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 New Covenant—17 November 2024 (18 Nov 18)

Mark 13

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

2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 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.

Well, since politics has been top of mind for the last few days, we might as well embrace it.  Time for a literary quiz, this one focused on autobiographies by politicians and political figures.  I’ll give you the title, and you shout out the name of the author.  Don’t be shy.

We’ll start with an easy one: “The Audacity of Hope” (by Barack Obama)

“A Full Life: Reflections at 90” (by Jimmy Carter)

“Madam Secretary: A Memoir” (by Madeleine Albright)

Okay, we have to keep this non-partisan, so how about “An American Life” (by Ronald Reagan)

Here’s one that could compete for a best title award: “Herding Cats: A Life in Politics” (by U.S. Senator Trent Lott) 

This one’s also clever: “White House Years: Waging Peace” (by Dwight D. Eisenhower)

And finally, “Going Rogue” (by Sarah Palin)

I was going to ask if anyone read it, but I don’t want to put you on the spot if you did.  Interestingly, her subtitle was “An American Life,” either the most pretentious thing you’ll hear today, or the book editor with a rich sense of humour.  You decide.  

While we’re on the topic, it might be instructive for today to look at the genre of ‘political memoir’ (and eventually) end up somewhere near the lesson in Mark.  Patience, dear listener!

Looking over a few lists, these memoirs come from former Presidents and Prime Ministers, upper level politicos such as cabinet secretaries or ambassadors, and even underlings like speechwriters and “fixers.”  They promise an accurate look at the recent past, some justification, or the ‘real story’ behind the headlines.  More often than not, the memoir serves to correct public perception, or defend a set of ideas, or launch a program (or career) while pretending to look back.

The classic Canadian example is “Straight from the Heart” by future Prime Minister Jean Chretien.  Published in 1986, the book had everything: fond memories, a sense of conviction, and (surprise!) an outline of ideas for the future.  To be fair to Jean, by 1986 he had already accomplished far more than most politicians.  But timing is everything, and the future was waiting for “The Little Guy…”

Stealing questions from painter Paul Gauguin, these books ask the question, “Where do I come from?  What am I?  Where am I going?”  They will sometimes recount the inner struggle that comes with the exercise of power, but most often they tell stories of being witness to the use of power.  The memoir is useful in offering early encounters with the truly powerful: to offer insight, to affiliate in some way, and to discern the most important moment in a story from the past.

This week St. Mark is writing, and to borrow a phrase, he’s “going rogue.”

He’s writing an important memoir, a recounting of his life with Jesus, and while he seldom enters the story himself, we know that he does all the things that memoir writers do.  We know that he is trying to answer ‘where do I come from, who am I, and where am I going;’ not so much for himself but for Jesus.  He’s attempting, in his years beyond the hurly-burly of direct discipleship, to write a memoir that will offer insight, affiliate in some way, and identify the most important moments in the story.

Mark is going rogue this week in the telling of what most scholars call his “little apocalypse.”  Later in the chapter will come predictions of arrest and flogging, the sky will darken, everyone will betray the people around them and there will be general examples of mayhem.  In chapter 14, Jesus is arrested.  So chapter 13 is really a hinge moment, the moment before the true action begins, and Mark is saying ‘get ready.’  But more on that in a moment.

One of the most exciting moments of Carmen’s young life was that time the Dead Sea Scrolls came to Toronto.  There were a few fragments, along with lots of interesting antiquities, and more than a little explanation.  Apropos to today’s reading, we also saw bits of the destroyed Temple.  I have to say I went prepared to be underwhelmed, having seen the great Isaiah scroll in its special home in Jerusalem.  But seeing parts of the destroyed Temple, including carvings from the entranceway that Jesus likely walked through, was a very powerful moment.  I’m a bit shocked they lent this stuff out at all. 

So, ‘not one stone was left here upon another; all were thrown down,’ and some were on tour!  Incredible really, and incredible that Mark highlights Jesus’ prediction at the very moment the story turns, and the destruction of Jesus’ body is set to begin. 

What I think we are seeing here is ‘conflation,’ the joining of two stories of equal import in the life of Mark.  I think it would be fair to say that someone writing a memoir might look back and confirm that the death of Jesus, and the destruction of God’s dwelling place on earth, were two of the most dramatic things they witnessed.  Assuming, as we do, that Mark wrote around the time of the Roman siege in the year 70, we can imagine the powerful way these two events might mingle in the imagination. 

Mark would even be inclined to remember, of all the things Jesus said on earth, the connection between the two.  So he recounts Jesus' words and lets them hang there, trusting us to make the connection.  

So Mark 13 recounts the destruction of the temple (in his way) and creates a parallel to the world-ending drama of the death of Jesus.  The events of 70 CE could accurately be called the 9-11 of the early church period, where the earliest followers of Jesus (still mostly Jews) imagined that their world was coming to an end.  As Mark tries to answer the last of our three memoir questions (‘and where am I going’) we can trust that he found the answer in the words of Jesus: do not be led astray and try to stay calm.

I know I’m jumping back and forth in time, but it’s hard not to look for contemporary parallels.  The whole “wars and rumours of wars” thing has been a popular source for biblical prophecy since the church began, and in our age seems to have new vigour.  A major land war in Europe, fighting in the Middle East, tension in the South China Sea: all of these might have you believe that the Mark’s “little apocalypse” stuff is happening in our day—that we need only see the signs.  I’ll let you fill in the remaining examples.

So back to Jesus, always back to Jesus.  Jesus said “do not be led astray and try to stay calm.”  Read the signs, try to interpret the signs, but stay calm.  When everything feels world-ending, how can we sift through the signs and find some hope?  We’re two weeks from the season of Advent, the season of hope, so maybe that’s a sign too, maybe it’s too soon for hope and we just need to dwell here for a while.  

There are times (I have learned) when it’s best to ask the Germans, those towering 20th century theologians who emerged as young men from the trenches in Belgium and France to spend careers trying to put their experience in perspective.  Before the Great War, there was an abundance of optimism, and the church believed that earnest men and women would help God usher in the Kingdom and all would be right in the world.  That hope appeared to die in places with names like the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Belleau Wood.

So what would Jurgan Moltmann have us do?  How would he have us approach “the mysteries of the end-time?”  First, he said “God’s future and the righteousness of his kingdom...are concealed and cannot be known under the conditions of the present age.” (Crucified, p. 167)

In other words, we have to be satisfied with signs.  God will only be fully revealed “at the end of the old age and at the beginning for the new”—and until then we wait.  We can read the signs, and we can wonder at the promise of the age to come, but we cannot know its full measure. 

So we are left to locate our hope in the signs we have.  And what are they?  Well, we look around us and we find hope in each other.  We are the hope of the Risen One, alive as his body, his hands and feet in the world as we tend to each other and to those beyond these walls.  Next, we see hope in the coming Advent of our Lord, the days of waiting that reveal God’s willingness to enter the world in a new way.  And, of course, there is the cornerstone of Christian hope—the death and resurrection of Jesus—commemorated every Sunday in this place. 

But this isn’t just theology or philosophy, nerds with books like me who read and reread looking for insight.  It’s a living question for Mark and his friends, waiting for the new age that Jesus said would come to Mark’s generation of believers.  Meanwhile, many had passed, some peacefully in their beds, and some caught up in the events of the day.  What of them, the loved ones long past?  What sign of them?    

Here is Moltmann’s answer:

For the Easter hope shines not only forwards into the unknown newness of the history which it opens up, but also backwards over the graveyards of history. (Crucified, p. 163) 

We are at the intersection of a faithful past and a hopeful future, and the answer becomes “now is the time.” Now is the time to show others the compassion of God in Jesus, now is the time to express God’s hope for the living and the dead, now is the time to remind everyone that this reality is not the sum of all that is, and now is the time to point to our future hope, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”  Now is the time we see glimpses, but soon we will see God.  Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 7:47 AM 0 comments

 New Covenant—3 November 2024 (was 1 Nov 2020)

1 Thessalonians 2

9 Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. 10 You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. 11 For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, 12 encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.

13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.

I suspect my mother was a secret Catholic.

And while my evidence may be vague and a little flimsy, it remains a question in my mind.  My suspicion began with the purchase of a late 70s Corolla, used, brown in colour with a beige vinyl roof.  Already you find this story troubling, and that’s before you sit inside.  For there, in the middle of the dashboard, was a small ornament, like a little coin on a pedestal.

So I say: Mother, what is that?

Mother: That’s St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers.

Me: But you’re not Catholic.

Mother: I know, but he’s the patron saint of travellers.

Me: You’re just gonna leave it there, aren’t you?

Mother: Of course.

It was only later that I learned that St. Christopher had been demoted—maybe reassigned—within the list of Catholic saints.  I can’t imagine that this information would have any bearing on the shiny metal object in the middle of the dash, since leaving it there was more about avoiding bad luck.  In other words, she was not-so-secretly superstitious rather than secretly Catholic.

If you are currently looking at the St. Christopher medal on your keychain, I do not mean to offend.  He’s an interesting case, and represents an important step in the evolution of the idea of sainthood.  His story mirrors numerous saints who emerged in the Middle Ages and became increasingly popular.  St. Christopher, like his colleagues St. Nicholas and St. George, appeared with the kernel of a story that was embellished over the centuries.

The name Christopher means Christ-bearer, and he is said to have carried a young child across a river, only to discover that he was carrying Christ.  In this sense, he blesses travellers, as he was blessed.  He becomes the embodiment of “entertaining angels unawares” (Hebrews 13) or serving Christ in the form of the “least of these.” (Matthew 25)

This, of course, was not enough to keep him on the formal list of saints.  Church reform in the 1960s demanded that saints who were more legend than fact be removed from the primary calendar of commemoration.  They were never fully omitted, just placed in a new category.  This allowed the church to emphasize saints that were recognized through the highly organized process of canonization.

Over here in the Protestant church, we’ve taken a different approach.  Our Anglican friends continue to commemorate pre-Reformation saints, but have shifted focus to “saints and heroes” of the faith.  On the west front of Westminster Abbey you will find statues of Martin Luther King Jr. and Óscar Romero, modern saints and heroes—just two examples.  Methodists have taken a similar approach, never praying to saints, but lifting them up as examples to follow.

The phrase “heroes of the faith” is helpful, since the common definition of sainthood is to display “heroic virtue.”  Beginning in the Middle Ages, this meant demonstrating the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) along with the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.  If these three sound familiar, it may relate to the many weddings you have attended.  St. Paul commends faith, hope, and charity in 1 Corinthians, though we usually flatter the bride and groom by using the alternate translation, “faith, hope, and love.”

In many ways, Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is an expanded version of faith, hope, and charity.  The letter is less concerned with matters of doctrine, and more about living together as believers.  The passage that I shared is like a letter inside the letter, giving us the gist of the matter:

For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.

Paul is keen to remind them that he was trying to set an example, demonstrating “faith, hope, and charity” at Thessalonica, and urging them to do likewise.  In some ways it sounds immodest, reminding them that he and his helpers were “holy, righteous, and blameless” while with them, but it strengthens his point.  By living lives worthy of God, we practise the ultimate form of devotion, the greatest gift we can give.

His words are not fully without doctrine, because he shares an important principle in the next section:

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.

“You accepted…the word of God, which is indeed at work in you…”

I’m going to be bold and suggest that what Paul is giving us is a summary of sainthood, a summary that includes virtue (in the word of God) and the abiding sense that God is at work in us.  Consider it: when we follow the word, we take it on, we embody it—then we take it into the world.  Without us, there is a risk that the word of God will simply be words on a page.  But when we live it, when we personify the word, then God is working in us and through us.

Let me share one more story: My mother liked to tell us about the time she was an enumerator, visiting homes throughout East Gwillimbury, adding people to the voter’s list.  She and her co-worker were met at the door by a potential voter with a less-than-welcoming look.  When informed about the purpose of the visit, the person was quick to say “I’ll not be registering to vote—you see, I’m voting for God.”  My mother’s co-worker, without missing a beat, said “I see, ma’am, but God’s not on the ballot.”

There’s something magical about having just the right comeback at just the right moment.  I think we all wish we were as quick-on-our-feet as my mother’s co-worker that day.  But setting aside the power of a good comeback, I’m left puzzling over the response, and the extent to which religious people vote for God.

If we could track down this anonymous non-voter, she might tell us that there should be a strict separation between church and state, and that those most actively involved in a life of faith should focus on that realm alone.  Most Amish, for example, choose not to vote, believing that politics is too worldly and pits “brother against brother.”  Or, perhaps her motive related to our “fallenness,” the idea that humans are too corrupt to govern themselves. It was Billy Connolly who said “The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”  I’m not sure this person in the wilds of East Gwillimbury was channelling the great Scottish comedian, but the impulse is the same.

Whatever her reasons, I’m left with the question ‘how can we cast our ballot and vote for God at the same time?’  And the answer (as expected) can be found in scripture.  (I should note that when I say “we cast our ballot” I mean “you cast your ballot” for obvious reasons).  

Turning, then, to scripture, it provides comfort and hope, inspiration and direction, but it also reminds us of the many ways we can allow God to work in us.  Think about some of your favourite passages, and then consider the mandate of allowing God to “work in us and others.”  Think of Micah 6, for example: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Then there’s “Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22) Or “be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5) Now we’re veering back to sainthood.  

Recall: when we follow the word, we take it on, we embody it—then we take it into the world.  We’re voting for God when we allow God to work through us, to translate the “words on a page” found in scripture into something tangible, redeemable, and worthy of the Most High.  

Overall, by living lives worthy of God, we practise the ultimate form of devotion, the greatest gift we can give.  We may not achieve the “heroic virtue” required for sainthood, but we can make “faith, hope, and charity” our theme, inching toward the “saints in light” we remember today.  Amen. 

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:54 AM 0 comments