- Sermon - Mickey Anders

Text: Mark 13:1-8

In 1936, a movie was made of the Broadway play "The Green Pastures." The movie, with an all-black cast, would undoubtedly be politically incorrect today because it presents some rather stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans. But the play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.

The movie begins with the angel Gabriel shouting, "Gangway for the Lord God Jehovah!" The Lord is constantly criticizing the angels, telling them to stop dancing around the moon, and every once in a while he goes down to earth to tell humankind to stop drinking and gambling, and to tell Noah not to forget to label all the animals with signs so they won't forget which ones are which. At one point God gets so mad about all the wickedness on earth that he exclaims, "Even being God ain't no bed of roses."

The movie tells the story of how God first sent Moses and then the prophets to call his people back to him, and, when all else fails, sends his Son to share their suffering. All the angels grow exasperated with the rebellion of humankind. Time and time again in the play Gabriel wants to blow his horn and bring it all to an end. Gabriel repeatedly implores God, "Now Lord? Can I blow the trumpet now?" But each time God holds out in patience. Finally, one of the angels watching the chaos on earth exclaims, "Everything nailed down is coming loose!" Yet still God would not give up.

Did you ever feel that way - that everything nailed down was coming loose? Did you ever feel that a seismic event had shaken your world beyond recognition? The Bible provides hope for us in just such times like that, for the Bible often speaks to people facing cataclysmic events. The history of Israel tells us of times when the chosen People of God were slaves in Egypt, conquered by the Assyrians, and deported into exile by the Babylonians.

In the New Testament, early Christians faced persecutions and torture. Jesus' own crucifixion set the stage for the kind of martyrdom than many of his disciples experienced. The emperor Nero visited horrific persecutions on Christians. The apocalyptic portions of the Bible were written for such traumatic times.

The passage we read today from Mark is often called the "little apocalypse," because it sounds so much like the book of Revelation and other apocalyptic passages.

Mark 13:5-8 says, "Then Jesus began to say to them, 'Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For 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.'"

Many people have trouble with the apocalyptic and eschatological texts in the Bible. Even theologians and preachers struggle with it. We often fall into one of two extremes.

One commentator makes this observation, "The thirteenth chapter of Mark is a happy hunting ground for persons fascinated by the end of the world. It figures prominently in the books by doomsayers and in sermons by evangelists more interested in the next world than in this one. On the other hand, this chapter is largely ignored by pragmatists, activists, believers in progress, and all who dismiss preoccupation with the end of the world as a juvenile state of human development or an aberration of unbalanced minds" (Larry Williamson, Mark in the INTREPRETATION SERIES, pages 235-236).

One extreme is the person who just doesn't have room for the theology of eschatology and apocalyptic. Some people either don't believe in the Second Coming of Jesus or they have no idea what it means and what to do with it.

Other people are so absorbed with talk of the Second Coming that they don't have time for today's work. As Reinhold Neibuhr once said, "There are some people who claim to know the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell."

But I believe these passages are there for a purpose. Mark had a reason for including them here. To dismiss them as meaningless is to the miss their significance. I hope we can avoid the over obsession with the end times. But I also want to respect the Bible, remain true to the text and find meanings that can work for us.

I was struck by the use of the word "earthquake" in today's scripture, so I looked through the Bible to find how many times earthquakes were mentioned. According to my computer concordance, earthquakes are mentioned thirteen times in the Bible.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah meets God at Mount Horeb. God said to Elijah, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Then came a great wind so strong that it split mountains and broke rocks in pieces, but the Scripture records, "The Lord was not in the wind." And after the wind came an earthquake, but again the Scripture records, "The Lord was not in the earthquake." After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a sound of sheer silence. It was after the silence that a still small voice came to Elijah.

A similar scene is described in Isaiah 29:6 where the Scripture says, "You will be visited by the Lord of hosts, with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire."

A historical earthquake is mentioned in passing in Amos and in Zechariah. The ministry of Amos is dated "in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and in the days of King Jeroboam… of Israel, two years before the earthquake" (Amos 1:1).

The same earthquake is mentioned in Zechariah 14:5, "You shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah."

Matthew 27:54 tells us that an earthquake occurred when Jesus was dying on the cross.

"Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, 'Truly this man was God’s Son!'"

Another earthquake occurred at the resurrection according to Matthew 28:2.

"And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it."

Paul and Silas were in prison in Acts 16:26 when, "Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened."

Then earthquakes are mentioned five times in the book of Revelation describing the cataclysmic events of the end times (Revelation 6:12, 8:5, 11:13, 11:19, 16:18).

Obviously, Biblical writers were fascinated by earthquakes, and referred to them often to make their point. An earthquake is a good image for cataclysmic times when "everything nailed down is coming loose." Earthquakes threaten our assumptions about the stability of life. We like to think of earth as rock solid, but sometimes the earth moves. Sometimes when people fear flying on a plane, they resort to the ancient Latin by saying, "Just get me back to terra firma." We expect the ground to be firm. We want our buildings tied to the bedrock because our foundations need to tie to something that won't move.

We are easily lured into thinking the same about our lives. We expect stability. We expect our lives to be "rock solid," but then something traumatic happens and "everything nailed down is coming loose."

The noted theologian Paul Tillich once wrote a sermon entitled, "The Shaking of the Foundations." His sermon reflected on the devastation of World War II, the holocaust, and the invention of the atomic bomb. If ever there was a time when the foundations shook, then surely that was it.

Tillich makes the point that God had laid the foundations of the earth, but humankind had discovered its undoing. The awesome power of the atomic bomb threatens the very existence of our earth. The question still lingers - "What will we do with this terrible ability? Will we destroy the foundations of the earth?"

Up until now, our national defense strategy has depended on "mutually assured destruction," with the appropriate acronym "MAD." We kept the Russians from firing their nuclear weapons at us by having enough weapons aimed back at them to assure mutual destruction. And they returned the favor.

Sometimes I think "mutually assured destruction" is the strategy that many people take in their relationships. People relate to one another in a private form of atomic warfare. When disagreements occur, one party or sometimes both have their finger on the "red button," and are fully prepared to destroy one another, to launch "mutually assured destruction." I've seen it all too often, and I'm sure you have too. Sometimes it even happens in attitudes toward the church.

Listen to the vivid description in Isaiah 24, "The foundations of the earth tremble. The earth is utterly broken; the earth is torn asunder; the earth is violently shaken. The earth staggers like a drunkard; it sways like a hut; its transgression lies heavy upon it; and it falls, and will not rise again" (Isaiah 24:18b-20).

The prophet Isaiah had witnessed the destruction of the Northern Kingdom at the hands of the Assyrians, a fate that would fall to the Southern Kingdom as well 150 years later. It was a devastating time. Isaiah uses earthquake imagery to describe the events.

What do you do when "everything nailed down is coming loose?" In times like those, we need more than a message of judgment. We also need hope and that is the main purpose of all of the apocalyptic literature in the Bible - to give hope for people in desperate circumstances.

Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats. But my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended" (Isaiah 51:6).

"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:10).

In Mark 13, Jesus speaks of eschatological events, events of the end times. Verse 24 says, "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken." It's Jesus way of saying, "Everything nailed down is coming loose!"

But then he says, "The end is not yet." The earthquakes of life do not have the last word; that belongs to God alone.

Jesus ends our "little apocalypse" in Mark 13 with good news. He says, "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven" (Mark 13:26-27).

All this talk of the Second Coming of Christ means one thing to me. It means that one day difficulties of this life will be set aside and God will wrap up human history, right the wrongs, and reward the faithful.

Did you notice that the Bible's dramatic messages about earthquakes always end in hope. I once read an article entitled "Hope in the Active Voice," which told this story:

The volunteer tutor was asked to visit a nine-year-old in a large city hospital. She took the boy's name and room number and was told by the boy's teacher that they were studying nouns and adverbs in class. It wasn't until the tutor got to the boy's room that she realized the boy was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a nine-year-old so horribly burned and in such great pain. She felt she couldn't just turn and leave, so gathered her courage and entered the room.

"Hi, I'm the hospital teacher," she stammered. "Your teacher asked me to help you with nouns and adverbs." And, clumsily, she launched into the lesson.

The next morning a nurse called the tutor. "What did you do to that boy?" The tutor immediately began a tearful apology, but the nurse interrupted her.

"No, no, no. You don't understand. We've been very worried about him. But since you were here, he's fighting back, he's responding to treatment. It's as though he's decided to live."

The boy explained that he had given up hope, until the tutor came. "I figured they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a kid who's dying, would they?" ("Hope in the active voice," Connections, Solemnity of Christ the King, Nov. 1998)

Hope is the essential ingredient for seeing us through earth-shaking events. Hope is the power that holds our lives together. When everything nailed down is coming loose, cling to hope.