The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: Mark 13:1-8
I’ve preached about this before, but I think it’s worth revisiting, particularly now: The gospel of Mark was written somewhere around 40 years after Jesus’ death, probably around 70 CE. It was either during or after the time when the Jews of Jerusalem and Palestine were revolting against Roman occupation of their land and city. Things did not go well for the Jews. The Roman army not only crushed the rebellion, but they tore down the second temple, stone by stone. A temple the Jewish people had been rebuilding for centuries after the traumatic destruction of the first temple nearly 600 years before, back when the Babylonians came and laid waste to Jerusalem and sent many of its people into exile.
So the time of Mark was basically a time of trauma upon trauma. The Jewish world had been shattered. Again. Their city and their temple, the embodiment of their faith in the world, gone. Again. Many died in the rebellion or were taken into slavery by the Romans. Others fled, creating a diaspora of Jews around Europe. It was a catastrophe, one that would change how the Jewish people lived and practiced their religion forever. Again.
If Mark wrote this before the temple came down, it’s clear he saw it coming.
As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Then Jesus, through Mark, predicts that it’s going to get even worse:
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.”
But, Jesus says, these are just the beginnings of the birthpangs. The beginnings of the apocalypse. The gospel we heard today is known as an apocalyptic teaching. Again, I’ve talked about this before, but the word apocalypse doesn’t mean “end of the world” or “catastrophe.” Apocalypse is simply the Greek word for “uncover,” literally apo- which is un and kalyptein which is cover. We see this same translation in the English for the Apocalypse of John of Patmos, better known as the Uncovering or Revelation of John, the last book of our Bible.
Jesus’ teaching today is meant to uncover or reveal something.
—
“Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” If you’ve been here at St. Luke’s long enough, you know that’s what I believe is the entire foundation of our Christian faith. Why? Because, when asked in this very gospel of Mark ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’, Jesus responds,
“you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’
That is how Jesus understands the very heart of his faith, and if Jesus is the very heart of my faith, then, well, my highest priorities are going to be loving God and loving my neighbors.
So I feel like many of us who share these priorities have experienced the past week and a half as an apocalypse. We always knew there was a chance that the presidential election would go the way it went, but how it happened seems like an uncovering, a revelation.
We suddenly knew that whatever was happening wasn’t a fringe movement that would bend or break any law or norm to come into power, but that it was the will of the majority of the people in our country. We suddenly realized that the fear and degradation openly fostered against so many of our neighbors—Black, brown, trans, queer, women—was at the very least not appalling enough to convince many of our other neighbors to vote differently.
I truly tried to find a gentler way to say that, but I couldn’t. That’s just the reality. Yes, we need to love these neighbors, too. Like I said last week, to love them by getting curious about them. AND whatever actually informed their vote, whether it was grocery prices or desire for smaller government or even disinformation, it was still knowingly at the expense of their vulnerable and marginalized neighbors.
So for a few days after the election, at least for me, it did feel like maybe not the end of the world, but the end of something important. It did feel like a catastrophe.
But that’s often what the sudden uncovering of something that was previously hidden can feel like. It’s not that it wasn’t there the whole time, it’s just that we didn’t have to look at it, didn’t have to reckon with it directly. And when I think about it that way, there’s something clarifying about this apocalypse. It gives us the opportunity to face it, to confront it, and to change it.
That’s what Jesus is talking about when he’s talking about the apocalypse. He is describing how when things finally get so uncertain, so frightening, so blatantly destructive, that’s when God can break through. That’s when God must break through. Jesus was talking about his own return, the return of the Kingdom of God, when it’s needed most.
Now I don’t know when or if Jesus will literally come back one day, but until we find out I remember what Teresa of Avila said:
Christ has no body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
—
Birthpangs. That’s how Jesus describes all these scary events, these seeming catastrophes, this unbearable uncertainty. But he himself never uses the word apocalypse or anything like it, not in this gospel passage and not anywhere. He uses the word birthpangs, the anguish and labor that is an integral part of the birthing process. So instead of saying apocalypse, he implies birth, which is most certainly an uncovering, a revelation. But it is also literally and simultaneously the most mundane and the most miraculous thing there is in all creation.
Birth is happening literally every single second on this planet. In hospitals, in the oceans, in trees, microscopically even within our own bodies. New life coming into the world changing the course of history every single moment.
Birth is the pinnacle of some animal’s lives. The octopus, the salmon, the squid all die after giving birth. The males die soon after fertilizing the eggs, and the females die after they’re sure that their offspring are in the world. Until relatively recently, even human birth was nearly always at best a painful and at worst a risky process.
Birth is why we are here—yes, of course, literally, but I mean something bigger than that. I mean it in the Teresa of Avila sense: Christ has no body now on earth but yours, but mine. It is now up to us to recognize the birthpangs, to see the pain and suffering and fear and uncertainty around us, and to bring something new into creation.
Birth is the most mundane and the most miraculous thing there is. I say this again because you’d be surprised how far a small and simple act of creating something new in a moment can change things: how far a random act of kindness or a surprising act of bravery or a deliberate act of integrity might shift a situation. Even if it means a little pain or risk for ourselves.
So I wonder, can we recognize our distress and fear as birthpangs calling for an apocalypse, an uncovering, calling for the coming of Jesus into the world—through us, through our actions, through our words? Can we recognize that while what we say or do might be mundane, it also might be miraculous?
Amen.
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