Signs of the end?

Next Saturday I’m going back to the city I went to school in, St Albans in Hertfordshire for a reunion of some of my year group who were at school from 1978 to 1985. I’ve not seen most of them for nearly 40 years. We are having a tour of the school and we are meeting some of our former teachers but I hope there isn’t a tour of the swimming pool. I hated swimming. The PE teacher used to hold a pole over my head and he’d shout when I started to struggle in the depths – hold on if you’re in trouble. Just hold on.

This Sunday is the second to last Sunday of our liturgical year. As we approach the end of the Church year, our Gospel invites us to consider Jesus’ predictions and teaching about the end of the world. And how we might hold on in trouble.

I went into the craft and chat Saturday workshop when I arrived at Allhallowgate yesterday afternoon. I was told as there was spare fabric to join in making a Christmas pudding. I told them I’d make one if they’d write me a sermon on the apocalypse! I was turned down.

There are people who are just holding on at the moment. The world feels too much. That’s why we are switching on Christmas lights so early. We need light. They were switched on last night, 16 November in Ripon. A truck was blasting out Christmas music so much so for several hours I had One more sleep by Leona Lewis going round and round my head. Santa was there and reindeer. On November 16!

We hold on by not thinking about the hard stuff, the swimming pool, the wars, the politics but you know one of the craft group said you’d better throw Thump into it…

I think I’ve told you that I’ve traced through social media some cousins in different parts of the United States. One says in a message “it’s scary and he isn’t even in the White House yet.” Are there signs of the end? Throw in too destruction of the planet, a lack of respect for the different and isolationism, who knows? People have worked out when the world will end and have been wrong. I remember once preaching in a very conservative evangelical Anglican Church the day after an expected rapture. I began my sermon by joking “ well we are all still here then” and none of them laughed!

Let’s be very brave and look at our Bible passages because they are both about just hold on when you are in trouble or it’s all too much.

The book of Daniel is familiar to many for the stories of the faithful being thrown into the furnace, and of surviving the lion's den. We were told those stories as children.

The story of Daniel is set just after Babylon's first attack on Jerusalem. The Babylonians had taken the city, plundered the Temple, and were taking swathes of their population into exile. Amongst the prisoners were Daniela and his three friends, whose Babylonian names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The book of Daniel can be split into two parts. The first part (chapters 1, 3, 6) is their story and how they kept hope alive while living in the land of their conquerors. The other chapters (2, 4, 5, 7) include visions and stories that instruct the reader in not rebelling against God, encouraging patience while waiting for God's rule to return. In chapter 11, the author writes about a vision of the future where kings will rise and fall, including the final ‘king of the north', who will invade Jerusalem and desecrate the Temple. But even he will finally fail and be defeated.

There are many debates about the identity of this king, with some arguing it is the Syrian King Antiochus who lived in the mid second century BC. Others think it is a description of the Roman Empire. No single historical figure or empire fits the description entirely.

In the reading today, there is a vision of the end times to come, the final resolution of God's world.

The fate of the righteous and the wicked is decided. St Michael the Archangel comes as a sign of divine intervention in the natural order, but there is a strong hint of predestination in this text with only some being saved, a theme that is attractive to the author.

In verses 2-3, the text suggests resurrection of the dead, the only time in the Hebrew bible where this is explicitly affirmed, though belief in it was more widespread than the texts might suggest. The dead here are revived so that justice might be done – both on those who sinned in life, and those who suffered even though they did no wrong.

The apocalyptic imagery is picked up by Jesus and is written about in parts of Mark's gospel and in Revelation, where John applied them to the Roman Emperor.

Hold on.

Then Mark 13.

Before we consider Jesus’ words, it is important to note the political backdrop against which many think Mark’s Gospel was written. Most scholars concur that Mark wrote his Gospel for Christians living in or near Rome about 30 to 40 years after the death of Jesus. This was a time of political turmoil in Rome. Some Christians experienced persecution by the Romans during the reign of the emperor Nero (about 64 A.D.). Jewish revolutionaries rebelled against the Romans, which led the Romans to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. In this time of political turmoil and persecution, many in Mark’s community might have wondered if the end times predicted by Jesus were in fact quite near.

The reading from Mark chapter 13 is part of the Bible which we call apocalyptic. About the end. Jehovah’s Witnesses will get you about the end. Christianity has beliefs about the end but we rarely share them. Christian faith believes there will be an end – the end of the present age, the return of Christ and a new age inaugurated.  We believe that those who trust in Christ receive now. here, a foretaste of the new life in which they will share in Christ's triumph over death and rise, transformed like him, to perfect life in the presence of God. And that that perfect life will come. The end of this story and the beginning of a new one. Jesus stands with his disciples outside the awesome Temple which the disciples marvel and Jesus says you know, one day this will be gone, there will be destruction…

 

A first look at his words isn’t very comforting. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be earthquakes in various places,  and famines but then he says something else. 

 

The new age is coming says Jesus, but it might be hard for a bit. Believe, stay firm, hold on, be the church. You will be rewarded in the end.   Only light drives out dark. Only love drives out dark. In that we trust even when we have no answers even when we do not know what to do – for God is God.

The Temple was the focal point for worship for Israel. The First Temple, built by King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians. Some seventy years later, Jews returning from the Babylonian exile rebuilt the Second Temple and 500 years later King Herod remodelled some of it, beginning around 19 BC and finishing in 63 AD.

This means that the work was still continuing in Jesus’ day but even partly done, it dominated the skyline as well as the religious practices of the Jews. To stand outside and look up would have been awe-inspiring.

Some of the structures were vast. One of the foundation-stones, measured in recent times, proved to be nearly twenty-four feet in length, by four feet in depth.

The disciples would not just have seen the physical structure but would have absorbed the cultural enormity of what the Temple meant for their people; what it said of their history; what is called from them in worship. This was the sacrificial centre of their faith. This was where they were expected to make pilgrimage. This was where, in the Holy of Holies, they were taught that God was most present.

Is it any wonder they gasped and said out loud: ‘Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!’

What they didn’t know, of course, was that the Temple was destined for destruction. In the year 70 the Romans laid siege to the city and after five months destroyed both Jerusalem and the Second Temple, as it was known. 

 

Yet existence as God’s people did not depend on the Temple; as they had learned in a previous era, so long as they gathered to pray and hear the stories of God’s mighty saving acts recounted in the Torah, so long as they allowed themselves to hear and heed the words of their prophets, so long as they continued to love God and neighbour and even their captors, they could continue even in dire circumstances to serve as agents of and witnesses to God’s faithful, redemptive work in the world. 

 

Just hold on…

Let me end like this. When I’ve no words, I always go to Nadia Bolz-Weber, an amazingly honest pastor in the States. She shared this prayer this week.

 

Dear God,

There’s so much to fear right now that I’m sort of losing track of what to worry about most. So I’m gonna need some help focusing. Show me what is MINE to do. Then grant me the strength to do it, and the humility to rest knowing it is enough.

Help me remember that even if there is more to worry about in life right now, it does not mean that there is less to love in life right now.   So protect every inch of our joy, Lord. And if you could help me stop reading shit on the internet, that might really help too. Amen.

And note how the Gospel ends today:

We read with hope that the "wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever."

The texts suggest a kind of ‘power behind the madness' that will break through for those who maintain hope. Reading this we might find comfort in the story of redemption that underlies all space and time: God's promise and power over, through and despite human actions. There is a pattern here that comforts. Whether it is apocalyptic beasts, humans glorifying in their own power, or anyone who doesn't acknowledge God, God will one way or another bring about God's kingdom. So, the message is simple – keep the faith.

 Things may well be difficult and confusing. Things may be changing, there are rumours and birth pangs… but you know what -  - maybe until the end we are simply to hold on and God will be faithful…