Mark 13:1-8
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher,
what great stones and what great buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see
these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be
thrown down.” When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple,
Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be,
and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be
accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you
astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ 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 birth pangs.
My mother was terrified of heights. Absolutely petrified. So, when my father
booked a trip to Peru, she wished him the very best of luck. You are going, he said.
My sister was doing a service trip there, so motherly love proved stronger than her
fear.
Then, my father booked a tour of Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas,
8,000 feet above sea level. She bid him go with God. Next thing you know, there
we all are, on a bus snaking its way around hairpin cliffs, puttering to a stop
somewhere above the clouds. My mother’s face was as green as the hillsides. To be
fair to my father, this was a well-beaten path. There were people in their 90s on the
bus.
My sister and I hopped off the bus, breathed in that thin air, and said, “Look
at those stones!” But my mother stepped off the bus, driven by a mix of
determination and certain doom. After my sister and I finished twirling like Maria
in The Sound of Music, we looked around and our mother was nowhere to be seen.
A little ways ahead, a tour guide was standing at the bottom of a massive stone
structure with a ladder so small only a daring Inca could use it, and all the way at
the top of the stone wall was my mother. The guide only spoke Spanish but was
gesturing to her. My mother could not understand, so she gave a fake smile and a
half-hearted thumbs up, like she was glad to have gotten that part over with.
The only trouble was… my mother had scaled a wall labeled PROHIBIDO.
That great stone she had scaled was off limits to the public. I started waving at her
to come back down. She waved back at me, still not understanding. Finally, I
snapped like someone ordering a dog off a couch, and it dawned on her that she
had to come down that tiny Incan ladder. Her eyes opened like Wiley Coyote.
After a few years, when the fog of embarrassment had cleared and we were
back at sea level, we were able to laugh about this. It became a family warning
against crossing bridges before you get to them, about the power of fear to lead you
astray.
The disciples strolled out of the Temple in Jerusalem, feeling pretty
confident. “Teacher, look at these great stones, look at these great buildings.” The
Temple in Jerusalem they’d just left was so much more than a great feat of
architecture. Those stones represented something. More than a place, they were a
sense of place for the people of God. More than a building, they were an
institution. Sacred ideals. The project of many generations finally come to fruition.
The fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. God’s promises literally set in stone.
That’s why what Jesus said next was so unthinkable. “Yes, nice, isn’t it? It’s
all going down. Intentionally. Totally.” At this point, I imagine the disciples
reached for an entire bottle of Tums. Four of them pulled Jesus aside. “Jesus,
What? When? How?”
It’s interesting how we think that knowing what is to come will somehow
make it easier. Tell us the symptoms, the tipping point, the road map. Show us the
New York Times needle. But I don’t think knowing made it easier for them. A
preaching professor of mine said once, “It is a merciful angel who hides the future
from our eyes.”
Jesus went on to describe wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against
nation, earthquakes and famines. He warned them that there would be many people
who would take advantage of the chaos and put up a shingle and say, “I am he.”
These deception brokers, fraudsters and entrepreneurs of confusion would be a
dime a dozen, he warned. And indeed in 70 the Temple was destroyed, never to be
rebuilt. That might have already happened when Mark’s Gospel was written or
seemed likely.
But then, as the disciples were about to pass out, Jesus gave them two
commands for the ages, two commands for when everything is shaking: Number
one, Do not be led astray and number two: Do be alarmed.
I will confess, sheepishly, that I have failed at both of these. I been led astray
many times. By politicians. By influencers. By ads that claim vacations are always
sunny. And by social media that claims every single person is in a clean kitchen
stirring healthy homemade soup to children with halos on their heads near well-
behaved pets most of the time.
I will also confess, sheepishly, I have been alarmed plenty. There might even
be audible sirens coming from my brain. I have been alarmed by media that panics
me with two or three existential crises before I have even had breakfast. By the
runaway train of thought chugging through my brain at 3 am. Sometimes I am
alarmed just by someone’s tone of voice.
I’ve heard from many you since the election— Some of you feel shaken,
disoriented, deeply troubled. I know that there is a range of politics in this room.
We are not all like-minded politically. And indeed, I give God thanks for a church
where red and blue, left and right, can live in communion with Christ and one
another. But if you feel alarmed – it is ok to say that here. If you are sacred for
sacred institutions – it’s ok to say that here. You are not alone.
That’s when we land at the heart of today’s story. Jesus doesn’t leave the
disciples with some prescriptions for how to feel differently, like a 1 st century self-
help author. Jesus dares to say something truly astounding from the middle of the
rubble. He says, all this you’re experiencing, yes, it is horribly uncomfortable, yes,
it is deeply disorienting, yes, it is shaking everything up and you might need to lie
down for a while, but this is not a death sentence. It is a birth notice. In the single
greatest understatement of all time, he says, “these are but the birth pangs.” That’s
all. Congratulations! You’re expecting!
Back in 2008, there was a reality show called: “I didn’t know I was
pregnant.” Remember that? People would assume they had a terrible disease. They
would race to the ER, bracing for news of a massive tumor only to be told that they
were in labor. I never quite got it with that show. That was not my experience. But
I have had times when I was sure something was a dead end but it turned out to be
a doorway. Times when I was ready to put on funeral clothes for something and
was surprised by the gift of something new and unexpected.
From start to finish, the Bible is practically a nursery, story after story of
new life showing up when all people expected was loss. Hannah – the other
lectionary text for today, then Elizabeth and Mary who are waiting in the lectionary
green room. And throughout the natural world. Shoots of green leaping off an old
stump. As it says in Romans, “All of creation is groaning in labor until now.” So
sometimes, the most Christian question I can ask when things feel shaky is “God,
this hurts. What is it that is trying to be born?”
Earlier this week, I told the staff that story of my mom scaling the prohibited
ruins in Peru. I could still picture her up there waving. But after telling it this time,
I realized it wasn’t a story about fear leading someone astray at all. It was actually
the story of the brave relentless love of a mother who overcame fear to do
something bold for her children.
In many ways, that is the story we come to hear every week in this church.
We think the life of faith is a scary mission of good versus evil, scaling great
mountains of injustice to rescue the vulnerable, with the ever-present updraft of
death on our faces. And sometimes it feels like that. But at some point, we realize
we are part of a better story. God has overcome everything that can hurt or divide
us. Christ gave us a Temple that can never be destroyed in his own body, given for
us, so that those wobbly ladders guilt and hatred are prohibido, and thousands of
years later, here we are… with a grand adventure of service and forgiveness, hope
and community, mending and beauty to share. We still love our neighbors and our
enemies. We still dole out good bread to the hungry and pour comfort on the
grieving. We still raise our voices for song and justice and keep people from
stoning the most vulnerable. Sometimes those heights still make us queasy. It is not
easy. The best things never are. But we know this: the view is worth the climb.
I’ll end with this benediction from William Sloan Coffin:
May God give you grace never to sell yourself short;
grace to risk something big for something good;
and grace to remember that the world
is too dangerous for anything but truth,
and too small for anything but love.