What the Little Apocalypse of Mark reveals about following Jesus – and why we’re scared to learn the truth about ourselves.
Following Jesus in an apocalyptic moment
Proper 28B | Mark 13:1-8
Chances are, when you woke up this morning, you weren’t thinking “Hey, let’s talk about Holy Week.”
And yet here we are. With Jesus offering us what scholars call “The LIttle Apocalypse”–a challenging vision for people who just hadn’t quite grasped the gravity of the Jesus Event.
If we back up just a little bit, we can bring to mind some of the context to explain why he’s talking about signs and wars and rumors of wars.
- So, just a couple days earlier, Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem to much fanfare. He peaked in on the Temple and then left the city to stay overnight in Bethany.
- Then on Monday, Jesus returned with his disciples to Jerusalem, to the Temple, where he drove out the dove-sellers and moneychangers.
- And then Tuesday morning, they came again to Jerusaelm, to the Temple, to teach some more. This time he was confronted by the leaders and was questioned.
That brings us to this point—late in the day on Tuesday. They are leaving the Temple, the disciples are awestruck and still not tracking as closely with Jesus as he would like.
Imperfect
It is really easy to both condemn the disciples for doing stupid stuff and forgive them of their ignorance. In a sense, we like to treat them like a best friend who just can’t not get into bad relationships. We know they know better. And yet, they keep falling for the wrong person. Or they struggle to be alone.
So it is easy to be both a little judgey with the disciples and a bit forgiving.
Now let’s take that tendency and recall that for the first seven chapters, the disciples followed Jesus and learned to do the very things that amazed them about Jesus. But when Jesus turned his face to Jerusalem and told them that he isn’t the kind of messiah they have dreamed of, but one that will die and rise again, they start to get drawn away. Not completely, of course. Just… slightly.
It’s like Jesus keeps telling them the plot of the story and they go yeah, yeah, of course, but what about the subplot? The one in which we get to be awesome?
The hard truth
And I think, at the center of this confusion, is that Jesus is telling them a truth that aligns with God’s plot, but it renders some beloved subplots as wrong. Subplots about punishment and nationalism, for instance. The sorts of things so ingrained in their upbringing that they can’t help but think that maybe these are actually the main plot.
We know exactly what that’s like, don’t we? We’re taught things about work, people, and creation that seem so natural to us. Like we’re describing the very order of the world.
And then Jesus teaches us things that don’t fit that. Like the parable in which the landowner pays all of the laborers the same, regardless of when they came to work. Or when he tells the pious young man to sell all his belongings. In these stories, we hear them and feel the dissonance in our brains and hearts. We feel like something’s off. We want to follow Jesus. But these other teachings…this stuff we’ve believed forever…
It is telling us something different.
This is the tension the disciples bring with them. This sense of wanting to believe and being afraid of doing what they presently believe is necessary to follow that belief.
And this Tuesday afternoon, as they are exiting the Temple, after warning the disciples a million times that the leaders can’t be trusted–and those leaders proved Jesus right–he warns them again.
And this warning is tough and slanderous. Jesus doesn’t mince words. But if we have been listening, we can hear what Jesus is communicating.
While we might be absorbed by the words or the politics–the he said/she said of binary political frames–let us set aside that frame of understanding the world for the one Jesus offers his followers.
This is a story about us.
Because we have read about those disciples. Seeing them succeed, get confused, and struggle to keep up with the plot. We see this in them.
And we also see others come in. Some long to join. Others only want to be healed and then go back to normal. Some, like the pious young man, come to learn but refuse the sacrifice for which Jesus asks.
Remember what happens after that man runs away crying? The disciples ask who then can be saved? Because they think Jesus has set a high bar. But his response affirms that they’ve already cleared it. So yes, they may be confused, doubting, and unsure of themselves, but there they are: following. And literally doing what they are supposed to do. They think there’s more to it, but there isn’t!
Being on the inside of the Jesus Event, the disciples struggle to see their apostolic identity. That their doubts and confusions aren’t the problem.
Their problem is when they step away from following Jesus and toward the tradition that conflicts with God’s dream.
The Confronters
Now there is one other group that we and the disciples see encounter Jesus throughout the story. And that is the religious leadership. And what do we see from them?
- Confrontation.
- Assumption.
- Questioned authority.
- Skepticism of Jesus.
- Refusal to see the problems Jesus is inviting them to see.
They are majoring in the minors. They defend the beloved subplots, even when those storylines go against the theme of the central plot.
We are invited to contrast the disciples who, despite mistakes and confusions, keep trying to find the central plot. But it seems as if the religious leaders are so focused on the subplots, they don’t even care about the plot itself. They want to punish Jesus’s disciples for picking grain in a field on the Sabbath thinking that their defending the Law is the point of the Law.
We receive Jesus’s harsh words after seeing how far removed they are from the plot of God’s story. After we have seen them confront Jesus, collude with Rome’s oppression of their people, and impoverish the widowed and poor.
For Jesus, it isn’t about condemning them or whether they are worthy of condemnation. It’s about the plot God has for us and who is keeping to it.
Keeping the Plot
This is how we enter the Little Apocalypse.
Of course Jesus has the plot. But who else does?
Nobody! Not fully, completely, perfectly.
At least the disciples know enough about the plot and they know how to find it.
Meanwhile, the crowds are asking what’s a plot? And the Pharisees are obsessing over their favorite subplots: authority, arcane rules, race, and sex (some things never change).
And that’s it.
This is what we should be noticing in this story.
So while his disciples are clearly distracted, Jesus tries to bring them back to the thing they know how to do: find the plot. So he opens up and tells them that the future looks pretty scary. But he isn’t trying to scare them, just remind them of what to do when things get scary.
And the main thing is Keep the plot. Don’t get distracted.
Don’t fall for subplots like nationalism; using violence for supremacy. Or severed family ties; when people leave abusive relationships.
This is all part of the plot. As much as Jesus’s own vision can be distracting and confusing, it is only so when we’ve lost the plot. When we don’t know what’s going on, this talk of signs and division can be truly terrifying. Or if we see this as creating new subplots like, say, the rapture or other end times theologies.
But if we have been following along, none of this is all that distracting.
The end of greatness
We have observed the disciples argue over greatness only to hear Jesus say that greatness comes through humility.
Then we witnessed two disciples seek to achieve glory by Jesus’s side. But greatness isn’t ours (or even Jesus’s) to decide.
And before they walk away, Jesus sits down and watches the great men of Jerusalem file in and give great sums to the Temple. And then a women, who puts her last two coins (everything she has) into the coin box, he points out to them.
This is what our pursuit of greatness reveals. The scribes devour the homes of widows and this widow has just given all she has. These two things aren’t just connected. This is the leader’s subplot. This is what edifices to greatness create.
It is not so with us.
Now, of course we do have a pretty awesome building. And I think you are all pretty great. But the building and you all being super awesome is all subplot. That isn’t what sustains us in adversity. What keeps us going in the bleakest of times. Nor does that help us keep to the plot.
Our purpose is love. To share the love of God with one another. And to accept God’s love into ourselves: accepting that we are worthy of God’s love.
That love leads us into humility; into the postures that Jesus has shown throughout his ministry. And keeps showing us in the lives of disciples, apostles, and saints: those we’ve met and those we’ve only read about.
That love leads us into sacrifice; into giving of ourselves to a cause that goes beyond us and doesn’t materially benefit us.
Keeping the plot means keeping the love of God alive when materialism, safety, and pride seem like better options.
But more than anything else, it means recognizing that we’re not supposed to be perfect. None of us is. Nor is the Way of Love easy. None of this is. And sometimes we will feel hopelessly and unabashedly lost. And you know what? All of us are.
But we also know the Way of Love means we at least know the way through the present is as close to us as any neighbor.