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Have you ever looked at something beautiful, something sacred, and realized it might not last?
Maybe you felt like that when the Cathedral of Notre Dame was on fire. Maybe you’ve felt it about a loved one who was struggling with illness. A lot of us have felt that way about businesses we loved—or owned—that couldn’t survive the pandemic. And many people feel that way about their country right now. It’s scary when the ground that’s always felt pretty solid under our feet begins to shift.
But Jesus warned us about this, and gave us some good advice: “Don’t be alarmed.” These things will happen. In our world, things are always dying. And new things are always striving to be born.
Our gospel today is about change. Big change. Cataclysmic change. It begins with Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple: the disciples are expressing their awe, and Jesus breezily waves his hand (as I see him) and says, “Don’t get too attached to it. It’s all going to turn to rubble.” Which it did in the next generation, courtesy of Rome.
For 1st c. Jews, losing the Temple–again!–was the end of their world. The end of their system of worship, of sacrifice and atonement, the end of their identity as a nation. It was a colossal, collective death. The beautiful thing, the sacred thing, that they had believed in, was not going to last. Were the disciples ready to hear that? Are we?
Salvation history is a long story of big, scary change. It’s a story of God’s efforts to peel people’s hands off things they can see, and teach them to love and trust what they can’t see: God’s own self, and God’s image in their neighbor. God would do it again and again until finally coming in Jesus and declaring, “Something greater than the Temple is here” (Matthew 12:6).
Anyway, Jesus starts talking about the end of the world, and his own return. Of course the disciples want to know when these shattering events will happen. And what does he say? “It’s going to be on this date, but they’re going to change the calendar a couple times, so pay attention.” No. “If you solve this complex equation, it will be completely obvious.” No. He tells them nobody knows: “Even the angels don’t know. Even I don’t know. Only the Father knows” (Mark 13:32).
This has not stopped a lot of people from pretending they did know. Jesus said they would: that many would come in his name and try to deceive everyone. We have here an example of fulfilled prophecy! Did you know there was a cult that formed in the 1960s that predicted Jesus would return in 1993? The founder died in 1994–probably of embarrassment.
Remember Harold Egbert Camping? He predicted the end would come on May 21, 2011. (To be fair, if I had that name, I might want the world to end.)
Now, I do believe, in line with the creeds, that Jesus will return. I have no idea what that will look like, and neither do you. Even Doyt doesn’t know—though he probably has a theory.
But what does Jesus tell us? There will be wars, and rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines. In other words, life will go on precisely as it always has. What generation hasn’t wondered if they were going to see the end? And there are churches that will slap a chart up in front of you and show you how there’s going to be an authoritarian leader appear, and exactly seven years after he turns up on the world stage, Jesus will return. Or maybe 3 ½ years. Or maybe a thousand years. The point is, we’ll know.
Except Jesus told us we wouldn’t know. I don’t know how much more plainly he could’ve put it. Why are we so susceptible, we humans, to false prophets and lies and manipulation? I think there are a couple of reasons.
The first is cognitive dissonance. There are several forms of this, and the relevant one here is “dissonance due to inconsistency between commitment and information.” Once we believe something, we will not give it up, no matter what. Even if any disinterested person could tell that the “prophet” who says when Jesus is coming is manifestly a charlatan, once we’re interested, once we’re invested, especially if we’ve taken a public stand on it, we’ll hang onto that belief, and no amount of contrary information will change our minds.
The second thing is that we often don’t get any contrary information to begin with. When I was teaching race relations at the UW, I had a couple lectures in which I told story after story of scientific racism. That is, science guided by racist assumptions and meant to produce racist conclusions: specifically that whites were intellectually superior to all others, and African and Native Americans were at the very bottom. These were mainstream scientists of their day–we’re talking Victorian Era well into the 20th c.–not the lunatic fringe, but they made mistake after stupid mistake because–wait for it–they only talked to each other.
It wasn’t until the academy began to diversify that other voices could be heard saying, “Um, your research is stupid.” Which it was! Easy to see now. But because of segregation, there were no relationships in which perspectives could be exchanged. The people who held other perspectives, particularly those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, were just excluded. Unheard. And junk science was the result.
The “beautiful, sacred” university in which white scholars didn’t have to hear unpleasant truths from scholars of color, had to die. And believe me, there were and still are plenty of people who have not loved this process. But it has greatly improved our research.
Things are changing in this country, and in the world. I think it’s safe to say that all of us here, no matter our politics, no matter how we feel about the election results, are worried about things dying in this country. Maybe different things. But some have more to worry about than others: it’s their own lives, and the lives of people they love, at stake. As Christians, we are commanded to listen especially attentively to their stories, their perspectives, their needs.
But everyone’s concerned about the passing of things that are sacred to us. And yet…
Because I was a nurse before I was a sociologist, I’ve been at deathbeds and I’ve been in delivery rooms. Maybe you have too. And in the midst of it all, it can be hard to tell the death throes from the labor pains. In fact, Jesus even calls these chaotic times he’s talking about “birth pangs.” While they’re happening, it can be hard to tell if everything is dying, or if something is striving to be born. Could be both. When social upheaval happens, it’s usually both.
Jesus tells us to pay attention–to discern the signs of the times. And our best discernment is done by listening with humility to people who are not like us. That’s how we avoid starting our own cults. As Doyt has been saying the last couple of weeks, that takes relationship. It takes hearing each other’s stories.
So our challenge is to discern this: what is dying in our world right now? What is struggling to be born? Here’s an example: Concerning the church, our new bishop has said that what’s dying is not Christianity, but christendom–that marriage of the church with secular power that began with the Emperor Constantine in the 4th c. It’s never been a good look for us. And maybe what’s trying to be born is a smaller but purified church, one that’s here for the right reasons.
In this country, time will tell. It’s easier to figure out what’s dying or dead than to discern what’s trying to be born. But here are two good principles for discernment:
First, as the early church father Origen of Alexandria said, Ubi divisio, ibi peccatum. “Where there is division, there is sin.” Doesn’t say where the sin is, but division itself comes from dark places. The Holy Spirit brings us together. Darker forces, whether you think of them as the devil or just our own shadowy motives, tend to divide and scatter. They create chaos.
Second, if what’s being born is going to be life-giving, it needs to come from love. That was always God’s design: new life comes from love, from union.
That’s why we say that “relationship is primary.” That is why we must be in community, especially with those we don’t naturally agree with. Jesus didn’t say people would know we are his disciples by our talking points. He said they’d know it by our love (John 13:35).
But love is not sentimentality, is it? It sometimes has to do hard things, demand accountability, take hard stands. Giving birth is painful–or so I hear! And it takes real courage to give birth to something beautiful that you know is eventually going to die.
In closing, let me offer you this quotation from Marianne Williamson (slightly paraphrased). If you take nothing else away from this sermon, take this, and meditate on it this week:
We’re living in two worlds simultaneously: one the fall of Rome and the other a new Renaissance. We need to be both hospice nurses and midwives, helping die peacefully the systems that need to die and helping give birth to a wholly different kind of world.