Mark's "Little Apocalypse"

Rocky: No $50 for me . . .

My final sermon looks something like this, three compact "moves" (thank you, David Buttrick) sandwiched between and intro and a conclusion. I'm trying to say more by saying less.

Introduction: Vignette about the one disciple who couldn't keep his mouth shut ("Look!")
Move 1: Temples fall down (this move is aided by the leaky roof that prevails upon us this morning)
Move 2: But don't be alarmed; the end (telos) is still to come
Move 3: So look! God's future is being born in our midst; these are just birth pangs.
Conclusion: Jesus wants us to look around us (not at our temples), to keep our wits about us when the rumors start flying, and to help the world out when the "birth pangs" get too intense.

There you go. Probably the most wrenching one so far, since so much of what appealed to me early in he exegesis process got left on the cutting room floor.

Landon: All right...

First - I've got to figure out a way to work in "antidisestablishmentarianism." There is no option. $50 to the preacher who says it the most in their sermon.

Second, my outline is looking sort of this way:

1. Look! Buildings! Aren't these things we've built with our own hands awesome? Aren't our "edifices" awesome? We rock!
2. Brace yourselves, babies - they're all coming down. Vanity, vanity, it's all vanity.
3. Yeah, but we're having fun right now, so tell us what to look for. That way we can get our act together when we need to. That way we can take refuge and get out of the way of the storm.
4. Be careful - the shysters have it wrong and they will trick you.

Third, my question is "What is it that the shysters (love that word) have wrong?" I'm thinking the shysters are the antidisestablishmentarianists. Think about it: Christendom is falling, there are many that are retrenching - fighting the loss of "the Church's influence in society." (Conversion, conversion, conversion - a "nonviolent crusade of proselytizing") Pluralism is on the rise, and we have maniacs proclaiming a gospel of exclusivity, elitism, and retrenchment.

Wasn't it Newbigin that developed the "Gaunlet"? "If the Church is in the world then God is in the church. If the church is not in the world then God is in the world."?

If one were a former missionary who worked to foster peace between Protestants and Catholics in a war-torn area, or if one were a former Interfaith Program Director, one might be able to bring strong experience to bear on the reality that our claims of exclusivity are no longer tenable.

You said you were scared of what people would make of the oil that you might hit - what will happen if we stand in the pulpit on Sunday and faithfully preach this kind of word? I shudder to think.

Landon: More response in just a bit, but it just occurred to me that this is going to be a great paradoxical move. If we truly go with the "chill out and quit looking for clues" angle, the parable of the bridesmaids will then tell us (prima facie) to pay close attention so we don't miss anything.

Nuancing it so that one does not become contradictory of the other will be fun.

Rocky: You're dead-on, mate. "We don't need it like we thought we did." Douglas John Hall's gimmick is to say that the church ought to disestablish itself as a task of theology.

Also, the more I think about the claim that the temple's buildings and stones will be thrown down, the more I hear N.T. Wright ringing in my ears, going on about the Jewishness of Jesus and his context. Because the claim that all would be thrown down seems to be less of a prediction than a statement of the obvious: if you continue to take up the implements of violence against the empire, there's only one way that can end, with the temple in rubble. After all, empires do one thing really well, and that's subjugate and control through force; if you want to try to match the empire blow-for-blow you're going to lose. It's the way of folly. So my narrative outline might look something like this:

1. Disestablishment is a reality for God's people all the time
   
2. But we want to know the cues for when it's coming
3. So Jesus says, "Don't be suckered by shysters; all this is not the end (telos)."
4. Because "all this" is birthing God's true end (telos)
   

It's rough, I know, but it's a start.

Landon: I think capitalism is a good one, but I agree - if we left it at that it would fall on its face.

I'm starting to get the sense in our discussion that humility and suspicion might be the watchwords of the day. Maybe the word is that Christendom is crumbling (as you point out) and that's not something to be scared of. Sort of a "We don't need it like we thought we did" kind of thing.

And you also raise a great point about the disciples. Over and over we are exhorted in the Bible to live like there's no tomorrow, yet the gang wants to know what the cues are so, when the time gets near, they can start getting their act together. There is an element of holding things at arms length here that I find disturbing.

I like one thing about reading the Left Behind books: They gave me a sense that I needed to start being a little more serious about the way I was living. Eschatology incites the notion of "take up your cross daily" more than anything else I know.

However, the story about your parishioner brings up for me the side of eschatological discourse that irks me (not you - generally): that the end of (our temporal) life is really important. Monks are asked if they are afraid of dying and they respond "No. I practice dying every day."

But that's just not a reasonable concept to try to teach at that point in the process, so where's the hope for her? I don't know.

Rocky: With more study of the passage, here's what's emerging for me:
Jesus' warning that all the buildings and stones would be "thrown down" obviously happened in A.D. 70 in the Roman/Jewish war, and it's quite likely that Mark is writing (or redacting) this story after that event has already taken place. Mark's usage of the story would seem to be "proof," then, that Jesus called it before it happened, thereby giving some credibility to Jesus' claims. But what I'm more interested in is the destruction of the temple as the ultimate disestablishment of religion. When you think about is and was and signified for the public, spiritual, and political life of 1st century Jews, that it would be torn down is a death blow to the culture; Jesus just says it's going to happen like he says he's ordering a pizza.

Are we not living in the midst of just such a disestablishment? Is the temple of Americana cultural religion not being "thrown down" before our very eyes, and has this not been happening for some time (I'm influenced here by Douglas John Hall). It's the end of Christendom, as it is often called. What interests me is Jesus' warning that, in such a situation, when the center of our cultural and religious life is torn down, a vacuum is created. And into that vacuum will step any number of people--many of which will claim Jesus' own authority--and say "I'm it. My thing, my movement, my ideas . . . the end."

Again, these people may not be apocalyptic in outlook at all, but Jesus says to watch out for them all the same, to not be taken in and suckered by them. Because a ton of people will. In Jesus' time you had any number of philosophical schools, including stoics, who would have made such a claim. But what about our day? I want to say that free market capitalism is itself such a system, because the proponents of it claim that it is the way. But that's a horrible illustration for a sermon. Can you think of any others?

And the other handlebar here is the disciples' question itself. That we want to know about signs and indicators is easily relatable, I think. But why? Why do we want to know? So we can be "prepared?" So we can get our house in order? Get right with God? Why? If Jesus were to give a clear sign (which he really doesn't--unless you count the "desolating sacrilege" of verse 14), what would the disciples do with it? I've got somebody in my congregation who's doctors have given her two months to live. "Here," they have said, "is the sign of the end: our word." The word of medical experts is the sign that "all these things," the very end of her life, is about to be accomplished. What is she supposed to do with that? She has the sign, the knows it's coming (if she indeed believes her doctors), and she has a fair idea about when: now what?

Landon: Oh, I'm with you. The imagination required during these least couple of weeks has damn near killed me. I had so wished I was a Bible literalist, because I preaching would have been a breeze - kinda boring, but a breeze.

"preach like there is no tomorrow—because there isn’t" - brilliant. I remember two guys saying something like that once.

On with the show....!

I am with you regarding a narrative. I find that my preaching tends to take on the line of the stories, and I've been floundering the last few weeks, trying to come up with a usable plot.

I'm thinking about using the same verses, but adding 1-2 as well. As I look at the Greek, kai seems as if it could be translated so as to continue the action from v2 to v3, giving some sort of motivation to the "tell us" question.

I, too, was immediately drawn to the "don't be led astray" aspect and I believe that that is the key to the whole passage. It is certainly the most important word for me right now. I'll admit I was simply going to limit it to the Robertson's and Van Impes of the world. But your thought of "those who claim special expertise" is an interesting one for me.

Say more about that. You and I can certainly claim a special expertise. Are we exempt, or did I miss you?

Rocky: Okay, so you've turned me on to the Kim Fabricious series of "Ten Propositions" posts, where I find this in a post on preaching:

. . .preach like there is no tomorrow—because there isn’t: in the sermon tomorrow is already today. Homiletics is eschatology. On the other hand, if you haven’t struck oil within twenty minutes, stop boring!

I don't know if I've struck oil yet these past two weeks, perhaps because I'm boring some d*** hard, and because I'm a little scared of what people will make of any oil that shoots up.

Rocky: Well, friend, we're headed into our third week of this, and I have to tell you that the first two have been harder than I expected. Perhaps there's a reason these texts tend to get neglected by preachers: they're difficult and they strain one's theological imagination. It's a strain of over-imagination, though, because--in the case of Revelation anyway--there's just so much imagery and so much being said that you have to make some grueling decisions about what's going to occupy your attention.

Having said that, on we go to Mark 13.

I spent some time with this earlier today, opening up the whole chapter to my attention to see where I might be drawn. After several readings, I think verses 3-8 are where I'm going to come down. I may even limit the reading to those verses. It seems to me that those verses encapsulate everything that follows, from the persecution of the disciples to the desolating sacrilege to the coming of the Son of Man, the parable of the fig tree, and the exhortation to "keep awake." All of that is anticipated in verses 3-8. A couple of other reasons are 1) I'm dying for some narrative after two weeks of Revelation and all Advent in Micah, and the narration of the disciples' question of Jesus in verse 3 is a drop of water to my parched tongue, and 2) we're doing the parable of the bridesmaids later on, which, as you know, is dropped nicely into Matthew's account of this same speech and which is all about "keep awake, for you no neither the day nor the hour"; I don't want to shoot that bullet prematurely.

So much for delineating the text.

What I like about what Jesus says in these five verses is that it encourages a healthy incredulity. Now, I've preached long enough to know that if you find yourself liking something that Jesus says you're probably on the wrong side of it, but hear me out. The disciples want some evidence, some sign that will prove that "these things are about to be accomplished." What answer does Jesus give? "Don't be fooled, boys. Lots of shysters will be coming along and saying, 'I'm it'; don't buy it" (the NRSV puts "I am he" in the mouths of these shysters, where the greek simply gives you the ego eimi--I Am).

He continues (and I paraphrase, of course--eat your heart out Eugene Peterson), "Yeah, so nations and kingdoms are going to go at each other; earthquakes over here, famines over there: you're going to hear it all. But none of that's what it's about (more greek: "the end"="telos"). That's just the beginning of labor pains, baby."

Jesus is undercutting the apocalyptic specialists who would "lead people astray" by claiming to have some special knowledge of the signs of the times by telling his followers not to buy what they're selling. I think there's an application here that isn't limited to the Hal Lindsey's and Jerry Jenkins of the world, but expands to include those who claim special expertise of any kind, whether it be of the Bible, history, politics, or whatever. Jesus' rule is, "what they're selling you as 'the end' is, in fact, not the end at all, but simply those things that are birthing the end, God's end for history.

As I typed that last paragraph I found myself thinking of present day environmental concern. Does it fall in the camp of "birth pangs?" Probably not, since it, unlike famine's and earthquakes, is inflicted by humans. But I don't know; if my mind went there, my congregation's might.

So there's a start. The apocalyptic ball is now in your court.