“HOW IS YOUR FUTURE LOOKING?”
Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Catford, HeathmontUnitingChurch
10 amSunday 18th November 2012 – Pentecost 24
Scripture Readings – Daniel 12 : 1 – 10,13; Mark 13 : 1 – 10
This is the time of year when our worship themes and lectionary readings in the church point us towards the future, as we begin to prepare for Advent and Christmas. Today’s reading from Daniel 12 is a Jewish vision of the warrior angel Michael, coming to deliver faithful Jews who are suffering now, and to resurrect the dead - the good to a living reward, and the wicked to their fate. And in Mark 13 we have disturbing teaching, quite possibly from Jesus, about the destruction of the JerusalemTemple, and being prepared for the wars, sufferings and persecutions of the end time before the coming of the Son of Man to gather his followers to safety.
How is your future looking? How do you see the big picture of the future of our world? Is the world and humanity winding up to a wonderful future, or running down towards inevitable disaster? And how do you see the smaller picture of your own life future? Is it expanding towards a glorious future and fulfilment, or is it fading away towards a whimper of death and extinction? I think it is probable that a majority of older people view the future with some fear, alarm and pessimism, while many younger and middle aged remain optimistic and hopeful, or even fatalistic and careless. So what about you yourself today? Today’s readings challenge us to face the future, and to choose for ourselves an attitude of fear or faith or something else, to live by.
1. Daniel and Jewish Pessimism
Many, perhaps most, Jews in Jesus’ time were pessimistic. For them life in their country and world had been going downhill for centuries. The great days of David and Solomon’s kingdoms were now 1000 years ago. Their nation had divided under weaker kings, they had been conquered and deported as slaves, they had been overrun by successive foreign armies on their return home, they had enduredcenturies of suffering, weakness and humiliation, and now they were under the iron fist and military heel of the Roman Empire.
So most Jews believed the world was headed for doomsday. You can see that in the Book of Daniel with its visions of disastrous wars. Four awful kingdoms like four savage beasts will rule and oppress the world. The fourth and worst beast would persecute, torture and slaughter the chosen people of God. But this disastrous age will end with floods, earthquakes, wars and famines, and even the sky will collapse and fall in. And the true believers will survive to greet the Messiah, and enjoy God’s new age and kingdom of freedom forever. Daniel is a Jewish apocalyptic writing, and there were many more of them in the centuries before Jesus. All hope in the present was dead. Only hope in some coming secret future of God was possible, as the apocalyptic writers revealed it. This was the Jewish religious climate of Jesus’ time.
Have you ever met the super religious Christians who make charts of the future of the world by identifying the cryptic dates, beasts, symbols and future hints of such apocalyptic parts of the Bible like Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation? Have you ever seen Christian eccentrics with placards announcing: The End is Near. Repent and Prepare to Meet God? Have you ever been shocked by the literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses and others announcing the end of all things, the destruction of the wicked, and God’s salvation and reward for themselves alone? If so you will know some of the strengths and faults of apocalyptic religion.
Apocalyptic religion leaves most to God and little to us to improve human lives and the world. It separates us from humanity and its joys and needs. It leads to judgmental uncaring attitudes to others. It reduces us to passive waiters for God’s kingdom, instead of praying and working for it now with God. It changes the Good News of Jesus into Bad News. It can make us selfish about our own personal salvation, instead of that of others. It falls short of the teaching andway of Jesus, of loving God and loving others with a positive stance to life, to people, and to the world.
2. Jesus and the Future in Mark 13
For some Christians Mark 13 is a disturbing and difficult chapter to understand and accept. Jesus seems to speak with apocalyptic images and ideas. He seems to offer a vision of a frightening future for his disciples. Some have even thought it must be a later insert in the gospel by apocalyptic Christians or Jews. But there is little documentary evidence for that idea, and our three main gospels treat it as original tradition by including and even expanding it.
Jesus was a Jew and seems to have shared the common view that upheavals and sufferings lay ahead. He was a man of his time, and was shaped by the prevalent Jewish world view of a cataclysmic end to the old age, and the birth pangs of the coming new age of God. But he balanced this by teaching that God’s coming kingdom was also already here among us and within us, and visible in his healing, forgiving and inclusive ministry and that we could share it. Jesus taught and embodied God’s love for the common people often judged unworthy by others, and apparently did not believe the pessimistic myth of doom and gloom for all but a very select few. Jesus obviously trusted in the spiritual power of God to overcome the reality and power of evil, both here and now, and in the future at the end. Jesus was neither a sunny optimist, or a gloomy pessimist, but a divine realist, able to face and overcome life and evil with God. And that is what he calls disciples and us to be with him.
Yes, Jesus does describe a future with wars and rumours of wars, social upheavals, and natural disasters as there always have been and continue to be in our time. And it is certain that this world will not last forever and one day will be no more, and we cannot know or calculate when that will be. And it is also certain that our own life will end as well, years from now or tomorrow, in a fatal accident or a deadly disease, or some other factor we cannot foresee or control. Jesus says
to us here: Face the future and all its uncertainty, do not despair or give up, remain alert in faith, watch for me and not false messiahs, go on trusting God and loving one another, and you will overcome life and the future whatever tough things they bring. You can face and overcome them, as I have already faced and overcome them for you. Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Rev G.A. Studdert Kennedy was an army chaplain in the First World War, known as Woodbine Willie for his ministry of bringing cigarettes, chocolate and physical comforts to the suffering, wounded and dying soldiers in the terrible trenches. He also had a powerful and spiritual ministry of comfort to their souls through his preaching of faith in a loving God who suffers with us and for us in life and death. Here is one of his poems:
How do I know that God is good? I don’t.
I gamble like a man.
I bet my life upon one side in life’s great war.
I must. I can’t stay out.
For he was a gambler too, my Christ.
He flung his life upon that cross,
For God, and us,
And ere the westering sun had gone,
He knew that he had won.
We can face life and the future with either optimism or pessimism. But both are really human myths we invent to make sense of what is happening around us and within us. In today’s Gospel Jesus is telling us there is another way we can choose. It is to choose to be realistic about the uncertainties of good and evil in life. It is also to choose the stance of an alert faith in Jesus Christ and his loving God, and in the reality of his Spirit working with us. Faith empowers us to make the best of whatever the present or future may bring us. Faith, not fear, is the choice that enables us to endure and overcome. Amen.