Pentecost XXIV, Proper 28
Daniel 12:1-13
Hebrews 10: 31-39
Mark 13:14-23
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
LAST WEDNESDAY, the headline at the top of the front page of The Wall Street Journal read: ‘That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May be from the Web.’1 It’s about how many preachers are getting their sermons from web-sites. A couple of you brought it to my attention, and I’m grateful.
It began by telling about the Rev. Brian Moon who on a recent Sunday had used 75% of a sermon he purchased for $10 on the web. Rev. Moon says, “Truth is truth, there’s no sense reinventing the wheel.”
He’s got a point. I checked out some of the sites, but I didn’t buy any of them. My parsimony was greater than my interest or desperation. One of sites, however, did have free sermons, and they were ranked according to how helpful people found them.
I wanted to know about today’s gospel - Mark’s chapter 13, a small chunk of apocalyptic writing, that is writing about the end times. What’s the truth about the end of time? A sermon, scoring 70 out of 75, told me,
Jesus said, in the last days there will be a great increase in earthquakes, famines, and pestilence (incurable disease). And you cannot watch the news today without seeing all three regularly. If you’ll pick up your Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other, it’s hard to be blind to the fact that we are in the closing shadows of this age. . . . Things are nearing conclusion.2
Another high scoring sermon promised, “We are not living in the last days, but the last seconds.”3 Last seconds. . . . He knows something I don’t.
I wondered, “Are these fringe views? Is this really the truth?” I checked out Lon Solomon’s website. He’s the remarkable pastor of McLean Bible Church, a tremendous communicator; probably no one in the Washington area has a bigger audience. I found that over the summer, he had talked about the imminent coming of Jesus, and while he didn’t endorse cashing out the IRA to buy a Ferrari, he did say, “Many of us may not ever need to use our IRA, because I believe the Lord Jesus is coming back sooner than any of us realize.”4
So that’s the truth: a literal second coming is likely in our lifetime?; Perhaps, but I’m not terribly comfortable with that kind of talk. I know time will end, but being too focused on its imminence often prevents us from having a richer, fuller life now. There’s a balance to be kept here. The spectrum runs from the especially enthusiastic folks, some who even fix a definite date for the end of the world, to those who are less frantically expectant, to those who think the material world is all there is.
Christians do believe the universe will come to an end, that history has an end point, that we should be expectant, but Jesus explicitly tells us that we can’t know when the end of the age will happen, that it will come like a thief in the night. Jesus is clear: we can’t know when the end will come, and we shouldn’t be speculating about it.
False prophets and false messiahs have taken advantage of people, manipulated people with predictions of the end, stirred up fear and dread, led people astray. Jesus warns us of the danger of being caught up in enthusiasm and excitement about the end of the age.
Apocalyptic enthusiasm is usually anti-social. It usually creates divisions – who’s in, who’s out, who’s saved, who’s damned. It usually stokes resentments and grievances – those like me are going to heaven, those who I find immoral, decadent, the worldly elite – those will be cast out. It usually makes people feel superior to others – those who understand the ‘truth’ and those who don’t, those who God favors and those who he dislikes. Apocalyptic enthusiasm usually cuts people off from reality.
Let me be frank. I started checking out these web sermons because I don’t much cotton to the apocalyptic bits of the Bible. I far prefer the other parts of Mark’s gospel, like the great commandment and the widow’s mite – those which we’ve had the last couple of weeks, the parts of the Bible more explicitly about love, sacrifice, joy, transformation, mercy. The apocalyptic parts don’t seem to have much good news; they don’t seem to be about having a good life.
But, of course, the apocalypse is part of the gospel. There is good news in it – it’s more implied than explicit. So we should not disregard it. But we have to read it with some understanding. Mark 13 and S. John’s Revelation appear to have a lot of talk about the future, but we should recognize that the authors are primarily interested in their own present. They are writing for their contemporaries, not laying out the details of the future. They are addressing concerns of the Church in the first century, not telling the twenty-first century what’s going to happen.
S. John in Revelation is writing to Christians who are being persecuted, and he’s telling them don’t buckle, don’t have anything to do with pagan worship, resist non-violently. He uses a lot of symbolic imagery to refer to the events of his day. He also describes God’s final victory over evil to encourage his fellow Christians, many of whom are being persecuted. He’s rallying them to endure their sufferings because God ultimately wins.
In today’s gospel, Jesus mentions the ‘abomination of desolation.’ This image refers to the desecration of the Jerusalem Temple nearly two centuries before Jesus. In 167-68 B.C., a pagan, Greek ruler had set up an altar to Zeus, desolating the Temple. This desecration had ended Temple worship for a while, but the Temple was restored. Nearly 250 years after this, Rome is the occupying power in Jerusalem. In about 70 AD, Mark is writing his gospel, and he’s writing it at virtually the same time as the pagan, Roman rulers desolated the Jerusalem Temple.
In today’s gospel, Mark is referring to the atrocities committed by the Romans against the Jewish people during the Roman-Jewish war which raged from 66-70 AD. This does not refer to some future event that must happen to signal the end times and the coming of Jesus. Check out the web today, and you’ll find sermons about how a sign of the end times is that the Jews will rebuild the Temple and then it will be desecrated again. Interpreting today’s gospel this way is profoundly misguided.
The point of today’s gospel is to warn us not to look for signs, not to speculate about when the end will come. Rather, today’s gospel, as usual, is to help us become better disciples. It gives us guidance about how to live now.
The first thing is, in effect, “Beware of deceivers. Don’t be fooled. Don’t be a chump.” There will be false prophets and false messiahs showing signs and wonders, but we’re not to be suckers. No one knows the end. “Believe him not,” Jesus says. We don’t have to worry and get all fretful about end time things. Focusing on the end of time won’t do us any good.
Second, we can be sure that time will come to an end. Despite all of the madness of our world, despite all of the suffering, despite all of the affliction, God has a plan, a schedule, and it is unfolding. He is in charge of history. He has shortened the days because he has mercy upon us, because he loves us. Even though we may endure suffering and injustice, God loves us. We can live with hope; we can have confidence in the future; we have nothing to fear.
Third, we live with some expectancy of the end; that it’s a possibility, albeit a very remote possibility, that the next moment may be the last. We live, therefore, with some urgency, with some passion and intensity to love God and one another now, to let others know of God’s love now. We feel an urgency to improve our relationships with God and with one another now. This urgency does not come from fear that we’ll be left behind at the end; it comes from a desire for a better, fuller, richer life now.
Perhaps, the greater truth in all of this, the reason why we live with expectancy, urgency, is that Jesus doesn’t only come at the end of time. Jesus is always coming to us, and we should be looking for him in this world, rather than speculating about the next world. In every moment of the day, in every event of the day, in every person we meet, we might encounter his presence and welcome him. The presence of God is not far off, but right now.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Suzanne Sataline, ‘That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May be from the Web,’ The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2006, p. A1.
2. Jerry Shirley, ‘End Times Posse: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ SermonCentral.com.
3. Bill Rushing, ‘It is Nigh, Even at the Doors,’ SermonCentral.com.4. Lon Solomon, ‘Return of Christ and the Jewish People,’ McLean Bible Church, July 23, 2006.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
