By the Rev. David Brinton
Gospel Reading: Mark 13:1-8
There are any number of global catastrophes and more personal tragedies that one could use to begin a homily on the theme of the end of the world: natural disasters of increasing frequency which remind all of humanity but especially us, the wealthiest and most technologically advanced society in the history of the earth, how puny and vulnerable we really are; the mind -numbing brutality of the war in the land of the bible that never ends; the less famous but even more brutal war in South Sudan; the drug-addled human wreckage that cowers in dark doorways right around the cathedral near where I live; the recent election in the US which has given rise in the much of the media to predictions of chaos to come. Even after so many wars and disasters, generation after generation, some still speculate: if this is it, is this the one, the last one?
Jesus explicitly tells us that no one can or should try to predict by exterior events alone when or how the end will come (“do not be led astray, the end is still to come”) , but it is hard not to when we experience (directly or through the media) earth-shattering evil. We feel a twinge that says – could this be it? Is there anything more wicked or painful to be endured?
But, like their predecessors, this year’s horrors will most likely subside into some form of normal life, at least for a while. For those directly affected, of course, nothing will ever be the same again, some will even long for the end so that the suffering ends, but for most of the rest of the world, life will go on. This isn’t the end and we go on until the next news flash or phone call or doctor’s diagnosis bring us again to the brink. This has been the pattern from the beginning. 1700 years ago St Augustine wondered if the victims of the barbarian invasions of Rome in the 3rd century thought that was the final end and warned that we were not to speculate in that way.
So the question then becomes not when will the end come or what will it be like, but how are we to live in view of that end, how do we wait for it. How do we live and wait in the midst of present suffering?
When Jesus in Mark chapter 13 describes a global scenario of natural and man -made disaster as “ but the beginning of the birth pangs”, he is bequeathing to the church a description of what Christian living in the present is to be like in view of what has already happened to us and what is yet to come.
Mark 13 (and its parallels in Matthew and Luke) is sometimes called the “little apocalypse” to distinguish it from the one everyone knows, and about which many like to obsess: the Revelation of John, sometimes called simply The Apocalypse. Both sound a lot like parts of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament from which we have an excerpt as today’s first reading. The Book of Daniel arose out of a time of violent occupation in Judea about 200 years before Christ. St Mark’s gospel may well have been composed in Rome in the wake of Nero’s persecution of the early Roman Christians. The apocalypses of the bible all seem to arise out of a situation of contemporary tribulation or persecution and seek to “unveil” (the meaning of the Greek word apocalypse) the deepest meaning of this suffering, and to reveal the loving purposes of God for his people in visions of a future destruction of a fallen world, a last judgement and, finally, restoration in “a new heaven and a new earth”.
Apocalypses are, then, essentially hopeful and meant to encourage hope in the suffering believer. The end of apocalypses is not destruction but re-creation: The Garden of Eden at the beginning of the first book of the bible gives way to the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem at the end of the last book of the Bible.
And so while the apocalypses of the bible are not literal predictions of the end of the world, they do tell us the truth about the future and how we are to live in the present . They are particularly intense and vivid summaries of the heart of the gospel: followers of Christ are to live hopefully now, oriented towards the end that will be our true beginning (Joseph Ratzinger).
When Jesus describes current suffering as “birth pangs” he is saying that out of present suffering comes a new thing, a birth, new life. His sermon in today’s gospel takes place in what we now call Holy Week, as he makes his way to his passion and resurrection. And so he is pointing to his own impending suffering and death as apocalyptic: his Passover from death to life is the apocalypse which reveals the true meaning of all the others, and of our own suffering, our own personal apocalypses. The final end of all histories, yours, mine, the universe’s, is shown forth in the Passover of Jesus.
And so in this sense the end we all await and are tempted to speculate about has already taken place, in the events of Holy Week just over 2000 years ago. And if this is so, it puts our present situation of suffering and our anxiety about the future in a whole new perspective.
If the suffering of Jesus is the birth pangs of a new age, so our own personal suffering is caught up and transformed in his, “our own suffering is part of the birth pangs of the new age. . ..history is short and we are made for eternity.” (Maria Boulding OSB) This time before the birth of the new age is to be characterized by patience and hope as we live oriented to that future. Thomas a Kempis in the 14 century said that we would not be judged on what we know or how well we expressed it, but “how well we have hoped” in this life.
To live hopefully is to be conscious of those who have every reason not to do so, and to help them. Christians are especially called upon not only to reach out with practical help, and to work concretely for peace, but to do so hoping for those who cannot hope, those whose present agony may make it hard for them to hear violent language, such as in today’s gospel, language of hope. St Augustine, who warned the church of his time away from anxious speculation about the signs of the times counselled such hope and patience: “ the Lord does not long withhold what he has promised. Only a little while, and we shall see him, and then we shall make no requests and ask no questions, because nothing will remain to be desired nor will anything lie hidden to puzzle us. This ‘little while’ seems long to us while we are still waiting, but when it is over we shall realize how little it was. Meanwhile we should not be sad during this time when what we desire is struggling to birth, for the woman in labour, to whom the lord compares us, is less sorrowful over her present pain than joyful over the child who is to be born.” (quoted in Dame Maria Boulding, The Coming of God)
