New Blue Church; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
My cousin Rick was out in their horse barn this summer with his 6-year-old grandson, Jackson. In one of the cracks, between the thick rubber mats that cover the floor, there was a golf ball sized dung beetle. They are ugly–with big pinchers. Jackson looked up at his grandpa and said, “Should I squash it?”
Wisely, Rick paused and asked him, “Do you want to?”
Jackson thought about it and, shaking his head, said, “No, it might be the last one!” continuing with another warning— “And that goes for grasshoppers too grandpa.”
There’s some hope to be heard in that little voice. Even under the specter of extinction, we can hear the call to act for life, we can protect even the ugliest of creatures.
Our texts today are both examples of a type of literature focused on the end times. Apocalyptic writings arose during the few centuries just before until just after Jesus’ life. Daniel, the Book of Revelation, and this 13th chapter of Mark’s gospel are classic examples, featuring graphic symbols, images, angels and fantastic beings. Often written under a pseudonym or attributed to a famous person, apocalyptic texts describe the end of the world, the last times, and offer hope beyond any present doom. The writings speak during times of oppression or persecution. Daniel was written in the 2nd century BC, when the Greek culture and rule threatened Jewish practices. Mark’s gospel was written during the 60s AD, when internal division weakened the people of Israel and revolution against the domination of Rome threatened to bring the power of the state down on them. Both texts offer an alternate vision for difficult times.
Every time this sort of text appears in the schedule of readings it seems timely. There’s never a shortage of fear or doomsday thinking in this world–Today is no exception. With the election of Donald Trump as president, half of the United States and much of the world is wondering if we’re tipping off into a political apocalypse. If the election had turned out the other way, of course, the other side would be doing the doom-scrolling.
Wars, rumors of wars, nations rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes and famines. Each generation around the globe asks, with Peter, James, John and Andrew, what will the sign be?
Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, wrote his famous poem, The Second Coming at a time when doom was prevalent. It was 1919 just after WWI at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, just after the Bolshevik Revolution. He wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The poem’s powerful images capture more than just political unrest and violence. It exudes the anxious concerns of the social ills of that time: the rupture of societal structures; the loss of collective religious faith, and with it, the collective sense of purpose; the feeling that the old rules no longer apply and there’s nothing to replace them—all of those factors have just been building for a hundred years now.
Some of the dreadful things Yeats wrote about came about actually. Looking back now, we know that the twentieth-century history did turn more horrific after 1919, as the poem forebode. The narrator suggests a “second coming” is about to occur, but rather than earthly peace, it will bring terror.
As for the slouching beast in the poem, it wasn’t just a particular political regime, or even fascism itself, but the broader historical forces, the technological, the ideological, and the political. Here we are, a century later and the slouching beast can be the threat of nuclear war, genocide, climate disaster, famine and new threats that we can’t even understand—like Artificial Intelligence. There is no shortage of cause for doom. Millions of people today aren’t just wondering about an apocalypse, they are living and dying in one, in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan. Entire countries look like places of unanswered prayers. Doom scrolling is certainly an understandable reaction.
It’s tempting to copy Woody Allen’s mindset who said, “More than any other time in history, humankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter despair and hopelessness. The other path to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly!”
There are other options, though. Mark Twain once said, “My life has been filled with tragedies, many of which never happened .”
H.G. Wells suggested that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but despair. The perennial question is how do we move beyond despair and doom to a place of hope, kindness and action?
Jesus gives two pieces of advice for times like these—for all times, in fact. First, he says “don’t be afraid.” Don’t be frightened or alarmed, don’t be worried or anxious. I especially like the translation of the parallel passage in Luke 21:9 in the New American Standard Version, “don’t be terrified.” Given the things that Jesus predicts — famine, war, earthquakes, imprisonment, torture, and more, this feels like wildly counterintuitive advice. It also feels like what some of us may need to hear: don’t be afraid. Instead, trust the mysterious providence of a loving God. Pray for Jesus’s promise of the “peace that the world cannot give.”
Let’s be careful here—hope is not denial. It’s not ignoring the problems in front of us. I’m not suggesting a kind of Pollyanna approach or a pie-in-the-sky-when you-die focus, looking away from very real challenges in this life.
Jesus’ second bit of advice is repeated at least eight different times in Mark 13, Jesus tells us, “don’t be deceived.” Watch out. Be on your guard. Take heed. Be alert. Keep watch. In other words, he calls us to vigilance and discernment, especially in light of all the many reckless lies and false promises that characterize times when people fear the ends of the age. Jesus says, don’t be duped, deceived, or distracted. Live in reality. Keep things in perspective.
There is work to be done. Always. We follow the risen Lord- who engaged with others in the world, who confronted oppression when he saw it, drew in the outcast, engaged people in healthy relationships and meaningful community.
The record producer Quincy Jones just a week ago. Many of the obituaries quoted him as saying, “Every day you have to make a choice between love and fear. As much as you can, choose love.” We can live beyond doom—we can live into love, hope and action.
Let us pray: Gracious God, when things fall apart, remind us that you are the center that does hold. That you came in a rocking cradle, you continue to come, to lead us to choose love instead of fear. Amen.