Living apocalyptically

(From a sermon I preached today on Mark 13:1-8)

… Always, it seems, we are looking for “signs”, signs from God, signs that will give us a sense of certainty and security among the tumult and confusion of our times. That’s a big mistake. Remember who were always looking for signs from Jesus? His enemies, the Pharisees, demanding assurances that he was the real Messianic McCoy – and Jesus would have none of it. Nor does Jesus promise his followers such explicit divine information, interventions, rather he teaches us lessons in discernment, in ways to read the world as it is, but to read it differently, differently from the way the world reads itself, from the way politicians and pundits, journalists and opinion-makers, read the events of our day; namely, to read it, imaginatively, through the lens of the gospel.

We look and what do we see? We see wars, earthquakes, famines, of course. “Of course” because – Jehovah’s Witnesses notwithstanding – because wars, famines, and earthquakes are always happening. Since I’ve been in Swansea there have been cataclysmic earthquakes in Indonesia, Sumatra, China, and of course the devastating 2004 Boxing Day tsunami; there have been terrible famines in Ethiopia, Sudan, and North Korea; and as for wars, take your pick. In Mark’s day, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions destroyed Laodicia and Pompei, crop failures and food shortages occurred with terrible regularity; and, again, wars, well Rome was in the business of war. How should the followers of Jesus respond? “Keep your head and don’t panic,” Jesus tells them. “This is routine history, and no sign of the end,” he insists (Mark 13: 7, The Message). We are not – I repeat not – to read anything into these natural and human disasters. And we are not – I repeat not – to listen for a moment to “doomsday deceivers” (Mark 13:5, The Message) who do.

What then are we to do in the face of disturbing world events? First, again, don’t panic. More and more I see that faith should make us fearless. And a good thing too, because, second, Jesus tells us that whatever we see happening, “these things are nothing compared to what’s coming” (Mark 13:8, The Message). No “things can only get better” for Jesus, nor even a hint of triumphalism that believers can expect to be spared the worst. On the contrary, Jesus consistently told his followers to expect the worst. No, it’s politicians who promise that progress is just around the corner, and charlatans who peddle the gospel as if it were an insurance policy. Jesus, on the contrary, tells us that if we get out of here without some serious suffering – and not just any suffering but suffering that issues specifically from faithful witness to the charlatans and the politicians, with their lies and their violence – a few verses on we hear that “There’s no telling who will hate you because of me” (Mark 13:13, The Message) – Jesus tells us that if our discipleship doesn’t get us into trouble, we’re going to have some serious explaining to do.

So no hysteria, we gird our loins – and, thirdly, we hope. Hope, not humbug. Hope, not optimism. Hope, not positive thinking, or even steely determination. Christian hope is more subtle than that, and more delicate, vulnerable too, and thus, paradoxically, absolutely indestructible. Hope, as the American poet Emily Dickinson put it:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

“If we want to know how hope works,” says the African-American church leader Peter Gomes, “we must look first to those who suffer, for it is only through suffering that hope is made manifest” – and made durable. The tree of hope takes root in the soil of suffering, in the earthquakes, famines, and wars that seldom touch us folk in the West directly – which is precisely why we tend to be either complacent or cynical, but either way a rather hopeless lot. Which is also why solidarity with the suffering is so crucial, not only for the sake of the suffering, but for the sake of our own sad and superficial souls.

From the suffering we learn that our hope must be in Christ and Christ alone. Not in the latest panacea for the economy or programme for the church, not through accommodation to the prevailing culture which insidiously insinuates itself into the church, but simply in being the kind of people Jesus calls us to be and the Holy Spirit shapes us to be, through the core Christian disciplines of worship and prayer, hospitality and sharing, friendship and forgiveness, truth-telling and non-violence. And that means having our own personal stories written into the story of Jesus, so as not to be flustered and diverted by all the purposeless plots of the world’s higgledy-piggledy business as usual. Being the ongoing story of Jesus – that is what it means to be the church of Jesus, and that is what it means, though the sky fall and buildings crash – that is finally what it means to live apocalyptically.

Tagged as: apocalyptic, Hope, sermon, suffering