bible verse, would point to either of the passages from today’s readings? These apocalyptic visions of the future, first from the Prophet Daniel and then from the lips of Jesus, depict a world rife with catastrophe. They probably aren’t the go-to passages from the Bible that we commonly turn to for hope and inspiration. The ones we have printed on our coffee mug. But for the original audiences, imagination and hope were what these writings were all about.
Apocalyptic literature, like the books of Daniel and Revelation in the Bible, could be considered literature for the dispossessed. They take current events and paint them in cosmic proportions, providing disenfranchised and alienated people with the assurance of a future in which God will triumph and they will be vindicated. And maybe you, like I, heard the reading from Mark this morning and felt a sinking sense of recognition in Jesus’ description of “wars and rumors of wars…nation against nation…earthquakes…famines.” Current events in Afghanistan and Haiti, the global pandemic, misinformation campaigns across social and conventional media, and the ever-increasing threat of climate change may resonate too familiarly with the Biblical narrative. A 26-year-old mother dying from cancer recently shared with me her conviction that God is going to be revealed decisively by the end of this year. And though I could not share her certainty about what God is going to do, I join her in the experience of feeling like things must be coming to a head. It’s getting to be too much. Something’s got to give. Perhaps it is not a stretch to assume that these apocalypses from the Bible may have a word of hope to offer us in 2021 as well.
The Gospel of Mark was written for a community who knew something about disenfranchisement and alienation. Living around the time of the Roman-Jewish War, the original audience of Mark’s gospel had seen their former concept of how the world works utterly demolished along with the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. The stones and buildings that the unnamed disciple was so enamored with? They were famed throughout the Roman world for their beauty. Based on the original Temple of Solomon, but about twice the size, the enormous structure was commissioned by Herod the Great (a ruler who was not known for his subtlety). According to the first-century historian Josephus, the entire façade was plated in gold. The upper parts of the Temple were pure white, probably marble, and gold spikes lined the roof. The reflection of the morning sun on the building could be blinding. Historical records differ slightly on its architecture but on one thing they agree: the Temple was stunning. What had originally been conceived as an expression of Herod’s ego and funded by heavy taxation of the Jewish people had turned into a cultural icon and a source of national pride. Religiously, it was considered the very seat of God. And now it was gone.
The defeated, disoriented first-century Jewish Christians must have certainly been eager for a word of hope and escape from the alternate reality they now found themselves in. Jesus’ words here would have offered a cautionary message to those who may have been drawn to the allure of doomsday soothsayers and false prophets peddling a sense of certainty to people wrestling with the grief and disorientation of devastating loss. Whose hearts and ears may have been ready to give attention to preachers standing on their soapboxes and authoritatively proclaiming, “The end is nigh!”
But ironically the message that Jesus wants to drive home to his followers here is not that the end is nigh, but rather that the end is “not yet.” And that is strangely a far less alluring message. Doomsday timetables and forecasts about how and for how long we will have to suffer still give us a sense of certainty and control. We who find ourselves trudging into month “who’s even counting anymore” of this global pandemic, have become better acquainted with the dissatisfaction and existential drudgery of the “not yet” times than we ever imagined we could tolerate. And I’m so sick of talking about it. I’m so sick of the control it has over our conversations and our lives. When will this cease to be such a dominating and ever-present source of struggle and loss?
“Not yet” is an uncomfortable place to be. And for those living under the full weight of social oppression, it is an impossible place to remain. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., explained, “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and [people] are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.”[1] When those who have power say “not yet” to the demand for justice, they participate in sin. The sustained suffering of the oppressed to maintain the comfort of the powerful is something Christians should never tolerate.
But the calamities that Jesus is describing here do not seem to have an addressable cause. “These things must happen,” he says. We are not talking about suffering that comes from somewhere or someone, or even from God. It’s not suffering that has a reason or a meaning or someone to blame. It’s suffering that just is.
The family therapist and psychologist Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” to give voice to the pain of losses that lack closure, that have an element of being unresolved: missing persons, immigration, dementia. But what Dr. Boss’ research helps illuminate is that closure is always illusive. The “myth of closure” actually interferes with our ability to cope with all of our significant losses.[2] Because we never are done with our losses, or they are never done with us.
It can be hard to give proper attention to the work of living through unresolved loss because our society balks against the notion that loss isn’t something that can be “fixed.” We want people to get over it. The priest and spiritual thinker Henri Nouwen lamented, “There are so few mourners left in this world.”[3] Loss isn’t something we get over, but we learn over time how to navigate our relationship to it. And maybe “ambiguous loss” could be used to describe the condition of God’s people throughout the ages: It is the condition out of which the Prophets often preached, speaking to people in exile and also, apparently, susceptible to the allure of false prophets. It is the condition that all of us at some point must exist in, though our death-denying, consumeristic culture uses the full economic force of its false-prophetic powers to capitalize on our discomfort and distract us from it.
“Look out,” Jesus warns his disciples. When self-proclaimed messiahs try to explain the pain away, don’t be misled by them. Don’t be misled by civil strife or natural disasters. This suffering is only the beginning. Or, as the Greek more literally states, “It’s merely the beginning of birth pangs.” Resist the temptation to look for quick fixes and easy outs. Don’t presume it will magically get better soon; if anything, it’s going to get worse.
These are hard words to stomach. And they’re only the beginning of a long speech in which Jesus details the suffering and persecution that his followers will need to endure. In fact, it isn’t until he nears the end of his speech, all the way down in verse 32, that he finally gives a nod to the disciples’ question about how and when the end will come: nobody knows, he tells them, not even Jesus himself. Only God knows that.
The very thoughtful people who assembled our Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of Scripture readings that is used in the UCC and many other Christian denominations, wisely placed these apocalyptic passages just a couple of weeks before we enter the season of Advent. As we meditate on the unresolved suffering of our present age, we join the Church throughout the ages in reminding one another that God is going to resolve it—has decisively resolved it—in Jesus Christ. Even as the days grow darker, a light is breaking forth on Christmas morning.
But if we leave it at that, if we leave our hope only in the future, we do injustice to the central message of this passage. And we do injustice to the suffering of people who are wondering how on earth do we deal with the grim realities we are faced with now. There must be something in the gospel that is good news for us today.
When our present reality is overwhelming, when the pain of our compounded losses reaches levels so absurd it seems our only options are escapism or despair, Jesus counsels a third way: faithfulness. To continue to get up each morning and participate in the Holy Body of Christ work of giving food to those who are hungry and standing with Jesus on the side of the oppressed. To do the Holy Body of Christ Work of caring for ourselves and our families because we do not know how long the journey will be, my friends. To not be too caught up in the allure of “success,” as individuals or as a church, remembering that our role is not to lay hold of some secret information that will give us the upper hand, but to live faithfully now in the “not yet” times, living our way into the new world order that God, like a laboring mother, is birthing forth.
Maybe our present condition isn’t something we are meant to “get over,” but something we are called to live into. The place where we encounter God—the place where all God’s people throughout the ages have encountered God—is only ever in the messy and unresolved moment where we find ourselves now. The golden temples of the way things used to be will crumble and fall, but Jesus has left us with his example and with his Spirit. So that the very seat of God is here. With us. Whether we are gathered in person or over Zoom. God is with us in this very unideal, awkward, messy, tragic, holy place.
The good news is that we worship a God who not only meets us in this moment, but whose reach is everlasting. Who does not call us to fix things, but to stay faithful. Who does not promise to eradicate uncertainty, but to meet us in it. And who calls us into holy communion with one another to live lives governed not by alarmism or apathy, but by love. And to ask ourselves, again and again, how to live faithfully into each moment, confident that, in that moment, Christ will be there with us.
[1] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” August 1963, csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf.
[2] Krista Tippett, “Navigating Loss Without Closure,” On Being with Krista Tippett, June 23, 2016, onbeing.org/programs/pauline-boss-navigating-loss-without-closure/.
[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 129.
