Today is the last week we will hear a gospel story from the storyteller we call Mark. After that we enter a new Church year and a new season – Advent. As we near the end of the Church Year, our lectionary turns to texts about the end of the world, or the endtimes.
I used to think that the end of the world would come in a blaze of glory. I used to think that when the world ended there would be plenty of warning. I used to think that if you paid enough attention to what was going on around you, you would be able to tell when the world was going to end.
Songs have been written about end times. When I was in my teens, I used to hear a song by Zager and Evans. Those who are young may not know what I am talking about.
In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)
Song by Zager and Evans
In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
In the year 3535
Isn’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin’ to do
Some machine’s doin’ that for you
In the year 6565
You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God’s a coming, He ought to make it by then
Maybe He’ll look around Himself and say
Guess it’s time for the judgment day
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down, and start again
In the year 9595
I’m kind of wondering’ if man is going to be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing
Now it’s been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, now man’s reign is through
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight
So very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday.
So bleak!!
We don’t have to wait for the world to end. It comes to an end everyday for many. For some it comes quietly without any fanfare at all sometimes with little notice or without any. This week I was supporting a family who had lost their grandson who was 18 years old.
Today, the media is full of news that heralds the end of the world. There are wars, genocide, poverty, loss of health, security, redundancy, bankruptcy and loss of jobs. It is the end of the world for hundreds and thousands of people in faraway places and near. The world comes to an end every single day. It hardly seems fair that the world can come to an end so suddenly for many. When I was younger, I always wanted to know how a story ended. As a kid, I would often flip to the last chapter of a wonderful book to see just how things ended.
The anonymous writer of the Gospel according to Mark is a mystery to us. We don’t know who wrote these stories about Jesus, but scholars have figured out that whoever wrote them down would never have met Jesus and wrote this particular Gospel some forty to fifty years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
The general scholarly consensus is that this story was written in the year 70 of the Common Era. The context:
- The soldiers of the Roman Empire had destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.
- The Romans drove the Jewish people out into the wilderness and for thousands of years they were a diaspora, until shortly after the Second World War when a world racked with guilt over the Holocaust consented by a decree of the United Nations to once again establish the nation of Israel.
- The times after the destruction of the temple were terrible days, for the peace of Rome, Pax Romana, was maintained by conquering enemies keeping conquered people under control by means of terrorizing the general population.
- One such Roman account details the crucifixion of 500 people. The fear that occupied the minds of the early Christians is unimaginable.
And it is in this climate of terror that the anonymous gospel-storyteller told his tale. We can only speculate why the author told this particular tale in this particular way.
Scholars doubt the historicity of this particular story. Most of the credible New Testament scholars in the world agree that Jesus probably never said any of the words that the unknown author of the gospel put into Jesus’ mouth with regard to the destruction of the world.
Jesus is portrayed as telling his faithful followers that the whole place will come tumbling down one day soon. The followers of Jesus needed to know that even something as frightening as the end of the world was in God’s good hands. They were to remember that God is sovereign and they were to watch – watch even in the darkness – for Christ to return.
The headlines were as bad then as they are today.
When all is crumbling around us, what is our job? The anonymous gospel storyteller’s Jesus says: watch, stay alert, pay attention.
For some, watching means looking for the literal end of the world. Every year, Hollywood offers up yet another disaster movie in which the end is clearly depicted. Disaster films make huge money as millions of us continue to flock to the theatres to catch a glimpse of impending doom. The only problem with this approach is that it tries to discover what even the gospel story-teller’s Jesus could not discover. Even this Jesus does not know the mind of God.
This Jesus, like us, is left with wars and disasters, waiting and watching for the end which experience has taught us comes again, and again, and again…
So, as for me, my method of watching comes out of my own belief that there is not just one end to the world any more than there is just one coming of Christ to look forward to. When Jesus died, his disciples believed the world had ended. When Jerusalem fell, and Nero swooped down on the young church like a mad vulture, they believed the world had ended. The story continues on today. The world can and does end any and every day of the week. The world ends over and over again, not just with the sounds of war, but with the death of a child, the loss of a job, a grim diagnosis, or the end of a cherished dream.
When I was a kid I wanted to know how the movie would end. Many times I’ve been told to be quiet and to watch, I was told not to worry how it ends. I soon learned how much better it was to experience the story without knowing how it all ends. And so, I quit reading the final chapters of novels and let myself fully experience the unfolding of the story just as the author intended.
The great theologian Paul Tillich wrote a powerful description of his vision of God, in which he described God as the “ground of our being”. That is to say, that we are all in God and that in God we live, and move, and have our being. If God is the ground of our being, then surely faith in God is putting one foot in front of the other and trusting that the ground will be there.
I’d still like to know how it all will end, but nowadays I’m content to stay awake, and put one foot in front of the other, trusting that the Ground of Being is that in which I live and move and have my being, trusting that in God, I can fully experience all that life has to offer.
My world came to an end many times but for me there’s been a whole lot of living and dying since then. Christ comes to me over and over again in the doctors, nurses, friends and lovers who help me to put one foot in front of the other and the Love that we call God has remained the ground of my being.
The world can and does come to an end, every single day, over and over again. Our job is not to lie in bed with pillows over our heads or to shove all the heavy furniture in front of the door for fear of what lies outside in the darkness. Our job is to light a candle and set it in the window. Our job is to watch for the One who comes to us over and over again, in the guise of a person, offering healing and to open the door for Christ even before Christ raises a hand to knock.
So, keep watch. Christ will come again, in the guise of a person who will help you to put one foot in front of the other, to make all things new, again and again, and again. But keep awake, for you do not know the day or the hour when the Christ in you will be called upon to extend the hand of God to a sister or a brother to help them put one foot in front of the other. Christ comes again, and again, and again.
Worlds have ended. People are waiting for Christ to come again. Let us be the ground of being for our sisters and brothers who have been left reeling from the shock and horror of the end of their world. Let us provide the Love which is the ground of being so that they can put one foot in front of the other and live and move and have their being, to make all things new again. Let us be the Love that is God in the world.
Funk, R. W. A, Credible Jesus. Fragments of a Vision. Santa Rosa. Polebridge Press, 2002.
Galston, D, Embracing the Human Jesus. A Wisdom Path for Contemporary Christianity. Salem. Polebridge, 2012