Rev Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
Birthpangs – The End Is Coming!
Nov 18, 2018 Pentecost 26-B Mark 13:1-8
I’m going to start today by talking
a little about the church year, and how the church orders time. We don’t follow the regular Jan-Dec calendar
- our New Year starts in 3 weeks, with Advent, which this year starts Dec
2. The church year starts in preparation
for the Messiah or Christ, to come, then Jesus’ nativity. We travel through Epiphany with the Wise Men
and then Jesus’ baptism; a month or so later we begin the 40 days of
preparation for our celebration of Jesus death and resurrection. After commemorating the coming of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost, our whole summer and fall explore other themes of the
Christian faith, and usually we emphasize one of the gospels = this year its
been Mark.
We are now approaching the end of
the Church Year, and the readings generally speak to the end of times, and then
next week, our church year ends by celebrating that Christ reigns over all. So, every year, our readings take us through
the whole of the Christian story.
Most denominations follow what’s called the Common
Lectionary (lection = readings), on a three-year cycle that covers a major bit
of the Bible. Most churches and pastors
have hangings and stoles in the designated color of that part of the cycle. We’re at the end of green today, and next week
is white. I like using the assigned
readings, mostly because it makes me work on a wider selection of Scriptures
than just my favorite soap boxes!!! And
because the hardest part of preaching, for me, is to consider this priceless
book and try to choose a part to preach on that’s meaningful. That’s not to say that sometimes I don’t
break out and preach something that’s on my heart, or do a series about
something, or because the assigned texts just don’t speak to me that week.
This week's’ reading from Mark about the end times is
difficult for me, because so many people in Christianity go crazy over prophecy
of about end times, the book of the Revelation to John. You might remember that series of books about
being Left Behind when all the saints are raptured up from the earth to
heaven. I was raised on that kind of
fear, the fear of missing the Rapture and being left behind, and the
terrorizing time of the Anti-Christ until, in our scenario, Christ returns to
wipe out all the bad guys and set up peace. All of our talk was highly speculative, as the
book of the Revelation to John is like a dream sequence - some parts a scary
dream, and other times a dream of peace and solace when God wins, but its
dream-like and difficult to pin down.
In today’s reading in Mark, Jesus refers to when everything
is torn down, and his disciples ask questions about it, like when will it be
and how will we know its coming? Same
questions we’d probably like to know the answers to, today. To me, Jesus’ first answer is an insight
about the fact that everything created is finite - everything passes. The Roman Empire of Jesus’ time is gone. The empires of the Hebrew scriptures are gone
- Sumerian, Hittites, Pharaohs - they are all archeological dig sites now, with
pieces of pottery in museums and dead languages carved in rocks. African
cultures, South America cultures, the Mayans - all subjects if research and
Doctoral theses. All their wars, all
their achievements, all their kings and queens, all their architectural
accomplishments - all gone, fallen, covered with sand & dirt, and buried in
history. Cultures rose and fell before
Jesus’ time, cultures of Jesus’ time fell, and new cultures rose; and that’s
just the way it is. If that’s a sign of
the end of time, almost any generation could claim their era was approaching
the end of time. Our own culture will
eventually fall and turn into ancient history, too, because everything finite
passes. We know this. Our movies like Star Wars and Star Trek have
tried to think about a better future; Mad Max and all the Terminator movies
have looked towards destruction - yet with hope. So that’s Jesus’ first answer to his
disciples - everything will pass. Everything changes, no matter when you live.
To me, Jesus’ second answer could also apply to any decade
before or since - that there would be wars and rumors of war, earthquakes,
famines, people claiming to be the messiah - Every generation of preachers
could claim that it applied to their era!!!
And have. So its not really
definitive of anything, either. Any time
period can be seen as approaching the end - maybe that’s the point!
Jesus calls these thing like wars and famines and
earthquakes, ‘birthpangs,’ an interesting choice of imagery. He’s using the idea of childbirth, ie labor. Ask some moms about labor and
birthpangs…..its not like TV shows, where the very pregnant mom grabs her belly
and groans hard, and the next shot is of her holding a cute infant in the
hospital. Let me tell you, the producers
skipped like 12-24 hours of increasing pain there. Maybe even a couple weeks or more, because
practice contractions start pretty early, and even early labor can start so
lightly that one doesn’t realize it - except that it must be getting nearer
that approximate 9 months.. There can be
lots of birthpangs before labor actually takes off. And even after it takes off, it still takes
time. So far, since Jesus said these
words that Mark quotes, birthpangs have been going on for 2000 years. In childbirth, those birthpangs increase in
time and intensity as the birth comes near.
I don’t know how we tell about the birthpangs of the end of time - we
hear of more nowadays, but then, we have global news coverage and 24/7/365
online information. We hear information
from all the continents and all the countries within hours, if not
minutes. It FEELS like more disaster and
more war, but who knows?
So what’s a follower of Jesus to do? The way Jesus talks about it, the signs are
always all around us, so it could be anytime - whatever it is that will
happen. So Jesus and the apostle Paul
say, be prepared! Be living right! Be following Jesus, because no one knows much
of anything about how or when. And
meanwhile, finite things around us are always falling down and moving back into
history. And our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren move forward
into a new era. The letter to the
Hebrews, in the passage for today, is also about the Day when all Christ’s
enemies are put under his feet an ending, but a positive one, as Christ wins.
Therefore, we have hope - we should be bold in approaching God for forgiveness,
keep our hearts true to the faith, hold fast to that hope; don’t neglect meeting together, encourage
each other….and I like this one - consider how to provoke one another to love
and good deeds;
Those are all good suggestions for the waiting period, which
is every period…. - we are to keep our hearts true, which can be a struggle
when 2000 years have passed already;
encourage one another, because its hard to keep living as a Christian
with all the temptations around us; keep meeting together - ah, that’s one
where we’ve been falling down as a larger community - embers go out more easily
when they’re separated from the fire of others.
This waiting time we’re in is a marathon, friends, not a sprint, like
early believers thought at first. And
its a a relay race marathon, too, with each generation running their long lap
before handing off the baton - its easy to lose heart, lose vision - meeting
together strengthens us all. I like the
line about ‘provoking’ one another to love and good works - usually I use the
word ‘provoking’ about something annoying, or something that gets under my
skin. Used in this way, though, its
about finding ways to pull out good works from one another, pull out or
encouraging love on one another. How DO
we provoke these in each other? That’s
an interesting thought. Maybe challenge
each other? Model for each other? Correct each other? Its worth pondering.
Let’s go back to Jesus use of the word ‘birthpangs’ - and to
the Hebrews passage about holding fast to our confession of the HOPE that is in
us. Birthpangs, of course, point to a
birth! The point of labor is to birth the new life. It can be a struggle, for sure. It gets really painful, for sure. It takes a lot of work, for sure. Jesus uses the word ‘birthpangs’ for dire
things like falling apart, wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes and famines
- yet the choice of that word indicates a hope and trust that something new is
coming out of all of this.
That’s the way a follower of Jesus can find any hope in all
of this we see around us - the wars and rumors of wars, the shakings of the
planet, the climate changes and famines - fearful things to endure - yet if
these are birthpangs, then there is a birth coming, a new life coming; a life
that we long for and hope for and trust in and prepare ourselves for. We cannot give ourselves up to despair; we
cannot escape into nihilism or collapse in meaninglessness. We Christians, of all people, have hope. We are the followers of Christ whose promised
birth was fulfilled, who was killed, but then was raised in another new
creation - a resurrection. Friends, our
God is the One who is Life itself. There
are all kinds of promises and images about this in Scripture - that the desert
will bloom like a rose, that a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse, that a
valley of bones was re-animated into a people.
Christianity is a faith where what looks like death is
actually the beginning of a new chapter.
Naomi and Ruth, of the last few weeks’ readings, remember, the first
chapter starts with all the deaths and moves - then the story goes from
there. Jesus is killed, yet is raised,
and the story of the church goes on from there.
This is a spiritual truth. God,
the creator of life, recreates and births new life.
This truth of God as Life is embedded into the creation God
placed us in as well. Albert Einstein
realized a truth of the universe, as he posits that energy cannot be created or
die - it just changes form. Fascinating
connection, isn’t it? We see it in
smaller forms in the cycles of seasons, or in the chrysalis of the butterfly or
other creatures that die in one form and re-emerge in another. These aren’t resurrections, although they can
evoke the nature of God as one who re-imagines and recreates life even in death.
So the truth that Jesus teaches today is that we live in a
time of birthpangs, a time of labor towards something to be born. We are moving towards the day of the Lord,
albeit more slowly than we can perceive.
I guess I could use the word ‘Interim’ or ‘transitional,’ like a
between-time. We learn and practice our
faith in the hope that the realm of God is near, and is even now in our
hearts. So have hope; trust in God. Keep meeting together to encourage each
other, and ponder how to provoke one another to love and good works. Hold on to the faith. AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment