Have you asked the question asked by the disciples? What is the future going to hold? Often we images in our minds either from the Bible or the futures market, and then look for signs that confirm what we think we know.
Truth be told we have all bought into moments that promise a grasp at what is beyond our control.
Often we remember a dim anxious notion, that these answers are hidden away in the Bible. If only we had the right code to unlock them or the right bible study group.
The "Left Behind" novels are a popular version, of this kind of future predicating. They turn apocalyptic speculation into marketing machines that sell.
We all remember the Mayan calendar that predicted that the world was to end Dec. 31 2012 and maybe it did, I just never got the memo.
The trouble with this stuff is that history just marches on leaving these prognosticators in the dust. Underneath all this, lies the fact, that there is always enough confusion in the world, to predict just about anything.
What did Jesus teach us about the Day of the lord, the End of the Age? So here it is Mark 13:32 about that day or hour no one knows neither angels in heaven nor the Son. Nobody knows. If you accept the Trinity, then God doesn't know
Steven Wright says: I was walking down the street and all of a sudden the prescription for my eye-glasses ran out.
Let's back up a bit give some context and hear what Jesus is saying, in this 13 chapter of Mark? Tell us they ask when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be accomplished?
How does this question fit into the story?
So these folks have followed Jesus around beginning in Galilee, they watched him healing, driving out nasty spirits, feeding hungry multitudes, challenging the wealthy to give away their possessions, they watch him trouble the minds of some and quiet minds of the troubled.
They have witnessed at last his entry into Jerusalem as the crowd cheered with "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
These Disciples, were counting on Jesus coming to bring the longed for restoration of Israel, the establishing of God's kingdom, here, on earth.
But then they saw Jesus barge into the temple, overturn the money changers tables and accuse the authorities of turning God's house into a den of thieves. The money tables were for changing the coinage of the Jews into the Roman equivalent of the day. To each transaction a fee was added. So people trying to buy a pigeon for sacrifice had to add extra because of the high exchange rates. Money laundering is always expensive. Anyway the poor were getting robbed and Jesus was Mad.
These fisher folk were not scholars but they remembered that Jeremiah had said something similar to Jesus that the temple was a den of robbers Jer 7:11. They remembered that Jeremiah had said that God was going to destroy the temple- not because of some cosmic clock was winding down but because the temple had become a place where people were going through the motions of faith. They were going through the motions, all the while continuing to oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow. They were playing at faith while shedding the innocent blood of others, and worshiping idols.
So it begins to dawn on the disciples that this Jesus they have followed might stand in Jeremiah's tradition, maybe like Jeremiah he's as a gloomy, weeping prophet announcing the doom of the temple.
As Mark highlights the point visually, like a cinema director and frames Jesus table turning, with Jesus cursing a fig tree for not producing fruit. So the withered fig tree foreshadows the fate of the temple.
All this was very upsetting to the Authorities and temple people of the day.
So as Jesus leaves the Temple again at the beginning of mark 13, it is not surprising that one of the disciples tries to coax out of him some reassuring admiration for this glorious temple.
Look at the stone work, the tapestries you can hear them brag and brag and brag. Josephus the historian wrote the building astounded both mind and eye. The Temples 40 ft Walls of marble and gold provided a Kodak moment. But Jesus isn't interested in snapping pictures. Do you see these great buildings? He snaps. "Surely not one stone will be left on stone here" That's a conversation stopper!
But later in private the four inner-circle disciples press Jesus again with their urgent question.
Tell us when will these things be, when will we see this? And what is the sign when all these things are going to be accomplished?
So everything in Mark 13 is a reply to the disciples puzzled question about the destruction of the temple.
Jesus is not talking about the end of the world or the end of the space time universe.
As the New Testament scholar Ben Witherington puts it, "Jesus prophecy is primarily not about the end of the world, but about the end of a world of first Century Judaism as a temple centered faith."
And now by the time Mark writes his Gospel 40 years after Jesus death and resurrection, the terrible prophecy as come true.
The Roman Army in AD 70 asserted the Empires power and reduced the temple to rubble.This is the historical setting to this passage. To a first Century Jew the destruction of this Temple would have felt like the end of the world. For this Temple was where God lived, where sins were atoned for with animal sacrifice, where heaven came down and touched earth.
Its destruction would have seemed like the end of hope, that God had abandoned God's people.
In our time we remember how we felt after 9/11 well for first Century Jews the Temples collapse was all of that and more.
These four disciples ask when this is going to happen. But Jesus doesn't answer this question.
Instead he starts warning against false prophets, or slick books or movies. There will always be charlatans around, you best watch out.
And so he warns his disciples not to be alarmed by wars, earthquakes and famines, for these things will happen again and again, as creation renews and disrupts. Whether in Palestine or Afghanistan, or Syria or China or Hawaii, don't be alarmed he tells them, terrible things happen as human stupidity, nature and disease seem to have their own agenda not always on our side.
So far we may think Jesus is just saying what we often say, "Hey, stuff happens." But that's not what's going on here. He is not saying there will never be an end. The Sun at some point goes out.
He is not saying this is just the way life is, something full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, I think he is saying that these terrible things, brutal wars and famines, nature going in directions to renew with little consideration for human settlements.
Human settlement, settling overtops known fault zones. Even the utter destruction of the Temple; do signify something: they might just signify the birth pains or the beginning of birth pangs.
Or to put it into today language, these can be labor pains of the new.
Joel Marcus in his commentary on Mark points out that most translations say, "This is but the beginning of the birth pangs" Suggesting that our present troubles are just a stage in a process that might go on a long time.
But there is no bases in the Greek Text for this little word but.
What the text says is this is the beginning of the birth pangs of labor. There is no going back its beginning. What does this mean?
In apocalyptic passages like the one we're reading today there is another metaphorical twist: It says in effect that, God is expecting!
God is bringing something new, a new world a new way of living.
We see a foreshadowing of this in Isaiah 42 where God speaks through the prophet and says
For a long time I have kept still held my peace, now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant. Birth can be dangerous painful process.
In the ancient world there were no hospitals few drugs to help things along or ease the discomfort. The labor pains came suddenly, causing intense convulsions. Likewise Jesus is saying the world is convulsed with conflicts, wars, earthquakes, volcanoes, Ebola, etc
The expectation is that these pains will not last forever and that through them a new creation, new patterns of responsiveness and responsibility might be brought into the world.
Paul says something similar in Romans 8.
For we know that the whole creation is groaning together and not only creation but we ourselves he says who have the first fruits peace joy love of the spirit- we too groan as we await the new that is coming.
And so the image of labor pains points to hope and new life. When Jesus speaks for birth pains he is looking over the edge of the horizon of human pain to a new world coming.
The marching and struggles for civil rights. The Protesting till guys and others have full inclusion and rights and responsibilities. The groaning in the Missouri Grand jury as it struggles with justice.
For the eager longing of the whole creation yearns for the revealing that all people are sons and daughters of God.
In John 16, Jesus talks about the pain of child birth as something that goes with the arrival of the child. He says this on the eve of his own suffering.
Just as the Jerusalem Temple will surely be destroyed by the Romans, so also will the temple of his body be destroyed by a Ruler who was afraid of love. But through Jesus labor on the cross a new world of hope beckons us.
So maybe Mark 13 is not the gloomy script, or time table for the end of the world that I used never wanted to touch.
Rather our reading this morning does two things at once
First it reassures us, in the world we see now things fall apart: But Jesus says don't be alarmed. Send all the "Left Behind" books, back to the publisher. The agony of history is not beyond God to redeem and transform.
These terrible things are but labor pains and God does and can and will bring new life out of them.
And Jesus own suffering and resurrection will be the means through which God's new world will be born.
In the meantime Mark says our role is to pay attention.
Not watch as a passive spectator but watch as a sentry, be on the lookout stay awake. Keep oil in your lamps.
Don't be lulled to sleep by the left behind series. For God does not leave people behind. But like a shepherd is relentless until all wake up to love.
Don't be lulled to sleep by phony religion/ don't be intimidated by kings and empires, or overawed by institutions that claim religion valor all the while oppressing the widow and the orphan.
Keep bearing witness to the truth above all don't give up hope and stop looking for God to come and make things right. Precisely because the world is suffering labor pains, that means the hoped for birth cannot be far away.
You stay in the truth, stay in love in peace in joy not in fear, but in hope, Work with God for peace, joy love and hope. Watch Washington Il. Rebuild better than before.
We hear the screams in Ferguson Mi as people struggle to hear some word of justice amid all the conflicting evidence. Birth pangs
Immigration we can't go back we must move forward, to the heath care crises of getting the uninsured into some program. Pay attention to the birth pangs so we can help deliver tomorrow as a just place for all.
If tomorrow impinges upon today, with pregnant possibilities how we can open our arms and allow a safe delivery.
Happy Advent.