Mark 13:1-8
“Birthing”
November 14, 2021
“This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”
So many images come to mind and that doesn’t even include the fictional ones from movies or television.
If you have ever been close by a woman at the very end of a long and already uncomfortable nine months or so of pregnancy, you know that it’s a lot less about how it looks than how it feels.
Jesus is not mincing words here.
He is laying out before his beloved disciples what to expect in the coming of the Kingdom.
And unlike other times when this passage has come up in the Lectionary and I instead went with 1st Samuel or Hebrews, these past 20 months and all of the struggle and loss and grief and relearning and shifting we’ve been through, feels that we need to lean into the power of Jesus’ foretelling here outside of the temple.
Think of this as Jesus’ own version of the constantly updated book many of us were gifted with when we were pregnant, What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
His message is that there will be pain, waiting that seems to go on forever, slow incremental changes, potential complications, surprises that no one warns you about and ultimately a total upheaval to life as we know it on the way to thy Kingdom come.
Back on that hot July day, very little went the way we imagined.
First of all, she was two weeks late – two weeks that required an hour every day at the hospital on a monitor because this was considered – and I love this term – a geriatric birth as I was 2 months shy of my 35th birthday. On the pre-ordained day of delivery if it hadn’t happened naturally which it had not, I was induced.
After 12 long and painful hours of labor it was determined that a C-Section was needed.
As the pain continued, the hospital had to call in from home the 3 doctors required – obstetrician, anesthesiologist, and pediatrician – which took a couple more hours.
When the epidural numbed almost all the rest of my body except where they would be making the incision, these professionals had no choice but to put me under general anesthesia.
But, oh what joy when I awoke and finally held our beautiful baby daughter Selene!
The birthpangs of which Jesus speaks are meant to usher in a new era.
We have come almost to the end of Mark’s Gospel with only the Passion narrative to finish it.
Jesus acknowledges that there will be destruction and despair.
This passage is often referred to as “the Markan Apocalypse.”
Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple with lots of suffering to come after that.
It can be so easy to give into despair, especially when fear feels so real.
Things will be bad before they are good.
This past year and a half have certainly tested all of us humans here on earth.
What will be our lasting response?
Are we supposed to just soldier on through the pain?
Maybe we are seeing ourselves and creation in a new light that could possibly lead us to a place of redemption.
When all seems lost, it was an old literary response to dream of a not-too-distant
future when God would swoop in and come to the rescue and where all the wrongs would be righted.
The folks that were causing all the trouble would get their due and there would be a whole new landscape before them where compassion and justice would abound.
The word Apocalyptic was used to describe this tradition in literature.
Apocalyptic can be translated from the Greek as meaning “revealing” or “uncovering.”
There are several apocalyptic stories throughout the Bible – Daniel and Revelation immediately come to mind.
These are stories that start from a dark place but then offer hope when things appear hopeless.
The temple that Jesus is talking about here took 80 years to build and so it was a construction project during Jesus’ time. Started before his birth and continued after his death.
In his prophetic way, Jesus predicts that all that hard work built with those massive stones will be destroyed.
Right now, when so much of the world seems to be hurting mightily, Jesus’ words can still be a beacon of hope.
Good things are coming, because of our good and gracious God.
That is the Gospel message.
The knowledge that despite the mess we humans have made so often over the course of history and continue to today, that God loves us anyway and has not given up on us is at the heart of Jesus’ teachings.
Hope continues to happen as it did late yesterday afternoon when more than 60 folks from all over the county gathered at what once was the St. Margaret Mary rectory and is now the newly renovated Arlington Common to learn how we might welcome Afghan refugees here in Bennington County over the coming months.
There were multiple other faith communities and non-profits represented and the compassion in the room was palpable.
The landlord who is holding a 2-bedroom apartment for an Afghan family was cheered and an air of determined compassion permeated the event.
These refugees will arrive with so little after fleeing their terrorized and war-torn country.
We, to quote Gandhi, will have the chance to be the change we hope to see in the world through our hospitality.
The new thing that is being birthed – the chance to start over – out of something terrible – a 20-year war – offers us the opportunity to lean into the promise that God is not through with us.
We still have Kingdom building to do.
Join me in prayer with these words from Lisa Hackney-James:
O God of abundant life, in these difficult times, help us to remember that you are ever with us, drawing us onward toward a fulfillment of your creation that is beyond our imagining. And whether we are laboring along with you, or are the ones coming to birth, we ask that you sustain us by the power of your Holy Spirit and through your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is our hope and our salvation. Amen. (www.dayone.org)