Mark 13:1-8 Daniel 12:1-4
“Are you frightened? … Not nearly enough. I know what hunts you.” Those are some of the first words spoken by
Strider to Frodo Baggins in Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring. He is speaking of the Ring Wraiths – nine
human kings who passed into the eternal shadows of evil all because of their
hunger for power. They have become
fearsome beings – immortal and immensely powerful with both swords and
magic. There reappearance on the scene
is an announcement of the end of life as all people know it. They are the sign that apocalyptic times have
descended on Frodo and Strider and everyone else in Middle Earth. They are right to be afraid.
Of course, we on this
Earth don’t need to fear the ring wraiths (though I suspect we could find our
own version of them without looking too far).
But we, too, are living in apocalyptic times complete with signs like
the Super-storm Sandy and the burgeoning war between the Israelis and the
Palestinians and prophets predicting the end of life as we know it. Either the world
economy will implode leaving us back in the dark ages … or Iran will finally
develop its nuclear missile bringing on a terrible war that will render the
cradle of Western civilization dead and sterile for centuries … or we will
reach the tipping point on global warming and whole countries will disappear as
ice caps melt and oceans rise.
Everywhere you look you hear news reporters, talk show hosts, political
activists, and scientists shouting … DOOM!
It would seem that times haven’t changed all that much in
the last 2000 years. All throughout
Israel’s history there were prophets of the apocalypse, but things really
started gearing up about 200 years before Jesus was born. The kingdom of Israel had come and gone a
couple of times, and the land was passed back and forth between several
kingdoms over the course of four or five centuries until the Roman Empire
finally took control and provided some kind of stability and tolerance, allowing
the Jews to continue their particular religious practices.
After a time, the people began to feel stable enough to
think about throwing off the yoke the empire and there were a few rebellions
that were brutally put down. The spirit
of the people was not broken, though, and they began to dwell on the prophesies
of the Messiah who would lead the chosen people back into a second golden age.
Daniel wrote of this coming change with vivid imagery that
described the end of the world as it was and the birth of a new reality, and
while his prophesies were full of suffering and destruction, they were meant as
a message of hope rather than fear for the people. All the bad stuff, after all, would be
happening to the unjust and unfaithful who were abusing the righteous
believers. In other words, it would be
the Romans and their supporters who would suffer while the rest of the Jews
would be delivered and raised up to shine like stars come to Earth … as long as
they lived Godly lives that got them written into The Book of Life.
The refrain was carried on by others – some of them recorded
in the apocryphal books that didn’t make the final cut but are sometimes
included in study Bibles. Eventually, we
hear the same message proclaimed by John the Baptist – repent … turn back to
God for the Kingdom of God has drawn near and the end of these times is upon
us. And finally, Jesus takes his turn.
“Do you see all these great buildings? …. Not one stone here
will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
And when will this happen?
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars …. [When] nation will rise against nation,
kingdom against kingdom. [When] there [are]
earthquakes in various places, and famines” (and flood and storms?). “These are the beginnings of birth pains.”
Not really a clear answer to say the least. It would seem that the birth pains have been
going on for quite some time.
As Stephen Fowl puts it in his writing for the most current issue
of The Christian Century, “Apocalyptic
visions generate fear. This fear can be
a good motive for action, particularly when your home is on fire or when a bus
is barreling down on you as you cross the street. In such a situation fear may save lives ….
But, for the most part, the fear induced by apocalyptic scenarios can so
truncate and focus our vision on such a narrow field as to render us almost
blind.”[1]
Take a moment to look inside yourself.
Find some aspect of your own life where you feel like things are racing
out of control toward a crisis that you can’t really anticipate.
Now take a deep breath and step back for a moment.
Try to look at the situation from a broader perspective.
If you can do that (and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it’s
sometimes impossible) … if you can do that, you will probably find that your
fears have done exactly what Fowl describes.
They have focused you on one part of your life so much that it has
become disconnected from the rest. They
have made you feel like you must act just a quickly and decisively as if you
were in the path of speeding car. And
they have convinced you that you have only a few options open to you … that you
must accept one of those options even if none of them fits the life you most want
to live.
That’s not the healthiest way to make navigate life. We need to move past those fears … to cast
them out and make way for more spacious, life-giving way of living. And fortunately, the scriptures give us many
clues to how to do exactly that. They
are most clearly summed up in first John,
chapter 4 where it says that perfect love casts out fear.
Again … Stephen Fowl….
“For Jesus, navigating one’s way through apocalyptic times calls not for
split-second judgments made in isolation but for clear vision, faithful insight
and holy patience. Fear is the enemy of
all of these practices of faithful living.
Fear narrows our vision so that we fail to see the good in those who
disagree with us. Fear-induced blindness
causes us to fail to see the great host of witnesses that surround, support,
and sustain us…. Fear … [makes] us forget that only God can save us and leads
us to treat others as obstacles that we must overcome.
Jesus' alternative is an invitation to be like those wise people awaiting
the bridegroom’s arrival. We need to
cultivate a patient yet ardent desire for God to arrive in fullness in our
lives … a desire not driven by a desire for triumph or vindication or by fear of
one’s opponents … a desire sustained by our love for God and our eager hope for
communion with the One who loves us without reserve.
The more apocalyptic our present seems, the more important it is for
Christians courageously to rely on love to cast out fear (1John 4:17).” [2]
What I saw was a gathering of faithful people facing difficult
decisions. It is clear – and has been
clear for some time – that we don’t have the resources to keep doing things the
way that we have done in the past. We
don’t have the money, and we don’t have the people. Like it or not, our lives together in this
congregation are going to change.
In the past, the coming crisis has been a cause for fear and anxiety. We have struggled to trim our budget and
adjust the structure that guides our leadership in the hope that the situation
will get better with time, and that has served us fairly well … for a while.
Yet the more that time has passed, the
closer we have come to the brink of change. The more “apocalyptic” our visions, the less
open we have become to the unexpected possibilities that are sometimes offered
by the Holy Spirit. We have focused more
and more tightly on how we can cut back our spending without undermining the
basic values expressed by our budget, and we have come to answer all … or at
least most of the difficult questions about how we will live together with the
answer, “we just need more people.”
But last week, something changed.
Nick suggested that we set up a committee to assess our options for the
future, and the idea of yet another committee was greeted with … well if not
with joyful enthusiasm, at least with without the sense of one more burden
added to an already heavy load. What I felt
as we continued to discuss how and when that committee would do its work was a
lightening of the congregation’s spirit … maybe even the beginnings of the
birth pains of new hope for the future.
Living in the shadow of fear closes us off … hems us in … and makes us less
than we are. It leave us isolated and
alone. Living in the light of love –
love for one another and love for our God – opens us up … allows our hearts and
our dreams to grow bigger … and ties us into life – the true life that flows
from God. It draws us together and sets
our feet on the path where God walks with us.
And relying on love to cast out fear is not simply a comfort to us. The power of love continually transforms
us. It draws us, always, toward being
the best people we can be. That is a
wonderful thing … a powerfully good thing for us and for those we love, AND it
is also the doorway to the world. The
more we are guided by love, the more our compassion leads us out of our doors
and beyond our families and friends to care for the suffering around us, and we
reach out with the most valuable gift we have to give - the love and the hope
that fills our lives with meaning and promise.
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