Celebrate the Gift Sunday!
Scripture Readings:
Psalter – Psalm 16: 5-111
5 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage. 7 I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. 8 I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. 10 For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. 11 You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Gospel Lesson – Mark 13: 1-82
1As [Jesus] came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
3When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" 5Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
“Punch Some Holes in the Darkness!”
Deep in every human heart lives the hope for a happy ending – of a “shout for joy”3 that goodness will finally triumph over evil, truth over falsehood, and love over every form of alienation. This is why we take such delight in fairy tales and the movies: they nourish our deepest hopes.
In one sense, then, we could say that the Bible is the richest fairy tale we have. Beginning with humanity’s expulsion from paradise, it ends with the descent from heaven of the new Jerusalem, the City of Peace, in which every tear of sadness will be wiped away.4 It’s hard to imagine a happier ending than the final chapters of the book of Revelation – unless, maybe, you were J.R.R. Tolkien.5 The ideal of a “holy city” breathes through the legends of cultures all around the world. It’s the great happy ending for which all people of good will long.
But happy endings, whether in fairy tales, in films, or in life, will satisfy us only if they come about as the resolution of a great tension or conflict. Truly happy endings have to be achieved. Some evolutionary development has got to take place. Not only does the old state of affairs have to be destroyed, but a new order must be born. The wicked witch has got to be defeated and the prince has got to marry the princess.
We’re living in just such an “end time” ourselves: not just an end of the church year, an end to “business as usual” in the United States Congress, an end to the war in Iraq, but with these endings we may, in fact, be witnessing the end of a world order in which heaven and earth for far too long have been radically split into two separate realities. Never before has there been so secular a culture as that which we see all around us today. And yet in the destruction and the upheavals of that old order, I do sense the onset of “labor pains” – of something about to be born. Are we prepared to be the church in this place to help with its birth?
Every child who’s ever played with Tinker Toys knows that when a thing is utterly destroyed, it can always be rebuilt if the pieces still remain, and if we have the power and the will to construct this new creation. In that sense there may be good news in the face of destruction. “Do you see these great buildings?” Jesus asked his disciples. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down”6…in order that something new will be put up in its place.
History is going somewhere, scripture and our faith tell us. “We are, all of us, tomorrow’s food,” says Ken Wilber provocatively (in his book The Marriage of Sense and Soul).7 As our Sunday Night Book Group knows of this book, Wilber also says that…
…real religion – genuine spirituality and the deep sciences of the interior – [may have] an unprecedented role as the vanguard of evolution, the growing tip of the universal organism growing toward its own highest potentials, namely, the ever-unfolding realization and actualization of Spirit.8
Hear that last word as the “Holy Spirit” – with a capital S. Wilber ends his book with the passion of a poet and the religious fervor of an evangelist when he says:
And perhaps, political freedom joined with spiritual freedom…, we will come finally to rest…to peace…to a home that structures care into the Kosmos and compassion into the world, that touches each and every soul with grace and goodness and goodwill, and lights each being with a glory that never fades or falters. And we are called, you and I, by the voice of the Good…the True, and the…Beautiful, called exactly in those terms, to witness the liberation of all sentient beings without exception.
And on the distant, silent, lost horizon, gentle as fog, quiet as tears, the voice continues to call.9
For something new to be born, though, often something old has got to die. That dying is what today’s gospel reading describes. Later on in this same chapter10 Mark speaks of Jesus’ image of the fig tree to say that just as trees go through cycles of budding, leafing and (as we see at this time of the year) losing their leaves, so do we go through times of growing, then withering, then dying, so that new growth can happen.
We live in the midst of the “already” and the “not yet.” Jesus, as the Christ, has already come, but the final shape of a world that he called into being has not yet happened. In the meantime – the in-between time – you and I are called to hold on, even in the darkest of times, even when there are wars and rumors of wars, even when we wonder if the darkness will win.
Robert Louis Stevenson tells a story of his growing up in Scotland around the turn of the 20th century. His family lived on a hillside, outside of a little town. Every evening he would sit in his family’s kitchen, look down on the town and watch the lamplighter light each of the town’s street lamps. He would say, “Look, mother, there is the man who punches holes in the darkness.”
Such an image would make any one of us shout for joy! In the middle of the anthem that our choir is about to do – an anthem aptly named “Shout for Joy!” – are these quieter words:
Within this congregation we offer praise and prayer.
With grateful hearts we celebrate that we are in God’s care.
O may we be united from elderly to youth,
that as one church we worship God in spirit and in truth.11
As we come forward with our gifts this morning, may we feel our spirits moved to “shout for joy,” as well, knowing that others have come this way before us to “punch holes in the darkness.” Now it’s our turn to do the same.
* * *
1 Psalm 16 is a priestly psalm, written by a Levite of the Temple, to express his very personal belief in life triumphing over death – the hopeful assertion that our end is not just that we are condemned to become disembodied souls wandering aimlessly forever in Sheol – the place of the dead. God has chosen a better portion for us. As such this is one of the earliest affirmations of belief in resurrection.
2 Chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel makes it the most apocalyptic account of all of the four canonical gospels – probably because it was written for a persecuted community of Christians which was in the midst of a crisis of immense proportions: Jerusalem had just fallen to the Roman armies (70 C.E.). False messiahs and prophets were everywhere saying that this was a sign of the End. According to Mark’s community, though, the Roman/Jewish War of the years 66-70 C.E., along with the terrible persecution that followed, were only the birth pains marking the beginning of an entirely new life.
3 A purposeful and pointed reference to the anthem sung this Sunday, “Shout for Joy!” by Allen Pote, which begins and ends with the lines “Shout for joy, O people of God” and “sing to the Lord a new song!”
4 Read Revelation, Chapter 21 (especially verses 4 and 10) and compare it with Ezekiel 48: 30-35 – as all of scripture is based upon an even earlier story.
5 For a quick look on the internet see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien for some background on his well-known novels of fantasy: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
6 Mark 13: 2.
7 Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1998), p. 207
8 Ibid., p. 208.
9 Op. cit., pp. 213-214.
10 Mark 13: 28-31.
11 “Shout for Joy!” by Allen Pote, Commissioned for the 160th Anniversary of First Presbyterian Church, Pensacola, Florida, and in memory of Grier Moffatt Williams (Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL, 2006), pp. 6-8.