25th Sunday in
Pentecost – Year B(Pr 33)
Mark
13:1-8, Daniel 12:1-3
Just
What is the Crisis?
I didn’t stay for the whole game
yesterday, but I was there to experience the first quarter. In case you aren’t football fans, Clemson
jumped out to a 13 point lead – which was pretty much expected. The only thing surprising about those first
three Clemson drives is that two ended in field goals rather than touchdowns. What happened next was not expected. And as it occurred, there was a palatable
gasp of disbelief making its way through the stadium. NC State rattled off 21 unanswered points –
14 of them in two, one play drives.
The conversation in the stands,
prior to the kickoff, was “Which BCS Bowl is Clemson going to.” As the 21st NCSU point went on the
board, the world seemed to be crashing around us.
The world crashing around us is a
scary thing. To think that everything we
had aspired to might be removed is frightening.
If the horror and dread of losing
something as relatively unimportant (yes – I said something as relatively
unimportant) as a football game could do that to Tiger fans everywhere, what is
to be our response to losing something which really matters?
Maybe there is nothing which
matters more than football. I will have
to say, it seems that way, at times. We
have to put up signs and threaten to tow cars in order to keep the parking lot
from becoming a disaster on Saturday. I
know it can be tough to get a spot on Sunday morning, but there are plenty
across the street – an option not available on game day – the parking deck is
full, too.
Sometimes it seems that the
things designed to amuse us or impress us hold our attention very well. While the things to which we claim our lives
are committed – well, they are held a bit closer to the vest. And, while no one may doubt our allegiance
with regard to the Pack or the Gamecocks – do they know of our convictions with
regard to the coming of the Kingdom of God?
We have just heard two
apocalyptic readings. In each, images
are shared of great anguish and of great buildings being thrown down. Both Mark and Daniel felt it important to
speak to a people who were looking, at horror, at what was happening before
them. And, they weren’t talking about
the Saturday afternoon football game.
They were referring to the future of the people of God.
It is impossible to know whether
the people were worried before Daniel or Mark did their writing, or if Daniel
and Mark were pointing out the tenuous nature of the lives they were
living. This is particularly true in
Mark – where all of this conversation arises as the disciples are looking up,
at the impressive buildings of the temple.
They are rather amused by what they see and impressed with what human
ingenuity has been able to accomplish.
Jesus tells them to stop prairie-dogging it and pay attention to the
things which really matter.
I wrote a little about this in
the e-news on Wednesday. There are an
increasing number of doomsayers around us these days. Some seem to just be stirring things up;
others seem to be right on target.
In Harcombe on Tuesday, a guy I
hardly know gleefully announced to me that there are now thirty states with
petitions underway to seek succession from the Union. Really?
All this over the results of the last election cycle?
One surprising and alarming
sub-plot of the election was the shifting of political allegiances after
Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. The
politician in question said he had to support for President someone who would
take global warming seriously. If you
have seen the photos from Venice you might understand why those living near the
sea level have fears of doom and gloom.
Serious and worrisome stuff.
If you have a Facebook account or
are checking your Twitter feed, then you know of the tremendous shock waves
circling the globe over Thursday’s announcement that Hostess would no longer be
making Twinkies! “How will live without them?” was re-tweeted
more times than I care to count.
Israel and Hamas have resumed
bombings. Those of us who came of age
during the time when nuclear winter was an active fear remember that what we
feared most was a middle-east confrontation in which two or more of the nations
there had nuclear capabilities. What
happens if Hamas gets a rocket to make it to Jerusalem, and Iran loans them the
nuclear fuel?
I would raise a different sort of
concern. Practically every indicator
which exists tells us that the role of organized religion is on the
decline. The mirage of a few large, mega
congregations distracts us from the continued and steady dead of more local,
neighborhood churches. There aren’t as
many folks joining the big ones as there are leaving the small ones. “Church” as we have known it is certainly
changing. You can call it a
re-adjustment; or you might label it as an ending.
There are doomsayers all around
us. And they have lots of fodder to feed
on. Do you feel anxious? Are you worried? One of the books I recommend to parents of
college students is titled “College of the Overwhelmed.” In it, the director of mental health services
at Harvard University puts together a persuasive argument that the world into
which they have stepped is overwhelming to the current collegiate
generation. What about you – their
parents, (or grandparents)?
It is the aging of the Church
which has me most concerned and anxious.
Were the people to whom Daniel
and Mark wrote already anxious, or were Daniel and Mark trying to wake them
from some amusement induced indifference?
Hard to know. Impossible to say.
But, I fear it is indifference,
or a paralysis of anxiety, which most threatens us. A professor at Luther Seminary asks how we
read these texts differently if the danger on the horizon isn’t the Roman
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, but the slow demise of the Church. Are we alarmed? Do we see the danger at the door? It is not about institutional preservation –
what worries me is an end to the proclamation of the Good News. Of course, some would say that proclamation
has already ceased; that the current decline is a result of churches becoming
more of a social club than a center of life-changing study and devotion.
Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples
there are no reasons to be concerned.
There are reasons – lots of reasons.
And, he tells us, there will always be reasons. There are many facing us - as a nation, as
inhabitants on planet earth, as persons on the membership rolls of Christian
churches.
Now that we are feeling a bit
anxious, it is time to remember that “apocalypse” is really a “revelation”. And what is revealed is our Biblical
apocalyptic writings is God’s steadfastness.
What is revealed to us is that God will remain by our side and in our
midst. These are but the birth
pangs. They are the interlude which
stands between us and the joy and happiness which is to come.
Will we experience that joy and
happiness? Probably not unless and until
we share in the prophet’s pain. It is
unlikely to occur, so long as we lose our voice yelling at a Saturday afternoon
football game, when all we muster on a Sunday morning is a few well scripted
and softly stated “Amen’s.”
Today, this Sunday, is the final
Sunday of Ordinary Time. Next Sunday,
our church year comes to an end. Next
Sunday, we will be asked to affirm Christ as our King. During the week to come, it is appropriate
for us to reflect on all that the past year has brought us, all that a year’s
worth of readings and sermons have taught us.
That is what we ought to do during the week, so that next Sunday when we
walk through those we are prepared to shout at the top of our lungs, “YES,
JESUS!!! YOU ARE MY LORD AND MY
MASTER! AND I AFFRIM YOU AS MY KING!”
That is what is supposed to
happen next Sunday. But I am going to
sit in that chair back there and listen and I am going to keep a tally. And I fear that there will be more
conversations about the football game with USC than discussions of what our
commitment to Christ as King means in our lives.
Please don’t let that happen.
I think I can survive wars,
rumors of war. Even famine and
earthquakes do not scare me as much as a lukewarm Church filled with folks whose
devotion to Christ is about as deep as a puddle of rainwater on the sidewalk.
The thing which frightens me the
most is the intensity with which we seek out our amusements; and the mediocrity
with which we approach our professions of faith. And I fear that even God’s faithfulness can
never fully overcome the latter.
Amen.
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