Twenty Fourth Sunday After Pentecost - Year B

Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – Year B (Proper 28) 2009
Daniel 12: 1 – 3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10: 11 – 14, 19 – 25; Mark 13: 1 – 8
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, November 15, 2009

OF GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS – OF BEGININGS AND ENDS

Let us pray: Savior Jesus, you came to us as “good news”; as the answer to our questions, the light in our darkness, the hope in our despair. In you, we experience the near and loving presence of God, embracing us. Reaching out to us. In this life, O God we have bad things happen to us. We discover that we are not as secure, not as safe from tragedy as we think. Bad news breaks in upon us and we feel engulfed, threatened by sadness and difficulty. Holy One again and again you come and turn our bad news to good news, you come and work with us, stand beside us, embrace us. Even in the difficulty especially there you are with us. You are not only our friend, our teacher and our guide; but also our savior. Save us from the things that threaten us. Save us from our despair. Bearer of our hope; savior of our world – our best good news hear us when we pray. Amen.

(SUNG) DEEP WITHIN I WILL PLANT MY LAW; NOT ON STONE
BUT IN THEIR HEARTS. FOLLOW ME, I WILL TAKE YOU BACK
YOU WILL BE MY OWN AND I WILL BE YOUR GOD.

We are all pretty familiar with the Good News/Bad News setup in our society. I’ve got some good news for you, and some bad news the setup goes. So here’s the bad news; I was in bed the later part of this week feeling like I’d been run over by a Mack truck. I didn’t run a fever so I’m guessing it wasn’t the H1N1 virus leading to swine flu. Here’s the good news my sermon this morning is going to be shorter than usual since I didn’t have the preparation time (10:00 AM and I’m not going to make you listen to the sermon in Portuguese that Marcos delivered at the Misa em Portuguese celebrated as the vigil last evening). I do, however, have a good news/bad news story for you. Jim was an incredible baseball fan. In fact Jim was such a fan that he made his wife swear a vow with him. Whoever died first had to swear that they would communicate with the other when they died to find out if there was baseball in heaven. As it happened, Jim’s wife died after a long and wonderful life. A few days after the funeral, Jim was getting ready for bed and he felt his wife’s presence in the room with him. A familiar voice rose up and he heard her say: “Jim I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is your Pitching on Tuesday.

So we will note that we get apocalyptic texts as we reach the end of our liturgical year; we are moving towards the end of that year, the end of the Gospel text attributed to Mark and so Jesus speaks to the disciples about the end of the world. “Apocalyptic” doesn’t mean destruction, ending or strange events. Apocalyptic means “unveiling”, “revealing.” Before Jesus goes into the events that will lead us to the cross, he let his disciples in on the final act, a glimpse of the future. Here toward the end of the church year, the church has an opportunity to reflect upon “the end,” to ask, “Is this the finale, the bad news of cataclysmic destruction?” Or, “Is this really the good news of a birth, a beginning, a cataclysmic creation of something new?” God is a God of creation, but rarely can creation be wrought without some dismantling, destruction, and re-creation. It is that aspect of God’s creative work that is the Good News of our Gospel text this morning.

You don’t hear a text like today’s Gospel often preached in a Church like ours. Mainline Protestantism doesn’t often use literature like the Book of Daniel or Mark 13, “apocalyptic” biblical literature. Those popular “Left Behind” books weren’t written by an Episcopalian. Why? People on top, people in power, people whose children are well fed, well housed, and well futured do not care for apocalyptic literature that speaks of ending and of the destruction of the present order. After all, the present order has been very good to people like us. To hear that God plans to allow the destruction of all our eternal looking achievements is bad news indeed. C.S. Lewis says that most of us Christians are “too easily pleased.” There is this human tendency to imbue human institutions and humanly created situation with divine permanence, as if God created everything that now is. Passages like Mark 13 remind us that God isn’t done with us or our world. When we discover, as we did this week, that our old dusty moon is brimming with life giving water; we can begin to hear the Good News that God is not done with our creation. Sometimes things can’t be made new until the old is destroyed. Sometimes there can’t be birth until there is death. In the falling leaves that are dying and falling to the earth in decay; comes the fecund mulch that will give birth to the bulbs hiding underneath the soil they cover.

(SUNG) DEEP WITHIN I WILL PLANT MY LAW; NOT ON STONE
BUT IN THEIR HEARTS. FOLLOW ME, I WILL TAKE YOU BACK
YOU WILL BE MY OWN AND I WILL BE YOUR GOD.

Have any of you here had to die in order to live? Does someone here know what it is like to have your “temple” destroyed, only to be replaced by something much better? Has your very bad news ever become very good news? In my last parish one of my dearest supporters and friends shared with me, “When my husband died, my life was over, I told God, ‘I’ve got nothing to live for now. My world is destroyed.’ But wonder of wonders, I didn’t die. I went on, not with the same life, but with a new life. I wouldn’t have chosen for my marriage to end, to be alone, yet that was the life I got and I must say, it’s turned out for the best. I have my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and they bring me great joy and hope. Now that’s someone who knew the move from bad news to good.

It is only human to cling tightly to what we know, what we have. Maybe its divine to give birth, sometimes painful birth, to a future that is new. Perhaps we come to church to learn how to look for God’s hand, even in the news that seems bad, to expect God to work, to continue to create good news – to continue to birth the Gospel. The Good News of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as told to the community that knew the author of Mark’s text is the Good News that we have been focusing upon this year. It is a Gospel that contains many sad events – the incomprehension and infidelity of the disciples, the growing hostility of the religious and political authorities of that time, and finally the bloody crucifixion of the savior of the world. Yet this Gospel attributed to Mark begins by saying that all of this, including the bad, is “The beginning of the Good News” way back in Chapter 1 at Verse 1. I had always thought that Mark 13, foretelling the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem was bad news, Jesus on a bad day. However, to the person who has been abused, thrown down by this world, the news that this world will be thrown down is good news. For God to say, “This world is not your ultimate home. I am still working, and will work, to make this world, my world in all of its goodness and fullness.” This is good news; this is Gospel “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the son of God.”

Amen.