The Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Collect

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Reading

From Mark 13:1-8

“This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”

Reflection

This week’s gospel story is scary. Full-on, toe-curling scary. At least for anyone who thinks war, famine, and the annihilation of everything and everyone they love is the least bit undesirable.

We only read the beginning of the story this week: this passage, known as “The Little Apocalypse” extends beyond the first eight verses and runs through the whole of chapter 13. I suspect many Christians would prefer to treat this like the 13th floor of a hotel and skip it.

What makes this chapter scary is just how inevitable Jesus makes it all sound. He is not simply saying, “watch out, some bad stuff is coming”; he’s telling them that everything they know and care about is going to change. Some of it for the bad. Some of it for the really bad. But sitting here and evaluating the change isn’t the point. The point is that it is going to happen and we ought to prepare for it.

Prepare for a reason: that we not get caught up in it. Wars and rumors of wars, for instance has a way of dividing us into camps, not just into right and wrong, but choosing between two wrongs. Getting swept up in the war drumming and before we know it, we are marching into battle to kill and die in wars that are not God’s.

It is also important to recognize that Jesus is warning, not frightening us. Because fear is itself a problem. Jesus’s most used phrase is “Don’t be afraid.”

Jesus calls these events signs. Because they notify us of what is happening. And this signal confusion is the very thing we need to teach ourselves to overcome.

The perfect example of this is Jesus’s use of the word “birthpangs”. I know it is annoying when a man talks about pain and childbirth, but hear me out. When we were preparing for our daughter’s birth, the midwives talked about birthpangs as the body’s signs of what is going to happen. And when we don’t feel them, we can’t know what to do next. It isn’t that pain is good, but that it is a necessary signal to us.

Our bodies carry a wisdom that can help us know what to do, even when we’re scared, confused, or experiencing something for the first time.

Pain isn’t universally bad or a thing to avoid. It is fundamentally required for growth in every way. It is also our body’s alarm system to tell us what to pay attention to.

Jesus isn’t trying to scare his followers. He’s warning them (and us) that we will need to learn perseverance. Because we’ll be tempted to go in an entirely different direction.