More Than Knowing

Mark 13:32-37

June 4, 2017 (Pentecost) • Mount Pleasant UMC

In just a little over a week, myself and thirteen others will get on a plane and head for the Holy Land. This will be my fifth trip to Israel, and I have to tell you, I still get excited every time I go. For me, to go to Israel is a little like going home; there is no place on earth like it. This year, I not only get to share the journey with several folks from here, I also get to share it with my son, Christopher, for the first time. Rachel has been twice, and in 2000, I got to share that trip with my parents. As we were planning that particular trip, with all the hubbub that surrounded the turn of the century, I had one person in particular ask me, “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll get over there and the end of the world will come?” I told her that I wasn’t really worried about that, but then I said, “What better place to be if it does?” As long as I can remember, for most or all of my nearly fifty years, people have been predicting the end of the world and the return of Jesus. When I was in college, there was a popular book making the rounds titled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. If you go to some used bookstores today, you can find copies of that book, along with its sequel, 89 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1989. I remember a pamphlet I saw once predicting the end during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The reason? Each of his names—Ronald Wilson Reagan—had six letters in it: 666. And, of course, many of you may remember the two specific predictions preacher Harold Camping made in 2011 as well as the Mayan Apocalypse that came along in 2012 and again provided “firm” dates for certain preachers. Wikipedia lists 154 different predictions for the end of the world and the return of Jesus that have passed, many of which were made by more than one person, and also 9 additional predictions for future years. And those are just religious predictions; scientists have their own predictions for the end of life on planet Earth. For all of my life and much, much longer, people have been predicting the return of Jesus.

And I understand that; I get that. The return of Jesus is the great hope of the church. Jesus promised that one day, he would come back “in clouds and with great power and glory” (13:26). The whole of the New Testament, especially the writings of Paul, echo that great hope. The church took the Old Testament concept of the “Day of the Lord”—the day when God would decisively step into history and end all the sin and corruption that are so evident—and they paired that with Jesus’ promise to return. Paul did so directly in his letter to the Thessalonians: “You know very well that the day of the Lord [there’s that Old Testament phrase] will come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). The actual promise had been made much earlier, by Jesus himself, and then by the angels who were present at his ascension. When he returned to heaven, ten days before Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, angels told the disciples, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seem him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). And though the church has not always agreed on the details, we hold onto this truth: one day, Jesus will return and put the world to rights.

For the last several weeks, we’ve been reading through and studying the Gospel of Mark in a series we’re calling “Stretch Marks” because in this Gospel, Jesus stretches our faith. We’ve heard him teaching, we’ve seen him healing, we’ve watched the opposition rise against him. We’ve experienced the various emotions of Jesus, including the sighing Jesus, the calm Jesus, the “family values” Jesus and the indignant Jesus. This morning, we find ourselves in the midst of Mark’s account of the last week of Jesus’ life. In chapter 11, which you will read beginning tomorrow if you’re following the reading plan, Jesus enters Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, and he has begun teaching and preaching in and around the Temple courts, the center of life for Judaism. One of the things I’ve noticed about the first part of Mark is how often Jesus is healing and casting out demons, and it’s fascinating that, according to Mark’s account, none of that happens after Jesus enters Jerusalem on this final week. The last healing in the Gospel is what closes out chapter 10, when blind Bartimaeus receives his sight as Jesus is passing through Jericho. After that, there are no more stories of healing. In his last week on earth, Jesus is focused on his message and calling the people to greater faithfulness to God.

Chapter 13 begins, then, with an observation from the disciples. As they are leaving the Temple, they comment on the beauty of the building, the magnificence of what King Herod built. “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” (13:1). And I get where they are coming from. Not only are the stones that are still visible today at the Western (or Wailing) Wall huge, but when you go through the tunnels around the Temple platform, you see even larger stones. Massive stones. They are very impressive. I can see how the disciples were both impressed and proud of what had been built there. But Jesus doesn’t waste any time with sightseeing. He sort of brings their mood down when he says, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down” (13:2). And that’s just what happened. In the year 70 AD, the Romans came to Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. They tossed the stones down and set the Temple on fire; they destroyed it so thoroughly that the Temple culture never recovered. After that cataclysm, Judaism reorganized around the practice of the Law and worship at the synagogue because what had been the center of their life was gone. But in this moment, Jesus’ prediction quiets the disciples until they have crossed the Kidron Valley and are sitting together on the Mount of Olives. That’s when they ask Jesus when all this will happen. “What will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” they ask (13:4).

A big part of the problem we have in interpreting what comes next, as well as what is in Matthew 24-25, is that Jesus is really talking about two events at the same time—not two events that will happen at the same time but rather two events that will be separated by thousands of years as it turns out. He’s taking at some points about the destruction of the Temple, and at other times he’s referring to his return. These two are certainly linked, for the judgment that is going to fall on the Temple is a foretaste of the judgment that will ultimately fall on the whole world (Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 187). And the end of the Temple would have felt like the end of the world for the Jews. So it’s not always easy to tell which one he is talking about because for Jesus, this is really all a call to a certain way of life. The order in which things happen isn’t so important as how the disciples and how we respond to those things. So he talks about betrayal, arrests, an “abomination that causes desolation” (an image he draws from the book of Daniel), and natural signs like falling stars and a darkened moon. For centuries, people have tried to take these statements, and others like them in Matthew’s Gospel as well as the books of Daniel and Revelation, and match them up to either current events or natural disasters or both. And do you know what all of them have in common? So far, they have all been wrong. Many of the events and all of the dates have come and gone and we’re all still here. The world keeps turning. And life goes on.

The other thing such predictions have in common is that they have completely missed the point of what Jesus is saying here. There’s two main points Jesus wants to make in the passage we read this morning, and the first is this: no one knows when the end will come, not even Jesus (13:32). Friends—if Jesus himself doesn’t know when it will happen, why do we think we can figure it out? Jesus is God, part of the Trinity, and even he doesn’t know. Granted, that’s a mystery, one scholars debate endlessly, how Jesus can be God and yet not know something the Father knows, but that is, apparently, the way it is. I can’t explain it and I don’t want to try. But note that Jesus does not say, “No one knows about that day—except some famous author in the twenty-first century who will get it right.” No, Jesus says, “Only the Father knows. I don't even know when the end will come; I’m just waiting on him to tell me when to come back.” To the church today, I think Jesus might say something like this: “Stop trying to predict the end. You won’t get it right.” As Biblical scholar Tom Wright says, to do so is to reduce Biblical prophecy to the level of a horoscope (187; cf. Barclay 321). “Modern church,” Jesus might say, “did you miss the part about no one knows and how it will come suddenly like a thief in the night? Stop setting dates and trying to decode so-called ‘signs.’ It just makes the church look foolish every time you’re wrong” (cf. Lane, The Gospel of Mark [NICNT], pg. 482). I know it’s presumptuous to speak on behalf of Jesus, but let me tell you why I’m so passionate about this point: when I was a kid, a series of end-times movies was going around and being shown in local churches. And I watched people give their lives to Jesus, which is a good thing, but it was a fear reaction. Honestly, when the fear passed, so did the commitment and the faith. Jesus is not trying to scare anyone into the kingdom here. In fact, if anything he's downplaying that aspect, calling us not to look for signs and hints. No one knows when the end will come.

Instead, Jesus calls us to respond to him in faith and live a life of faithfulness. That’s the second thing he wants to say, and it’s what he means when he tells the disciples, “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back” (13:35). That’s not meant to inspire fear or dread; it’s meant to tell us we’re supposed to keep doing what we have been called to do until he comes, whenever that is. He wants faithfulness, not fear. The image of “keeping watch” comes from the first-century culture where servants or slaves in a master’s household were not told when the master was returning, so they were to live as if every day he might be coming home. That required doing their duty and exercising his authority until he came back. They could live that way even if they didn’t know for sure when the master was coming; in fact, being part of the master’s household might be described as a life of “more than knowing,” faith manifested in obedience to the master’s last commands (cf. Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pgs. 161-162). With that mindset, “all of life becomes a preparation to meet the King” (Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, pg. 321).

Ten days after Jesus returned to heaven on what we call Ascension Day, the disciples were all gathered in an upper room (presumably the same room in which they had shared the Last Supper with Jesus). They have been doing what Jesus last told them to do: staying in Jerusalem until God the Father sends the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4). On the day of Pentecost, an agricultural festival up until that point, the Holy Spirit comes in power upon the disciples. Luke, in the book of Acts, struggles to adequately describe it. Listen to how he puts it: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:2-4). In that moment, the church, was given the power to be able to do what Jesus had sent them to do: to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And they were to do this until he comes again (Acts 1:7-8). The Spirit came so that we could fulfill our mission and be faithful to our calling.

So what is it God has called you to do in this time and place? God has called you here, I believe, for a purpose. Not just to this church, but to this city, this community. What has he called you here to do? Cathy and I firmly believe God has called us to Terre Haute for this time, and that he called us to this place for a purpose. We’ve talked on occasion about how the United Methodist appointment system works, and that we could have moved sooner or later, but that we would not have ended up at Mount Pleasant. And we have a conviction that this is where God wants us at this time, that God has a purpose for us here. I’m not sure what all that entails yet, but I do know what my calling is: to be faithful to do what he puts before me until he calls me elsewhere or until he comes. Sometimes, though, we think of “purpose” in big terms, changing the world like a Martin Luther King Jr. or a John Wesley. But God has not called us all to that. For some, the most godly thing you can do, the most purposeful thing you can do is to love your family well with Christ-like love. Especially for those with young children, following the guidance of Proverbs 22:6 is your highest calling: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” For others, you might be in jobs you don’t particularly like and you’re always looking for the next thing. Perhaps God’s calling or purpose for you right now is to be the best employee, the best worker, the best businessman or woman you can be and give glory to God by your hard and faithful work. That can speak volumes to your co-workers and your bosses about what a Christian man or woman is like. Though Paul was addressing slaves in Ephesians 6:5, I think it also applies in today’s culture to employees: “Obey your earthly masters [or employers] with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” We live out our faith in faithful ways, often in small ways. As Mother Teresa is reported to have said, “We can do no great things - only small things with great love.” St. Francis of Assisi was once  hoeing in a garden of beans when he was asked, “What would you do if you knew the world would end today?” His calm, considered reply was, “I suppose I would finish hoeing this row of beans.” Keep watch—stay faithful. Do what God has called you to do until the moment Jesus returns (cf. Lane 483). He is coming. He will return. Our calling is not to figure out the when but to be ready whenever through faithful obedience.

Now, having said all of that, let me take a brief detour because occasionally I get asked, “Pastor, what do you think? How do you interpret it? What’s your view of the end of time and Jesus’ return?” Because of my experience as a child and teenager with the end-times movies, I have given quite a bit of time and energy to studying the various ways the end is interpreted, and there are really four main views. I don’t have time to get into all of it this morning, but let me give you a quick overview. One view is called the “pre-millennial view.” The “millennium” is the thousand-year reign of Christ referred to in Revelation 20, and though even that is open to wide interpretation, let’s just use it as a reference. “Pre-millennialism” speculates that Jesus will return, as you might guess, before that thousand-year reign, and that his reign, then, will be here on earth. Another view, “post-millennialism,” as its name implies, says Jesus will return after the millennium, and that his reign, therefore, will be in heaven. A third view, called “amillennialism,” suggests that the thousand years is just a symbol, a representative figure, referring to all of history between Jesus’ first coming and his second coming, and that the return of Jesus will be the definitive last act, the absolute end of time but that he is reigning now. And scholars have argued over those ideas for centuries.

So which one do I think is right? And why did I say there were four when I’ve only listed three? Well, the best answer to those questions is found in a story from my seminary days. Dr. David Thompson was one of my Old Testament professors, and in one of my classes on the minor prophets, Dr. Thompson spent a whole class period laying out his understanding of these things as seen by the prophets in the Old Testament, how it will all come to pass. And when the class bell rang, Dr. Thompson signaled for us to wait for a minute, looked out at the class and said, “This is my best understanding of the Day of the Lord. Of course, if God decides to do it differently, that’s okay with me.” I am sure God was relieved to hear that! But I think at that moment, my viewpoint became fully formed. After years of study, pondering the Scriptures and praying through it, I am a firmly committed “pan-millennialist.” I believe it will all pan out in the end—because God is in control, God is on the throne, and my calling is to be faithful until the end, whether that’s tomorrow or a thousand years after my death. Jesus is coming; this much I know (cf. Lane 484).

And I also know that we are reminded of our call to faithfulness he in the act we call holy communion. In this act, we remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, during which he took an ordinary Passover meal and transformed it into something new. “This is my body…this is my blood.” And he said he would not drink the “fruit of the vine” again until he drinks it anew in the kingdom of God, when the kingdom fully comes (Mark 14:25). So this supper, this act of holy communion, not only looks back—it also looks forward to the day when Jesus returns and the kingdom arrives fully. In the first description of communion committed to writing, Paul reminds us of that truth: “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Until he comes! We look back, and we look forward—and we live the present with more than knowing, with joyful obedience, with faithful discipleship. Until he comes, Amen.