Birth Pangs of New Beginnings

November 15, 2015

Marilyn B. Kendrix

Birth Pangs of New Beginnings

Psalm 42: 1 – 6a

Mark 13:1 – 8

So here is the scene… Jesus and his disciples have made their way to Jerusalem

for what will be the last week of Jesus’s life. With all his preaching and teaching and healing,Jesus had built up quite a following. The disciples are almost heady with the adulation of the crowds. It’s like traveling with a rock star, what with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and the throngs of people spreading palm branches on the road ahead of him. I can just hear the crowd shouting his name, over and over, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” And when he looks toward any group of people,the already deafening roar climbs even louder. Can you picture it?

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The concern of the temple authorities is evident. They have been questioning Jesus all along the way and not, it would seem, to learn from his answers, but rather to catch him in blasphemy. Oh the scribes were worried about this preacher whose power over the crowd seemed complete.

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So that’s the scene as Jesus and his disciples emerge from the temple. And one of his disciples says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.”I can just see it. They would look like country bumpkins,coming out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and craning theirs necks to see to the very top of the steeple and admiring the architecture and the amazing feat of engineering it took to build such a grand edifice. And it is at just this moment, when the disciples are feeling all triumphant and everything that Jesus says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Jesus sure knew how to stick a pin in the disciples’ comforting vision of the future.

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Now, I think this is a good place to stop and think about what was going on in Jerusalem at the time that Mark was writing his gospel. We know that Mark’s gospel was the earliest of the gospels writtenand that Mark was writing between 60 to 70 CE. And we know that the Jerusalem temple was completely destroyed when the Roman army laid siege to the city in the year 70. So, what we have here is not some imaginative scene, playing out with Jesus and the disciples. No, we have the writer of Mark remembering Jesus’ words in light of the destruction of the temple. And wouldn’t you remember someone talking about the largest building in your town being completely destroyedwhen some 40 years later, that very thing happened?

Much of Jewish writing dated to this time focuses on death and destruction and an apocalyptic view of the future. We see it here in this passage. We hear Jesus predict the bad times to come,when the disciples will hear of wars and rumors of war, when nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

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And he tells them that “the end is still to come” which is why this text, the 13th chapter of Mark is called “the little apocalypse.” The common interpretation has been that the end times are near. The “still to come” has often been thought of as

“still to come… really soon.” But, as I was reading this passage for what it might say to us, today in 21st century New England,I had to wonder how many of us sit around

worrying about the end times, when the world and everything in it will cease to exist? Even given the events of the last two days in Paris, the city of lights, I can’t bring myself to worry about the end of all life as we know it. I don’t know about you, but I spend almost no time at all worrying about the end of the world, wars, rumors of wars not withstanding. And so, I got to thinking about what we might make of this passage if it is not, in this moment, about the end times. If it is not about what we DON’T worry about but is instead about what we DO worry about.

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Many of you know that this call to Christian ministry, is, for me, a second career. I spent my first career working for the telephone company,initially as a computer programmer and then as an organizational development consultant. And one day, in 1998, SNET – Southern New England Telephone was purchased by the telecommunications giant, SBC. And as a result of that purchase, everyone in my department, Organizational Effectiveness and Education, was presented with a 90

day letter, which essentially says that unless you can find some other job in the company in the next 90 days you would be laid off. Let me tell you, that was a dark day. Even though I knew it was coming, when my turn came to climb the stairs to the third floor and meet with the hatchet man who’d been sent out from headquarters in San Antonio to give us these dreadful letters, one at a time, when I was handed my letter, I cried. Even though some of my colleagues had been called before me and I had even had a chance to read their letters before I saw my own and knew that mine would say the same thing, …still,… I cried.

Looking back on that day from this vantage point of 17 years later, I can see that the best years of my time at the telephone companywere still ahead of me. I went on to work as the sole organizational consultant in one department where I got to work with lots of employees, many of whom had lives sorely in need of a little pastoral care.

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In that moment, though, when I was handed that letter, it felt to me like a little apocalypse, not the end of the whole world, but surely the end of my world.

And I wonder how many times in each of our lives we experience a little apocalypse. Like…the day that you learn that you will not be getting that job that you’ve wanted for so long. Or the day that you don’t get into the college that you had your heart set on. Or the day that your spouse tells you, “I want a divorce.” Or the day that you find yourself without a place to live. Or the day that your children take away your car keys because you’ve lived long enough to be a danger on the streets. Or the day that your doctor tells you that you will not live as long as you had imagined that you would. Those days… what does this passage in the Gospel of Mark tell us about those days? What does it tell us about the buildings of our lives that we’ve built up, when we find that “not one stone will be left here upon another?”Well, if we read what it says about that time in Mark, we see that

it says “the end is still to come.” NOT that the end is here. The retelling of this same passage in Matthew and Luke also indicate that “the end will not follow immediately.” Don’t be lead astray, this is not the end.

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I think that if we read this passage this way, it can’t help but provide us with hope,

hope that whatever struggles and challenges we are facing in our lives, those struggles and challenges will always be the birth pangs of some new beginning.

My 90-day letter ushered in the next phase of my career,a new beginning that was better than the last. Ten years later, my loosing all my consulting assignments as a result of the Great Recession in 2008, ushered in the next phase of my life, when I sat still long enough to hear the still small voice of God, calling me to Christian ministry.

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I believe that each time we come to what seems like the end times, if we resist the urge to be led astray by anger or fear, we might just be able to see the road ahead.

We might just be able to live into the challenge in a way that opens up something new. We might just be able to experience the birth pangs with hope, hope that the end is not yet here, that the end is still to come.

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Imagine what life might be like, if we live everyday, with the sure knowledge that the end is still to come. That whatever challenge we are going through just may be the birth pangs of a new beginning.Rather than spending our time worrying about our challenges, we might just be able to keep our hearts and minds open to see the new thing that is coming. Each day, look for the new thing.

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You know, I have dinner once a quarter with folks who once worked at SNET but are now retired, for the most part. And there is something that we all tell each other as we provide the latest news of our lives and that is that there is life after SNET. And it’s true.

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There is life after retirement.

There’s life after the children have all left the nest.

There’s life after high school.

There’s life after college.

There’s life after losing that job.

There’s life after losing those car keys.

There’s life after senseless attacks in an ancient city.

Here’s the hope that God provides. Jesus tells us, no matter how hopeless the situation may be, have hope, the end is still to come. AMEN

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