Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
Advent 1 – 30th
November 2014
Mark 13.24-37 "But in those days, after that
suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling
from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see 'the Son of
Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the
angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to
the ends of heaven.
28
"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender
and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these
things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this
generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will not pass away.
32
"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven,
nor the Son, but only the Father. 33
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a
journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work,
and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.
35 Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the
master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow,
or at dawn, 36 or else he may
find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37
And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."
Isaiah 64.1-9 O that you would tear open the heavens and
come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- 2 as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your
adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3 When you did awesome deeds that
we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4 From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those
who wait for him. 5 You meet
those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were
angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 6 We have all become like one who
is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade
like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on
your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from
us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O
LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your
people.
There
have always been people
who have sought to predict the date
of the end of the world.
From
the prophecies of Nostradamus
to the date-setting of American
doomsday ‘prophet’ Harold Camping,
from
seventeenth-century millennialists
to the tenth-century monk Joachim of
Fiore,
from
the messianic prophets of first-century Judaism
to the 2012 end of the Mayan
calendar
–
there has never been a shortage of people predicting the end of the world.
And
yet here we still are, and the world is still turning.
In
the twentieth century,
end of the world prophecies took a
technological turn,
and
many who grew up in the shadow of the cold war
genuinely feared the world might
imminently end in nuclear holocaust.
In
the 1970s it was believed that the world was cooling
and that a new ice age was coming
(as Punk Rock group The Clash
famously sang in their song London
Calling).
The
current and genuine fears about global warming and climate change
inspire similar levels of fear,
anxiety, denial, or activism.
And
yet, for now, here we still are.
So
far no-one has set a date which has been proved right;
as Jesus says in our gospel reading
for today
‘about that day or hour, no one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son.’
(Mark
13.32; cf. Matthew 24:36).
Strictly
in the interests of research for this sermon, you understand,
I spent a few distressing minutes
this week researching end-times predictions online.
And
I have to say that the world of the contemporary end-times prophet
is certainly an interesting place to
be…
One
London pastor and blogger, who had probably better remain nameless,
runs an end-times ‘news feed’,
in which he lists
contemporary events that he believes
are indicators of the
fact that ‘Jesus is Coming Soon’.
Just
in case you’re a stranger to this world,
I thought I’d share some of his
evidence of the end times with you…
He
describes himself as a
“Pastor &
Proclaimer of the Word of God.
Counting down
to the return of Jesus Christ
& pointing
out the signs along the way.”
Interestingly,
he then adds,
“REPENT, for
the time is at hand...”
His
list of signs of the end times,
includes the following from just the
last few days alone:
45 arrested in
Boston yesterday for rioting... 700 miles away from #Ferguson. This has spread
right accross the US
Massive
earthquake in Indonesia. 7.0 on the
richter scale
Bubonic Plague
death toll in Madagascar reaches 47
Woman got
swallowed by a sinkhole in her garden while hanging the washing out.
Flash floods
have killed at least 32 in Morocco today #EndTimes
Volcano
erupted in Cape Verde
Earthquake in
Japan caused houses to collapse
And
so it goes on…
For
this blogger, and his many, many followers online,
human violence and natural disasters
are
the convincing proof they need
to believe that the end
of the world is at hand.
Whilst
at one level it is fairly easy to deconstruct his logic;
after all, earthquakes, volcanos,
disease, and war are nothing new,
and yet, still the end
has not come;
nevertheless,
the issue of suffering at the hands of humans and nature
continues to pose a very real
question for any of us who seek to hold a belief
in a God of love and mercy.
In
many ways, seeing such events as proof that we live in the ‘end times’
is a compelling solution to the
problem of human suffering;
because
it shifts the focus away from us, and our
response,
and puts the emphasis instead onto
the outworking of the purposes of God.
In
other words, these things must happen before the end,
because God wills it to be so,
and
the fact that they are happening now,
must mean that the end is nigh…
Many
of those who have responded to the problem in this way,
have been influenced by date-setting
end-times prophets,
or the many films and books
that offer such an interpretation
of the relationship
between human suffering the end of the world.
The
Left Behind series of books and films
has achieved huge popularity over
recent decades,
offering
a rapture-based end times reading
of passages like our Gospel reading
for this morning,
or other similar biblical texts such
as the book of Revelation.
And
not without good reason or effect,
because I have a suspicion that if
you ask most people
what they think Mark 13
is about,
one of the first things they will
say
is
that it’s about the end of the world.
And
it’s true, there is a lot of imagery in this chapter
that sounds pretty catastrophic
(‘apocalyptic’, you might say, but
we’ll come to that shortly).
However,
is it actually accurate to say that it’s about the end of the world?
Well, yes and no.
If
what we mean is,
‘is it a kind of “Dummies Guide” to
the end of the world?’,
then no, it isn’t.
As those who have tried to make it
such can show us,
neither Mark chapter 13,
nor the book of Revelation itself
are any better at helping us predict
the date of the end of the world
than, say, Nostradamus!
This
is where our end-times blogger is making his category error;
he’s treating this chapter, and
others like it,
as a literal prediction of specific
events
that will precede the ending of the
world.
However,
there may be another way of looking at this chapter,
where it can indeed speak to us very
powerfully about the end of the world.
Have
you ever heard someone say,
perhaps after a tragic bereavement
or a serious illness,
‘it was the end of the
world’?
They
clearly don’t mean that the world has literally ended,
and to assume they did would be to
miss their point.
What
they mean is that the world as they knew
it has gone,
and they are now living in a new
world,
a world that, is in a
very real sense,
different to the world
that they lived in before.
Of
course such world-ending, or world-transforming, events
aren’t always tragic or traumatic,
sometimes
it can be a positive thing that ends one world and starts another,
think of the unexpected lottery win,
or falling in love, or becoming a
parent.
The
old world ends, and a new world begins.
So
when the New Testament uses imagery and language
about the end of the world,
it
is telling its readers that if they understand its message,
if they spend time with its
prophetic images,
they
too will experience ‘the end of the world’,
as their old world is brought to an
end,
and they find ourselves entering a
new world
in which Jesus Christ is
at the centre of creation,
drawing all things and
all people to himself.
Those
who have sought to confine such passages
to the realm of predictive prophecy
make
it of greatest relevance to those
who find themselves living in the
‘last days’ of planet Earth.
And
the difficulty with this is that they run the risk of alienating
the vast swathe of humanity
(probably including
ourselves, unless we really are the ‘last generation’)
who have been born, lived, and died
within the normal course
of history.
Christians
usually assert that the Bible is of equal relevance to all,
whether you live and die in the
first, eleventh or twenty-first centuries.
So,
if it is to be of relevance to all generations,
not just the last generation,
and
if it proclaims a message of world-ending significance
rather than simply predicting the
end of the world,
what
is it that is so special about the message of a passage such as Mark 13?
Well,
I think Ruth was very helpful last week,
when she suggested that one of the
ways of reading such sections of scripture
is
to see them as similar to the story of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’,
where the vision of the future that
is shown to Ebenezer Scrooge
by the ghost of Christmas yet to
come,
is not prediction of
what must take place,
but rather shows the consequences
that will arise
from the choices
Ebenezer will make.
The
intent of the vision that he is shown
is to produce in him a change of
behaviour;
it
is to get him to ‘repent’ of his scrooge-like behaviour,
and to start living a life of
generosity and care for his fellow humans.
In
other words, it is to bring his world of mean-ness to an end,
and to bring into being a new world
of kind-ness.
It
is exactly the same with Mark 13,
as it is for other similar texts
such as the book of Revelation.
The
descriptions of suffering and tribulation
that we find in the apocalyptic
tradition of the New Testament,
are
not to be heard as expressions of the vengeance of God,
but rather should be seen as the
suffering caused by
- as Robert Hammerton
Kelly puts it -
‘wars, frauds, charlatans, natural
catastrophes,
misunderstandings, and
persecutions’
The
very human and very troubling question,
of where God is to be found in the
midst of human suffering,
is
not answered by seeing God as the instigator of that suffering,
but rather as the one who suffers
alongside us
in the shared tribulations of our
fallen human condition.
This
is not a cross God,
it is the God of the cross.
Some
of us here may remember the news reports from 1966,
when, over a period of five minutes,
the coal tip above the Welsh mining
village of Aberfan,
slid down the mountain and engulfed
a farm, several houses, and a school.
In
total, 116 children and 28 adults were killed.
The
question which many asked, quite rightly, was:
where was God at Aberfan?
An
end-times blogger might see such an event
as further proof that we live in the
last days,
with
tragedies such as this happening in fulfilment
of the prophecies of scripture.
But
I think a more helpful perspective comes from the theologian W H Vanstone,
who offered the following reflection
on the question
of where God is to be found in the
midst of suffering. He said,
‘We believe that at the moment when the
mountain of Aberfan slipped,
“something went wrong”.
Our faith is
in a Creator who does not abandon even this,
nor those who suffered, wept and
died in it.
Our preaching
on the Sunday after the tragedy was not of a God
who, from the top of the mountain,
caused or permitted,
for his own inscrutable reasons, its
disruption and descent;
but of one who
received, at the foot of the mountain, its appalling impact
and who, in the extremity of
endeavour,
will find yet new resources to
restore and redeem.’
If
our view of God is one that expects him to intervene in power
to stop the vicious cycles of human
suffering,
then we are worshipping the wrong
God.
The
‘intervention of God’ is that which we see in Christ,
where God comes to his people not in
vengeful wrath,
but rather to suffer with us, and to
redeem our fragility and frailty.
The
sufferings of humanity depicted in the Apocalyptic tradition
point us not to violence of divine
origin,
but
to the sufferings brought about by humans themselves
as they resist the in-breaking the
Kingdom of God
and live out their humanity in imitation
of a violent God of their own making.
Sadly
predictable human failings cause human suffering on a global scale
without any divine intervention
needed.
And,
time and again, it is the innocent who suffer.
From
children whose school was sited beneath an unstable coal tip,
to impoverished subsistence farmers
forced to live in areas
prone to flooding as sea levels rise,
to Syrian refugees,
to aid workers,
to people who are simply on the
unlucky bus, or tube,
or
in the wrong building at the wrong time.
The
powerful flex their muscles,
and the innocent suffer.
And
where is God in the midst of all this suffering?
Well,
this is a good question,
for us on this first Sunday of
Advent.
In
the deepening darkness of the world,
where is God to be found?
The
prophet Isaiah wrestles with this question
in our Old Testament text,
as
he addresses God’s seeming absence from his people,
and articulates a desperate longing
that God would
dramatically intervene in human affairs,
tearing open the heavens and coming
down
with such force that the
mountains would quake at his presence (Isa 64.1).
The
Advent prayer of, ‘Come Lord, come quickly’
is the prayer of desperate longing.
It
is a prayer born of an experience of the absence of God.
In
our evening ‘Informal Church’ services,
we always have a time of quiet
reflection,
where
we ask people to think about where, over the last week,
they have met with God.
But
then we follow this up with another, possibly more difficult question,
of where, over the last week, have
we been,
but have not met with God.
Or,
to put it another way,
where have we experienced the
absence of God;
where
have we wanted to share with Jesus and the Psalmist
the cry of desolation ‘My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?’
And
sometimes the desperate longing of our souls
to experience God in the midst of
Godless suffering and pain
may simply need to be
held in mystery.
Sometimes we have to wait through
holy Saturday
for the day of
resurrection to come.
But
sometimes we may discover that God appears absent from our lives,
because we have been looking for the
wrong God.
We
may discover that we have been looking at the top of a mountain
for a God who sends a coal tip down
onto a school,
when
God is actually to be found at the bottom of a mountain,
in the mud, and terror, and death of
human suffering.
As
humans we have an inbuilt tendency to idolatry,
we find it all too easy to worship
the wrong God.
The
story of the fall from the opening chapters of Genesis
vividly explores the human
experience
of seeming hard-wired for idolatry.
We
so often look for the wrong God,
in the wrong places, and from the
wrong perspectives.
And
so it was that the longed-for Christ was born,
not in the palace where the wise men
first sought him,
but in poverty to a refugee family,
The
coming of Christ marks the beginning of a new humanity,
one which is focussed on the true
God of love
rather than the many gods of
violence that we so readily construct in our own image.
The
Advent of the ‘second Adam’, as Paul calls Jesus (1 Cor. 15.45),
opens before us a new way of being
human
which is not dominated by the
violent idolatry of the first Adam,
because
the Advent of Jesus reveals God to be the God of the bottom of the mountain,
rather than the top.
If
we are looking for a god who comes in might,
to violently liberate us from our
enemies,
and to extract revenge
on those who oppress us,
then yes, that God is absent.
However,
if we are looking for the God of the victims,
then we may discover that he has
been with us all the time.
And
if he is hidden from our eyes,
it is because our eyes have not yet been
opened to the true God,
who comes, not to fight
for right,
but to redeem suffering and restore
humanity.
The
God who comes to us in Jesus,
and who goes to the cross in pain
and suffering,
is
a God, not of violence, but of non-violence.
The
God who is revealed in Christ,
is not a God who is passively
indifferent to human suffering,
but
one who takes positive action
to enter into our suffering bringing
redemption to all.
The
apocalyptic tradition which we meet in Mark chapter 13,
unveils the true nature of the God
who comes to humanity in Christ.
And
it challenges us all to see the world unmasked,
to see God as God is, and not as we
would construct him,
to see the Son of Man revealed in
Christ Jesus,
who comes to us in
weakness and humility,
to see the signs of the in-breaking
kingdom of heaven,
redeeming and
transforming the world,
to keep awake when others slumber,
to
not let ourselves be lulled into a stupor of indifference,
but
to keep hope alive and faith active.
The
apocalyptic unveiling of the world
reveals to us a God who is not found
along the well trodden paths of violence.
And
as we see God in Christ Jesus we come to realise that all attempts
to simply contain our human desire
for dominance over another
are ultimately fruitless in
releasing us from the hold that sin has over our lives.
Any
attempt by humans to sanction violence,
whether through secular legitimation
or sacred justification,
simply opens the door to the
profanity of further bloodshed.
What
we need, to be fully free before God, is re-creation,
we need the radical transformation,
that
comes through the ending of one world
and the inauguration of a new world.
We
need violence transformed,
and suffering redeemed.
We
need humanity recreated,
and the world reborn.
And
this is the vision of Mark 13,
not as a future hope,
but
as a present reality, coming into being in our midst,
as we enter the new world and live
its reality into being in our lives.
The
end times are at hand,
the old is gone, and the new has
come.
As
Jesus puts it;
‘in
those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its
light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will
be shaken.
Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power
and glory.’
