How Long?

I've been pondering over the book of Mark for the last couple of months.  Normally I read through the Bible like I watch movies a second time:  I know that I've been there before so I stay awake for only the good parts.  But here I am in my sixth year of pastoral ministry and I'm reading one of the gospels like it was the first time and boy, did I miss a lot.

I'm pretty good with the general message of the New Testament.  I get it; I really do and it's been pressed into my spiritual skin for almost forty years:  Jesus lived; Jesus died; Jesus rose again.  I'm saved by Jesus. 

Amen and close the book.

But that truth never seemed to motivate me that much.  Because of a general apathy towards anything that would change my relatively hedonistic view of life, I never dug deeper.  What really are the gospels saying to a group of people?  I try not to say, "What is the Bible saying to me?" because too often, when I over-personalize it, I remove the opinions and reflections of everyone else and the Bible becomes whatever I want it to be - usually a good luck charm that takes up a place of prominence on the third shelf of the bookcase.  If I'm feeling particularly down in the dumps, I might pull it out, touch the cover of it and somehow (I hope) by osmosis, the Bible would change my prospects for life simply by holding it.

But I rarely ever opened it.

And now I am. I'm astonished and I'm being changed.  Reshaped, if you will.  The book of Mark is fascinating and monumental.  The other gospels shed theological light on different aspects of the life of Jesus, but Mark gets right down to it, right down to the nitty gritty of who Jesus was and who his incredibly fallible followers were.  The more I read of Mark the more careful I am of...

Wanting to say I am just like one of the disciples. 

The disciples were arrogant, selfish, blind to the needs of others, reticent to pray, questioning, rebuke-worthy and full of pride.  They tried to put Jesus into human-sized boxes that looked a lot like constructs of limited minds.  Their hearts were hardened by the nature of the ruling class.  They complained about the politics of the government; they were concerned less for the needs of the hungry and poor than they were about providing themselves with the best opportunities for power. 

Man, I fit the mold of a pre-resurrection disciple perfectly.  For three years Jesus gave them every opportunity to watch and learn.  Then he set them free to change lives and make mistakes.  To bring unity and create chaos.  They never stopped being human.

One of my favorite stories of the disciples comes up as the preaching text this week.  I encourage you to find it in your own Bible if you are reading this.  Almost always it helps to get the context of the passage; read the previous verses and the ones after.  They should  affect your viewing.  Mark 13.  I'll add it here first, but feel free to read around it.

As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher!  What massive stones!  What magnificent buildings!"

"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus.  "Not one stone here will be left on another; everyone will be thrown down." 

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will these things happen?  And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you.  Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many.  When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.  Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.  These are the beginning of birth pains."

"You must be on your guard.  You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues.  On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.  And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.  Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say.  Just say whatever is given to you at the time, for it is not you speaking but the Holy Spirit."

I thought the gospel meant 'good news.'

Here we read Jesus explanation of current events, but Jesus reminds the disciples not to read into them.  There has always been a fascination when the last days were going to occur.  From Paul's understanding that Jesus was coming back soon, to the black plague, to the fires of London.  From various cults throughout history who believed that leadership was a reincarnation of Jesus to our own present day anxiety whether an ancient tribe of Central Americans have, in fact, been the recipients of the knowledge when God will say,

"Enough."

Interestingly, our scripture verses start with the disciples being completely enamored by the size of the stones and the architecture of the buildings.  Their eyes are filled with the amazing ability for humankind to dream and then create four walled structures that negate the affects of gravity.  But sooner or later, they all come crashing down, don't they?  The disciples, as if wandering through the downtown Beijing for the first time, ooh and aah their way down Church Street but then Jesus reins them in quickly. 

"Listen, fellas.  These things are not destined for eternity.  They are just buildings; man made dreams that, just like all their dreams, will crash down in the end."

Then, to me, it seems like Jesus snaps his fingers in front of their eyes and says, "Hey, guys, over here.  Focus on the bigger picture."  The disciples blink once or twice and then see Jesus reappear out of their architectural reverie. 

So they end up across the street.  A different perspective awaits them.  Ironically, as they carry on the next discussion, the temple is in full view.  The place where worship was carried out every Sabbath is the place from which they withdraw.  Four of the disciples pull Jesus aside and let him know they want some inside information.  "Teacher, when is this all going to end?  When will the buildings come down?"  Unasked is, "When do we get to be masters of the universe?"

Jesus cuts through the junk because too often, current events, natural disasters, wars and conflicts are used to justify how we preach the 'gospel,' the 'good news.'  We see hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, plagues and somehow cast judgment on the people who have suffered labeling them as sinners or recipients of God's profound justice while at the same time praying to God to refrain from punishing us for our pride and arrogance.  We see in those events God's hand preparing the end of the age, lifting us 'faithful ones' higher so that we will be the first to see God at the end of the age.  We have done all the right things.  We've gone to church, we've...

Well, what have we done?  As a Christian church we've placed ourselves in a position to reap the rewards of God's grace without actually doing what God has asked in the end times namely, "The gospel must be preached to all nations before this thing comes about."  What I find as a sinful disciple is that I preach the gospel to all nations that agree with me.  My evangelism is often limited to the set of people that have the same values and constants in their lives as I do.  And when I have finished my next great sermon, sinfully I sit back and say, "Okay, God, whenever you're ready.  Take me home."

So, I recline sometimes and ask God for a sign when the end is coming.  Why do I do that?  Why did the disciples do that?  Well, perhaps it is the great human understanding of how children see parents.

When I was a teenager, I think I begged my parents to go on dates.  Not that I wanted to think about what dating was like for thirty-somethings, but I wanted my parents out of the house so that we, my brother, sisters and I could do whatever we wanted for a few hours, whether it be throwing things, cooking things, watching TV uninterruptedly or whatever.  If my parents were around, there were always chores to do.  We all wanted them to go out so we could do whatever we wanted.

My parents took us up on that one time.  They left us at home (we were fifteen, or so) so that they could go to a party.  As they left the house, I'm sure that they said, "Don't break anything or anyone."  In today's cellphone technological age, I'm sure that our parents would have called us before they left the party to let us know that they were on the way.  But back in the 80's, no such phone call was made.  Probably for a good reason, too.  If my parents would have called fifteen minutes before they were coming, we would have cleaned up whatever mess that we made, straightened the cushions, swept up the broken glass and dirt from the plants that we tipped over.  But they didn't make that call and the earliest we knew that they were arriving home was the headlights turning down the driveway.  Because we didn't know when they were coming home, we had to be relatively good with regards to keeping the house together.  If we didn't, if the house was messed beyond repair and they arrived, there would be considerable consequences.

Jesus, I think, was using the same kind of analogy with the disciples.  Without knowing, they might have been thinking, "Can you have God text us when He's going to come back, the earlier the better, so that we have time to clean up the mess that we've made?"  But Jesus says response is one of, "How about you guys take care of the house now so that we don't have to clean up any houses?"

We don't need to know when the end is; we just need to take care of the house.  We don't need to know how long it will be before God comes back because living in peace with our neighbor was the intent all along.  When all of these stones fail; when all of these buildings fall; when all of our constructs of what is fascinating in life is left aside and peeled back, then we might see the amazing detail of God's original plan.

The beauty of the Good News.  That Jesus lived to show us a better life; that Jesus died to take away the end of life; that Jesus rose again to give us eternal life. 

That's something to focus on, isn't it?

Praise the Lord

It's been a while.  Usually guilt finds a clawhold on me, somewhere underneath my ego and above my ability to find time to do all the things on earth that I am meant to do.  It's all about time, isn't it?  Even if there were twenty-eight hours in a day, even if there were thirteen months in a year, even if I could live to one hundred and fifty years of age I would still find a way to stress out about all the things that I am supposed to do in the next week.  So, on a Sunday night in mid-November I sit in front of the digital eye tapping frantically away at words that will somehow be cathartic for me.  This tip/tapping on my computer keyboard brings some kind of release.

Or, it could be just a gracious opportunity to procrastinate. 

I'll choose the former.  Catharsis always sounds better.  In fact, the word catharsis is a fun word to say as if by saying it enough times you already feel less stressed.  Try it.  Catharsis.  Dictionary dot com defines catharsis as the purging of emotions or the easing of emotional stress.  Am I stressed?  Do I know what that means?  Does it simply mean that can I feel the blood pressure in my throat at certain times of the day?  Perhaps, but cathartically I can purge my emotional duress by laying out there some of the events that have occurred in the life of this small town pastor.

I've never not prepared for a funeral sermon before.  After spending time with a grieving family, usually I will find a way to connect the life story of the deceased with the living word of the Bible and viola, a sermon leaps from my head like the kangaroo that jumped out of the bush at my car this morning on the way to Mt. Sylvia, a fly speck of a church in the hills of the Lockyer Valley.  Fly speck sounds derogatory; don't ge me wrong - it was an adjective indicative of size rather than composition.  The church building  would comfortably hold forty on a Christmas Eve service.  I'm not sure that Cross Lutheran Church has seen that many since Martin Luther was alive, though.  Perhaps we can invite the local kangaroo population to attend.  Anyway, this kangaroo comes flying out of the bush to leap across the road inches in front of my Toyota Altise, as if a crocodile were hungry for some kangachips.  I beeped my horn as I swerved on the one lane road.  I didn't hit the marsupial but I'm pretty sure her pouch was not full of joeys when I barely missed her.

So the funeral sermon, right?  Eddie was an incredible man.  After the funeral service, one of the attendees caught up with me and explained Eddie in the best way possible.  The man who described him was one of the local farmers.  To the funeral he did not wear a suit and tie, but stained blue jeans and a wide brimmed hat.  His hands, large and stained with dirt, encircled my own as he stopped to talk about Eddie.

"There was nothing spectacular about Eddie.  He didn't really own anything.  He wasn't rich.  He wasn't powerful.  He wasn't even particularly successful at farming.  But look around you.  At this little church, there are almost three hundred people who have come to say farewell to an almost ninety year old man.  When is the last time you saw a truly elderly man whose funeral was attended by so many?"

I had to agree with him.  Usually, when someone in their late eighties passes away, it is a small funeral attended by the family and a few friends.  Most of the deceased's friends had died before.

"And yet here we are, farewelling (it's a verb here) a man who, by most standards, was not materially successful.  But he must have done something right."  With that, the farmer pushed his hat back a little farther on his head, placed his hands on his hips and smiled a slight smirk of contentment.  It was obvious his own memory of Eddie was impinging on the moment.

It was the same memory that all of us had (and I had only known Eddie for a eighteen months.)  Eddie smiled a lot.  And I mean, a lot.  Not just when things were going really well, when he was thinking about his kids or grandkids, but all the time.  One time, during a church service, Eddie banged his leg and it started to bleed.  Because he was on blood thinners, the bleeding didn't stop very easily, but no one in the congregation knew that Eddie was exsanguinating all over his Sunday best socks.  He just sat at the front, content to be part of the community, caring not whether he had to buy a new pair of argyles.  Nobody knew because Eddie was smiling.

His smile carried him through life.  It wasn't that he was happy all the time; the last few months he was not particularly pleased about his lack of ambulation, the falling, the bleeding, the cancer, the age; but he was joyful.  Content with whatever life brought because it meant that he was, as we spoke on that last day, "Almost home."  He said that a few times as he laid in the bed.  "Pastor Reid, I'm almost home."

People knew about Eddie's faith; it was evident in the way that he carried himself and the way he related to his church and his children.  But I'm not sure anyone really knew the extent of his faith.  When Jesus said have the 'faith of a mustard seed,' Eddie's faith was more like a coconut.  Which is why, when it came to preparing a sermon for Eddie's funeral, he had already done it for me.  The four texts that he picked out, all of them about praising God, entering his courts with gladness, rejoicing in the Lord always - the all fit together perfectly, so that when it came to speak about Eddie's journey home, I simply read the word of God. 

I should do that more often.

On the front page of the funeral bulletin was a picture of Eddie (smiling, of course), but the picture is only two dimensional; we don't hear Eddie's voice or see his depth of character and certainly, we don't catch a glimpse of his fourth dimension-ness, his spirituality.  "Come into his presence with gladness.  Praise the Lord.  Rejoice in the Lord always."  Shake and repeat.

I wish there were a lot more people like Eddie in the world. 

Praise God, he's home, though.