November 15, 2009 - Pentecost + 24

It's The End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
Mark 13:1-8
Pentecost + 24 – November 15, 2009

“That's great! It starts with an earthquake, birds & snakes, an aeroplane. Lenny Bruce is not afraid...”

That's the opening line of a song by the band R.E.M. called, “It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) – and that's the chorus: It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).”

It's the song that kept going through my head all this week, as I thought about these readings from Daniel and from Mark's gospel. And even though Andy likes to say that my brain is like a jukebox set to random, or an iPod set on shuffle, I think it makes sense. Sure, Jesus doesn't talk about birds & snakes & airplanes, but earthquakes are in there – and wars, and rumors of wars, and nation rising up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and famines, and big strong buildings being thrown down – not a stone will be left on stone. REM sings about the end of the world as a present event, & Jesus was talking about something yet to take place in the future sometime, still, it sure sounds to me like Jesus is talking about the end of the world as we know it.

The disciples & Jesus come out of the temple, and the disciples are kinda like country bumpkins coming to the big city for the 1st time. They look up & around, & they are impressed. - “Look, Teacher, what large stones, and what large buildings!” What a fortress – tall & strong & solid! Permanent, built to last, that temple, something you could put your confidence in – a symbol of wealth and power and glory. But Jesus is not impressed. “You see these great buildings?” he asks. “Not one stone will be left upon another...” And then Jesus goes into all these other signs...the wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines and nations rising up against each other. And that's not the end, Jesus says! Don't be alarmed – it's just the beginning of the birth pangs!

Well, gee, Jesus, I guess since since you put it that way, I won't be alarmed. It's just the end of the world as we know it...

It doesn't sound so different from the way we feel sometimes. We've seen our own fair share of these signs, they've been happening all down through history – wars (2 going on right now), and rumors of wars (we worry what could happen in Iran & Pakistan & North Korea & the former Soviet Union); earthquakes happen, and hurricanes, and natural disasters of all sorts; famine in Africa, widespread hunger even in places where there is plenty of food. And if that isn't enough to make us wonder about the end of the world, well, we have our own modern-day signs to help us figure it out – things like the color-code system of the Department of Homeland Security – alerting us to times when the risk of something awful happening is high.

I don't know how many of us lie in bed at night, worrying about the end of the world as a whole – but we do worry about the end of our worlds as we know them: the end of a marriage or other close relationship; the end of a career; the end of good health, the end of a life. When any of those things happen, our worlds are turned upside-down – when a tragic accident strikes, or when your business goes out-of-business without warning, or when you get the call from the doctor that says “It's cancer”, or “You're gonna need surgery & we can't guarantee how successful it'll be, but it's your only option, your only hope.” These are the moments, the days, the weeks, sometimes even the years, when it feels like it's the end of the world as we know it – and unlike REM, we usually don't feel fine about it. We feel all sorts of things – worry, anger, frustration, denial, fear – but fine is usually not how we feel when our world gets flipped upside down. And it's not much comfort to hear Jesus say that these big events – on a world-scale, or just at the level of our individual lives – are not the end – and not to be alarmed, because they're just the beginning of the birth pangs. Because while I've never done it, I have it on good authority that giving birth is messy. Giving birth is painful. And if this is just the beginning...

But be that as it may, and as hard as it may be to believe it sometimes, we actually can take some comfort in what Jesus says here. Because as scary as these “predictions” may be (maybe they're not really so much predictions as they are observations of stuff that happens all the time), as difficult a situation as the disciples and all early Christians will soon enough find themselves in, and as much as they may just want it to be over before it begins – when labor hits, with water breaking, and contractions contracting, with its uncertainty and pain – at the other end, you know there is gonna be new life. On the other side, there is a new person – and with that new life, it really is the end of the world as you have known it. Parents, you know it. Even I know it, & I am just a mom to a dog & 2 cats. And where God is concerned, it's not just a new person, but a whole new world.

So too, for us – as scary as life can be, as much as we'd rather not have wars & rumors of wars, as much as we'd like natural disasters to not be so natural, as much as we'd like the bottom not to drop out, as much as we'd rather not have an end to the world as we know it – the promise is that these are the beginnings of the birth pangs. The promise is that God - in and through and despite all of these events – God is doing a new thing. The promise is that in God, new life waits for us on the other side, whether it is in this life, or in the life to come.

The Psalm reminds us that because God is at our right hand, we shall not be moved. Even though all of these things happen, God is on our side. “Therefore,” the psalmist says, “my heart is glad & my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. You show me the path of life.” Hebrews encourages us to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”
God, who has promised to lead us to life, is faithful. Remember that, hold on to that when it feels like it's the end of the world as we know it. Remember that, even when it is the end of the world as you know it, because God is bringing forth a new world, one that changes everything we ever knew – but in a good way. And trust that one day, when we see what God has done, we'll be able to sing along with REM – It's the end of the world as we know it – and I feel fine.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.