Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 13:24-32

The Gospel of Mark was written about the year 70 A.D., probably in Rome.  The war between the Romans and the Jews, which occurred around this time, resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple.  The people who first heard this gospel were probably Roman Christians of Jewish ancestry, along with a few gentiles.  During the period from about 200 years before Christ to 200 years after, there was a popular kind of literature called apocalypse, which means “uncovering”.  Most of the time apocalypses talked about the future, but were really referring to the present.  The last book of the Bible talks about the end of time, but much of it is a criticism of the Roman Empire.  The Book of Daniel seems to predict five kingdoms, each succeeding the other -- but was written during the time of the last kingdom, the broken up kingdom of Alexander the Great.  Today we hear Mark’s “little apocalypse” and if you are like me, you are left scratching your head.  Stars can’t fall from the sky.  Did Jesus really say that this generation would not pass away before all these terrible predictions happened? If he really meant what he said, then clearly he was wrong.  There aren’t any people left from that generation.  So what is going on here? 

If you were one of those people for whom Mark is writing, you would be really worried.  Back in Palestine the Jews were being defeated by the Romans, and the temple was destroyed.  If you were a member of what then was a form of Judaism in which people followed Christ but kept many of the same traditions, you would fear for your life.  You would be getting dirty looks from your fellow Romans. You would try to fade into the background when the soldiers marched by.  And you would wonder if you’d made the biggest mistake in your life when you joined up with the Christians.  We forget that we Christians were subject to antisemitism a long time ago -- just like those Jews who came to Holland to watch the soccer play-offs.  

And Mark’s gospel addresses these fears, especially here in this part of Jesus’ discourse.

First, the gospel reminds us that everything comes to an end, eventually, even the world itself.  You and I will come to an end.  My marriage will end -- one of us will die before the other in all likelihood.  When we think about this fact, that everything we know about in our world will end, the first reaction is a feeling of hopelessness, purposelessness, maybe even despair.  But the little apocalypse we just read promises that God, who created the world and declared it to be good, will in some way deal graciously with all these seeming endings.  After all, we believe he loves his creation so much that he chose to become part of it as Jesus of Nazareth.  He isn’t a God that waits for us to fail, then punishes us.  He is there to forgive us time and time again when we acknowledge our failings.  He gives us grace to try again.

A second message is that we need to be lightly attached to the institutions and structures of this world.  God wants us to be good citizens and work for the common good.  We just went through another presidential election and you would think from the rhetoric that during the next four years we would have either a Nazi or a communist (depending on which side you were on) not only ruling us, but destroying all that we hold dear about our country.  Both sides claimed that if their opponent got into office, this would be the last free election.  Someday that will happen.  We would not be the first country to go from freedom to a form of political slavery.  Every now and then we have to step back and ask, to what are we really attached?  Because only God is permanent, only God lasts forever.  

A third message is that we have to be awake, alert, ready at all times.  We need to see the hand of God working in the world.  Jesus told us, “Be alert, I have told you everything”.  And yet most of us go through life half asleep, not aware of all the amazing things God is doing to us, for us, around us all the time.  Jesus urges us, his disciples, to see that whenever everything is falling apart, that God is there, the Son of Man is coming, nothing will be lost.  He will gather and preserve all that God has given him -- that’s you and I. And Jesus assures us that we will pass through whatever terrible things happen to us, because his word and his promises will never pass away.