Hi everyone. Today is the 26th Sunday after Pentecost, and we’re just about at the end of the biggest chunk of what’s called “Ordinary Time” in the Church calendar—next week is “Reign of Christ” Sunday (Christ the King), and then Advent will start, leading up to Christmas.

We’ve been on a long journey in the lectionary over these 26 weeks, mostly through the Gospel of Mark, following the whole arc of Jesus’ ministry, finally arriving in Jerusalem, getting ready for the amazing climax of it all, the crucifixion and resurrection. Today we’re on the Mount of Olives (in East Jerusalem, adjacent to the old city—it is described in Acts as the place from where Jesus ascended into heaven—now a Palestinian neighbourhood) and we’ll read the first part of the famous Olivet Discourse, as it is known, which appears in all three synoptic Gospels.

But it’s a bit of a freak out—in this very intense discourse Jesus is preparing the disciples for his impending death, and their lives and mission after he leaves, and he explains it in terms of the terrible future events of the so-called End Times, leading up to a Final Judgement Day and his own Second Coming—Jesus seems to be channelling a whole bunch of Old Testament prophecy about End-times and Final Judgement—which is, by the way, common to many religious traditions.

Yes, this is scary stuff—and ever since Jesus’ day people—some people— have been trying to predict when the terrible End Times will happen. Jesus gives the distinct impression that it’s going to happen in the disciples’ own lifetime, but, well, it still hasn’t happened to this day!

So, today we’ll try to make sense of what Jesus’ is trying to tell the disciples in this very controversial discourse—and it turns out that there is a real positive here, for us all, about the Kingdom—the Reign of Christ, which will be next Sunday’s celebration.

GOSPEL READING: Mark 13:1-8

The end and the coming of the Son

13:1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”

13:2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

13:3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately,

13:4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”

13:5 Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray.

13:6 Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.

13:7 When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.

13:8 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.

REFLECTION

“Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

“Beware that no one leads you astray……”

“When you hear of wars and rumours of wars ……. nation will rise against nation ……. earthquakes ……… famines. This is [just] the beginning …..”

Yes, pretty scary stuff! It’s understandable, you’re probably thinking: Jesus is about to be arrested, tortured and executed, and he knows it! He’s feeling the heat, the weight of it all, bearing down on him. The disciples, well, they don’t get it at all, they’re oblivious to it, still riding high on Jesus’ miracles and amazing preaching. Just 3 Sundays ago—in Mark 10—James and John, God bless them, ask Jesus if they can sit on his right and left hand when he is crowned King! They’re still thinking Jesus will be a conventional worldly King who will triumph over all their enemies! Then a few days later Jesus is on a donkey making a triumphal entry to Jerusalem, to the cheers of the adoring crowd. But the truth is that he is a lamb shortly about to be slaughtered, and his Kingdom will be very different to the one they’re expecting, a long time in coming to fruition.

Several times, to this point, he’s told them directly what is about to happen: a terrifying death ordeal, but then a death-defying resurrection. And then—he hasn’t told them this at all yet, at least not in so many words in the synoptic Gospels’ narrative—he will leave them, on their own, ascend into heaven, not to be seen again, in the flesh, anytime soon—they’ll be on their own, with an amazing mission to undertake, against the odds—against all the powers of human sin and selfishness arrayed against them. This is us, remember—Jesus’ disciples today—on the same mission, against the same odds.

How can Jesus explain all this to them, how can he prepare them for it, both what is immediately about to happen, and what will happen later after he is gone? Well, he can only explain it in terms they can understand. When Jesus starts talking about the destruction of the Temple, the disciples immediately realize what he’s referring to.

“Tell us”, they ask him, “when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”

They’re immediately making a connection with the Old Testament narrative of End Times and Final Judgement—virtually all the Prophets predict it in one form or another: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Zechariah, Amos. The destruction of the Temple is usually seen as the beginning of a chain of terrible events leading up to a final dramatic climax, with God themself arriving, at last, to judge the world.

Later in this long discourse, which takes up the whole of Mark 13, it gets even scarier:

12 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death……..

14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong [referring to pagan sacrifices offered in the Temple described in the book of Daniel] ……then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains…… How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequalled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equalled again……..

22 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 23 So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

24 “But in those days ….. “‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; 25 the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’”

But then (this is verse 26):

“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Then, finally, God will judge the living and the dead—so the prophecy goes—and the good, the elect, the true believers will be called forward into God’s blessing and eternal life, the wicked cast into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Eek! Help! I added the last bit in myself, it’s from the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, with the “wailing” thrown in for good measure!

But it’s not true! Yes, it is a traditional, very common and widespread religious narrative, not just Christian—cataclysmic End Times then Final Judgement—but no, it’s not true. God is not that sort of God—not a God of Judgement and Punishment, as I’ve said here before, rather a God of Grace and Love. Yes, maybe we humans will end up destroying the planet through our own selfish greed and stupidity, but that won’t be God acting in order to judge us, rather it’ll be the result of our own foolish actions!

No judgement! Sure, when things are going badly for us—when we’re being oppressed by the Babylonians or the Romans, when people are giving us a hard time, when the rich and powerful keep getting more rich and more powerful, seemingly at our expense, when we seem to be hemmed in on all sides with enemies, with people who don’t like or respect us—we want a God to come and judge those people—maybe even the whole world if it is the whole world that is against us—judge them in our favour! It’s a natural human thing—to want our very own judgemental God, and some sort of Judgement Day, hopefully sooner rather than later, when justice is finally delivered, for us, for me. That’s why we invented such gods in the first place. And that’s why God—the real one who actually exists, the one we didn’t invent—eventually had to send Jesus, for the precise purpose of sweeping away all those old ideas of God as Judge, and showing us, directly, in the flesh, that God—the real one—is a God, solely, of Love and Grace.

“Judge not, lest ye be judged”, says Jesus, famously [Matthew 7:1], although it’s not God’s judgement we’re likely to bring upon ourselves when we judge people, but the retaliatory judgement of those people we judge! But will there be no ultimate justice in the world, a thing our hearts can’t help but continue to ache for, for our desire for justice isn’t always so obviously purely selfishly motivated? Ah, now we’re getting to the truth—the Gospel-transformed truth—of the old religious narrative of End Times and Judgement.

Will humanity ever transcend its own selfish nature, the very thing which is the root cause of all injustice in the world, including all self-destructive, vengeful, natural desires for justice for us, for me? How can we—any one of us humans—do it—transcend our own selfish nature? Well, that is precisely the question for which Jesus has the answer—for which Jesus is the answer!

In and through Jesus, God—the real one, who exists—incarnates into the world the ability for us human beings to overcome our natural-born selfish nature, so that we can start to practise a little bit of selflessness, begin to live a life and lifestyle motivated not by the desire to take care of number one first, always, but a desire to cooperate with, care for and serve others. Through faith in Jesus, we are able to begin to let go of our selfish desires, including all those self-destructive, vengeful, natural desires for justice for us, me.

This is no mysterious, esoteric process; you can see it happening any day of the week with parents teaching their little children the ropes of day-to-day cooperative social life: how to share, say “please” and “thank you”, “sorry” and “I forgive you”, play nicely, let other people have a turn, be a humble winner and a gracious loser; be kind, helpful and encouraging to others; and so on. The gradual transformation, that hopefully every human child will undergo as they grow up: from natural-born self-centredness, to very unnatural selflessness!

If every individual human being needs someone outside themselves—typically their parents—to intervene in their lives to teach them how to practise a bit of selflessness, so they can live successfully in community with others, who is it that intervenes in the life of humanity as a whole to teach it the art of selfless cooperative living? God, of course, through the incarnation, through Jesus!

So, there is no final judgement coming humanity’s way in the future, near or distant: our God, we believe, we affirm, just doesn’t do judgement! Ultimate justice will come, but not through a final cataclysmic judgement, rather through the coming to fruition of God’s Kingdom in the world, humanity opened up to, and transformed by, the incarnation of selfless love through Christ—the Kingdom of God, or Reign of Christ which we’ll celebrate next Sunday.

“When you hear of wars and rumours of wars …nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be  ….. famines … false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive.”

Yes, Jesus is simply describing events which typically happen, and will continue to happen, as long as humans continue to be self-centred, self-seeking and act in ways to bring destruction upon themselves. But do not fear, natural-born human selfishness will not win out in the end, rather, as we noted:

“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” (verse 26 of Mark 13)

Jesus’ ultimate aim in the Olivet Discourse, therefore, is to reassure and encourage the disciples—and us today—to hang in there: no matter how badly things might seem to be going at any point in time, God’s Kingdom will come to fruition, as sure as night follows day. But it won’t be through God’s judgment—God is no judge—rather through God’s never-ending love and grace.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. Amen.