A sermon from me about judgement and the 'Little Apocalypse' of Mark 13.

1. Sermon for St Michael’s
15 November 2009
Psalm 16:5-11; Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14,18; Mark 13:24-32
Matthew Bartlett
Today I’m going to concentrate on the Gospel reading. It’s difficult
material on more than one level. There is a lot of strange stuff about the
sun and moon going dark, the stars falling out of the sky, and the Son of
Man coming in the clouds – what, if anything, does this have to do with
us, sophisticated city-dwellers [, university students and graduates] in the
21st century?
Some see this cosmic language as pointing to the end of the space-time
universe, the wrapping-up of the whole shebang at some future date. The
text itself, however, in verse 30 appears to bracket the possible time
application to the near future of Jesus’ listeners: “Truly I say to you, this
generation will not pass away until all these things take place”. The
Gospel reading is somewhat oddly excerpted from a larger section of
Jesus’ words. If we expand the area of Mark we’re considering, we’ll see
that this chapter begins with an exclamation from the disciples that sheds
some light on that matter: “Look how flash this temple is! What
wonderful stones & buildings!”
As we’ve heard before from this lectern, the Jewish temple in Jesus’ day
was the focus of Israel’s national identity, continuing existence and its
hope for future blessing. Perhaps you’ll remember that vision of the new
temple that Ezekiel, the prophet in exile, records in great length and detail
starting at chapter 40 in the book of Ezekiel. In his vision, God takes
Ezekiel on a tour of the temple and shows him a stream of water that’s
flowing out the front door. The stream gets wider and wider and deeper
and deeper, and becomes a mighty river. Wherever the river flows, trees
spring up, and there are loads of birds and animals, and when the river
touches the sea, it turns the seawater fresh, and there are enormous
1 of 5

2. quantities of fish. It’s a beautiful image of blessing, healing and
fruitfulness, and it would have to some extent informed Jews’ feelings
about the temple in Jesus’ day.
In many places in the Hebrew scriptures cosmic language involving the
sun, moon & stars, and God coming on the clouds like this is used to talk
about judgment – of Israel or of other nations. In our gospel reading Jesus
is borrowing that language to predict the destruction of Jerusalem and of
its temple, and to prepare his disciples for it.
And of course, in early August of the year AD 70, the temple in
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. This happened in the middle of
the first Jewish-Roman War (66-73 AD). It was an utter disaster for the
Jewish people, one from which you could say they didn’t recover till
1948. It is difficult for us to imagine what the effect of Jesus’ prediction
would have had on the disciples. It certainly plays an important part in his
state execution. In his trial, such as it was, the testimony against him
(which Mark says is false) is that he said, “I will destroy this temple made
with hands and in three days I will build another made without hands”.
And again, when Jesus is dying on Golgotha, passersby yell at him, “You
who were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save
yourself, and come down from the cross!” In New Zealand, I can’t think
of one similarly important great symbol or institution. I suppose we don’t
have as cohesive a national consciousness as Israel did in Jesus’ day. If
say the Beehive burned down, it would be a bit of shock, but few of us
would feel that all our hopes and dreams for the future were shattered.
Pondering this stuff, it did remind me of an event in my own family’s
experience: When I was growing up, we lived in Masterton, and my
father was a policeman. When I was about nine years old, our house was
burnt to the ground by arsonists. Evidently they had a bit of a grudge
against the police in Masterton, and took it out on us, and a number of
other family’s houses. Now of course it was all very upsetting and
traumatic at the time – more so for my parents than me – but eventually
2 of 5

3. the house was rebuilt and our life continued more or less as before. But
for Israel, the people of God, this is a much more radical break. This
world-shaking judgment was the end-point of Jesus’ transformation of
what exactly it means to be ‘the people of God’. But it was also in a way
the beginning of a new age. No longer would God’s people be tied to a
particular nation, racial group, or particular spot of land. This is all
anticipated in Jesus’ life and in his death. Throughout his career he
himself did what the temple system was meant to do – he provided
healing, forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. He was critical
of particularly Israel’s leadership because they had misunderstood Israel’s
calling. As David said last week, its vocation was “to manifest the life of
God before the nations.” But instead, they hoped to gain pre-eminence
over the other nations, either through military revolution (the Zealots) or
by winning God’s favour through precise law-keeping and separation
from unclean Gentiles (the Pharisees). He preached and practiced love for
even Israel’s enemies, and his self-sacrificing death at the hands of his
own enemies was surely the clearest possible manifestation of the life of
God before the nations. Basically, all that’s left of Israel’s aspirations and
expectations after the temple is destroyed is the resurrected Jesus himself.
I’d like to spend a few minutes teasing out some of the implications of
this for our life now. The first and most disturbing feature of this story I
want to note is the reality of judgment that it assumes. I read through the
Gospel of Mark in the last couple of days in preparation for this sermon. I
definitely can’t pretend to understand all of it, but it’s hard not to notice
that Jesus spends a lot of his time announcing this coming judgment and
inviting people to join his movement, because their old ways of being
God’s people had literally no future. Though the leadership become
Jesus’ implacable foes, crowds of people did respond and follow Jesus
around. It seems to be particularly the marginalised, the poor, diseased,
and social outcasts who latched on to Jesus, while the people with a lot
invested in the status quo couldn’t stomach him. “How hard it will be for
those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” Jesus tells his
3 of 5

4. disciples. And as Jesus says in this very chapter of Mark, “you will be
hated by all on account of my name.” Both these sayings point to the fact
that there will often be tension between the kingdom Jesus proclaimed,
and any particular society. Success in one realm may mean failure in the
other. [Many of us here have some wealth, some power, some status in
society. Of course it is not necessarily true that we are therefore being
unfaithful to Jesus’ upside-down kingdom, but it should at least provoke
us to some self-examination and reflection.]
Another thing to note about today’s text is the danger associated with
being ‘the people of God’. We perhaps too blithely take on God’s name,
“we go in the name of Christ”, without always remembering that God
takes an active interest in the people who’re named after him, and who
are to a large extent responsible for his reputation in the world. By nature
we’d prefer to deal with God on our terms, as a sort of involved hobby –
someone who we can keep in our back pockets, who we can turn to for
comfort from time to time, but who wouldn’t make concrete demands of
us. I think this is how our culture wants us to treat God, and religion. A
bit like a passion for stamp-collecting, or yoga: more or less worthwhile
in their place, but if it starts interfering with work, or politics, or how we
spend our money or make major life decisions, then things are getting out
of hand. [Most of us crave the regard of our peers. If you’re young, you
want to be cool, stylish and fit in. If you’re older, you want to be
successful and respected. I’m almost 30, so I want to be both cool and
successful. But as I suggested earlier, God’s upside-down kingdom will at
times be at odds with coolness and success as our society defines it.]
One other I noticed while reading the Gospel of Mark is the way the
disciples only gradually realise who they’re dealing with. Though readers
of the gospel are told in the very first verse “The beginning of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”, Jesus’ disciples only discover little by
little that their rabbi is more than a doomsday prophet – somehow he’s
the one on whom all of history will turn. I hope we too can occasionally
4 of 5

5. catch a glimpse of who exactly we’re dealing with. Then perhaps we’ll
realise it’s not about us, it’s about God, and God’s plan for the whole
world.
Though I’ve argued that today’s gospel is primarily about the end of the
temple system and the de-nationalising of the people of God, of course
that’s not the end of the story. We’re still waiting for God to do for the
cosmos what he did for Jesus in the resurrection, for the groaning of the
creation Paul talks about in Romans 8 to be eased. That expectation
informs our continuing task in the world: in addition to the responsibility
of living out God’s life together, we also now proclaim Jesus’
resurrection as the hope of a beautiful future for the entire world.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
5 of 5