As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, \u201cLook, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!\u201d Then Jesus asked him, \u201cDo you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.\u201d<\/p>\n When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, \u201cTell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?\u201d Then Jesus began to say to them, \u201cBeware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, \u2018I am he!\u2019 and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.\u201d\u00a0 Mark 13:1-8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To understand this Gospel reading, we really need a paraphrase.\u00a0 Let me share my own:<\/p>\n Walking out of the Temple, the disciples said to Jesus, \u201cLook at this terrific building.\u00a0 It\u2019s our pride and joy.\u201d<\/p>\n And Jesus said, \u201cYou are focusing on the wrong thing.\u00a0 Buildings come and go.\u00a0 One of these days, this one will be rubble, too.\u00a0 Giving yourself to God and the work of God\u2019s kingdom is what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, when they had sometime alone, the disciples asked him, \u201cSo when are we going to lose our terrific building?\u00a0 Are there any signs we should be looking for?\u201d<\/p>\n And Jesus wept.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Maybe the passage doesn\u2019t quite say that. The \u201cJesus wept\u201d part certainly doesn\u2019t appear there.\u00a0 It comes from John and in a completely different connection.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n But, otherwise, the paraphrase captures the disciples\u2019 failure to grasp the point that Jesus makes and, time after time, throughout the rest of Mark 13 Jesus is forced to remind them, \u201cWait, watch, be faithful, do the work of the Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n As I read and re-read these words this week, I couldn\u2019t escape the feeling that they have become even more relevant than ever for the church.\u00a0 Along with the rest of the country, we seem to be caught up in the same kind of non-stop anxiety that the disciples display in this story.<\/p>\n The pandemic is partly to blame.\u00a0 When people sit at home and finish binge watching everything that is vaguely worth viewing, it is easy to begin looking for things to worry about.\u00a0 And the virus itself has generated no small amount of anxiety on its own.<\/p>\n But the isolation that the pandemic imposed is also partly to blame.\u00a0 \u00a0We viewed our neighbors at a distance and the media told us how to think about them and what was going on in their lives.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t and isn\u2019t healthy, and it breeds suspicion.\u00a0 I\u2019ve watched thoughtful, reflective people attribute hateful motives to millions of people with one label, in spite of the fact that no group of human beings is ever that simple or predictable.<\/p>\n Our news cycle is also partly to blame.\u00a0 Yes, there are thoughtful, wonderful hard-working journalists out there, doing their best to be even handed.\u00a0 But there really isn\u2019t enough that\u2019s newsworthy to fuel news cycles 24 hours a day, seven days a week and without it, ratings fall.\u00a0 So, we are also served up a lot of news in the subjunctive mood: \u201cThis could<\/em> happen.\u00a0 That might<\/em> happen.\u201d And the annoying little crawler at the bottom of the screens on our televisions constantly screams out, \u201cBreaking News\u201d or \u201cAlert\u201d has a predictable effect.<\/p>\n And, of course, our politics are mainlining anxiety and mistrust.\u00a0 As a nation we seem to be locked into one of the least reflective, most combative cycles I can remember.\u00a0 And I am not sure we know how to walk away from it.<\/p>\n The result is that we all seem to be looking for a decisive turn of events.\u00a0 The ultimate conflict, the final face-off.\u00a0 And Christians have managed to get it all balled up with their faith, expecting God to be on their side when it is all said and done \u2013 whatever that side might be.<\/p>\n From the very beginning, followers of the church have been obsessed with the question of when God is going to wrap things up.\u00a0 We wondered about it as a church shortly after the Resurrection and that obsession was intensified by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.\u00a0 We worried about it again at the end of the first millennium.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve wondered about it at almost every chokepoint in history.\u00a0 The second World War, the creation of the Israeli nation-state, the threat of nuclear war, and the repeated conflicts in the Middle East were all occasions for apocalyptic speculation.<\/p>\n What is stunning is that in between big events still others of us have persisted in thinking that the end was coming.\u00a0 William Miller, a Baptist preacher from Massachusetts predicted that the world would end on October 22, 1844, when, in fact, nothing in particular happened at all.\u00a0 (It was his third effort to predict the end.\u00a0 Three strikes and you are out.\u00a0 His followers referred to it as \u201cThe Great Disappointment.\u201d)<\/p>\n And fixating on the end isn\u2019t just a religious preoccupation.\u00a0 Look at our movies, cultural trends, or even analysis of challenges that we face, and you see apocalyptic dread everywhere you look.\u00a0 If any number of challenges don\u2019t get you, the Zombie Apocalypse will get you.<\/p>\n Apocalyptic dread is so bad, I cut a paragraph from this article that listed all the things we are afraid will be the end of us, knowing that if I listed your fear, that\u2019s the one that one thing that you would tell me we really should be afraid of.\u00a0 So, apologies to those of you who were mostly concerned about Zombies.\u00a0 They were an easy target \u2013 I hope.<\/p>\n Why do we fixate on the end of all things?<\/p>\n The great Christian philosopher, S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, argued that it is because we live uneasily with our power to choose, and there is certainly something to that.\u00a0 We have so many choices that we can make that it is all but impossible to know what their consequences will be.\u00a0 I think we intuitively want to rush to the end to see how it all works out.<\/p>\n But, ultimately, I think that we also fixate on getting to the end of everything because we refuse to acknowledge a simple fact: There is a God and we are not.\u00a0 We do <\/em>have the power to choose, but if we don\u2019t choose in conversation with God, there is no possibility of being at rest, of living in confidence, of finding peace.<\/p>\n So, we fixate on the end, and we fixate on who will be left behind \u2013 and who is wrong \u2013 because it is easier than the simple, mortal business of listening to God \u2013 of waiting, of watching, of keeping the faith, of working for the Kingdom.\u00a0 Focusing on whether other people are faithful, longing for the judgment of others, dodging the simple \u2013 daily \u2013 resolute effort to listen for the voice of God is just easier.<\/p>\n It is the greatest of all temptations.\u00a0 It is also the path to separation from the work of God and a life of dread and anxiety.<\/p>\n Think back through your life or the history of the church\u2019s saints, and I doubt that the people who matter to you are the ones who screamed \u201cthe end is near.\u201d\u00a0 I am fairly sure that most of you have never heard of William Miller.\u00a0 I am certain that you have never heard of Heriger of Lobbes or Abbo of Fleury.\u00a0 The people you have heard of are people like Augustine, St. Francis, William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and Desmond Tutu.<\/p>\n Why?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t they believe that God is control of history?\u00a0 Yes, they did.\u00a0 But they also believed that our ability to choose can only yield life and healing if we make those choices in conversation with God.<\/p>\n We cannot make those choices, if we are obsessed with proving that our neighbors are wrong.\u00a0 We cannot make them if we are watching for \u201csigns of the end.\u201d\u00a0 We cannot make them by passing our days, evading the necessity to choose or to serve.\u00a0 They can only be made, looking to Jesus and making simple, daily choices to listen, to follow.<\/p>\n Recently a friend of mine, Al Staggs<\/a>, posted a tribute to his sister.\u00a0 His tribute bears repeating, because her choices are much like the choices we are called to make:<\/p>\n Like so many Baby Boomer boys in the 50\u2019s, I was struck by the images I saw of Marilyn Monroe. At around my eighth year, it was obvious to me that my sister, Martha Frances, was growing up to be another Marilyn. Perhaps she was dolling herself up more or the fact that as I matured I was paying more attention to \u201cgirls.\u201d<\/p>\n My beautiful sister left home in the fall of \u201954, eloping with a handsome young man six years her senior, just after graduating from Jacksonville High School. Though only eighteen, life had given her lessons that became the crucible of her early womanhood. She was the oldest of the five\u2026children and thus took a disproportionate share of caring for her four siblings during those the absences of Dad and Momma when they were either working or one of them was absent, Dad being \u201cdried out\u201d at that State Hospital for alcoholism or Momma receiving necessary psychiatric treatment as a result of having to take care of five kids and an alcoholic, drug addict, abusive husband. Being the oldest child, Martha took the brunt of Daddy\u2019s brutality in physical and emotional abuse. All of this made her a strong and tough beauty who could order a big bully on our school bus ride to \u201cget up and give me that seat\u201d when there were no open seats available. When she was in the seventh grade, her third-grade brother, Tom, was sent to the principal\u2019s office to receive a paddling for something he did not do and Martha, his attorney, flatly told the principal, \u201cyou will NOT paddle my brother!\u201d, and he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Martha passed away last week at 85 years of age. How I miss my beautiful sister, an ever-present source of encouragement to me through all of the chapters of my life. As I reflect on her journey as a woman who was compelled to become an adult at so young an age, a woman whose life was touched by severe abuse and considerable deprivation growing up in our eight-hundred square foot house in rural Arkansas, I marvel at the beauty of her soul as she came closer to the end of her pilgrimage on earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What struck me about Al\u2019s tribute to his sister was the simple, faithful, giving life that he describes \u2013 the mortal business of listening for the voice of God.<\/p>\n So, my prayer for you is this:<\/p>\n May you choose life.\u00a0 May you choose to live in deep attention to the voice of God.\u00a0 May you resist the distractions of righteous indignation \u2013 sweeping, indiscriminate judgment \u2013 a desire to judge \u2013 a longing to be superior \u2013 an obsession with the end.\u00a0 May you choose, instead, to live in steadfast, resolute, and patient obedience to the commands of the One who redeemed you.\u00a0 And in that deep attention may you find peace.\u00a0 Amen<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photo by Quinn Burman<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, \u201cLook, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!\u201d Then Jesus asked him, \u201cDo you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.\u201d When he was sitting on the Mount of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3575,3569,3571,3574,3577],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-apocalyptic","category-apocalyptic-dread","category-mark-13","category-news-cycle"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/174\/2021\/11\/quinn-burman-Q4OKpycQRa0-unsplash-scaled.jpg\")
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