November 17, 2024
Pentecost + 26
Friends, please be seated.
Because we are closing in on the end of the Church Year, we are hearing the Gospel of Mark for the last time. Next week, we shall observe the Feast of the Reign of Christ, the last Sunday of the Church Year. The feast pulls from the Gospel of John. The Feast of Christ the King was invented by Pope Pius XI, exactly 99 years ago, to remind Christians that their allegiance was to Christ as opposed to the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. It was, originally, a political invention to offer a witness against the darkness of the present age. It was a counter-cultural witness of hope. Anyway, beginning with the first Sunday in December, we are into the Season of Advent and the Year of, and the Gospel of, Luke.
So, today’s reading is the last refrain of the sometimes-dark Gospel of Mark. Jesus, in this Gospel, is uneasy with his world. He is alienated from his own family, as we learned early in the year. In the pages of Mark, Jesus is frequently down in the dumps about the state of the world. Familiar territory?
The Gospel of Mark was written to the church, likely from Rome. It was not written so much to convince others to join the effort as to offer a Christian take on Jesus’ life to those who were already aboard … Christian converts and Roman believers. Some of these folk may have been convinced by Paul, a generation or two earlier. I hunch that the bleak world that Jesus encounters in the Gospel of Mark, reflects the darkness of Mark’s own fledgling Christian community at Rome. The church of Mark’s day was born of life lived as people tried to make sense of a very harsh, slavery-driven imperial reality. And so today, we hear Jesus say
“When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
Those words are written in anticipation of a long game, a long labour if you will, and they are the final words we hear from Jesus in this Year of Mark. Mark’s world would have been full of wars and rumours of wars … Roman military campaigns, for the most part, as between the Romans and the Jews, for example. Jerusalem, and environs, was a hot mess and was going to be flattened by Rome, sooner or later. Because nation was rising up against nation. And there were earthquakes in various places. And famines were commonplace.
Mark is writing some time before the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, two or three generations after the crucifixion of Jesus. The Roman Empire would completely encircle the Mediterranean. Mark’s writing at a time when Roman expansion required absolute control over the lands they’d conquered. Mark lived amidst the slave culture which was born of Roman expansion with citizenship for some –a big carrot – and slavery for others – a big stick. Rome was built on the protection of citizenship and the threat of slavery.
So, Mark is bringing a tremendous weight of anxiety to his telling of the story of Jesus. Not that there wasn’t enough anxiety already built into Jesus’ story. Roman crucifixion was the stuff of everyday life in Jesus’ day. The wars and rumours of wars of an expanding empire abounded already. The Gospel of Mark ends with the execution of Jesus … by the Roman regime. With no small measure of help from people Jesus had trusted. Think Judas. Think Peter. “I never knew this man.”
There is much about today’s Gospel which feels familiar. Now, to be clear, I have never known war … earthquakes … famine … slavery. Nada. But the world I am called to love has known all of these and more. There are many among us who live where we do because we, or our forebears, felt compelled to leave where we were … or where they were. And while few of us can say much first-hand about earthquakes or famine, the evening news is full of the devastations of climate change and the greatest all-over-the-globe migration in human history. And no one is leaving where they were of their own volition. For some months, I have not been able to drive our car. And I have met many, many Uber and Lyft drivers … not one of whom wanted to grow up and come to Canada to drive some old white guy to his next appointment. Not one of them. All are displaced people of one sort or another. Some have 1 job. Some have 2 jobs. Some have 3. So many displaced like the great slave underclass of people who build the city and empire of Rome, the world of the Gospel writer Mark.
What follows in the Gospel, after today’s piece, and what we don’t read this time of year, it the story leading up to Jesus’ death. There is something, however, that I cling to in today’s Gospel, even though I know how the story goes and how the story ends. In ancient constructions of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 16 –the last chapter– appears as a sort of sequel of varying content, order and length. A sequel to the death and burial of Jesus. But originally, I think, Mark wanted to keep some room for possibility and, dare I say, hope. But my point right now is that we are already at an end of sorts with today’s reading. The next part is the journey to the gallows and to the tomb, followed by the ministry of the women in chapter 16. But what’s at an end, is Jesus’ three years of ministry.
And what the Gospel of Mark says, today, in anticipation of the journey to the cross, is that we need not be afraid as the business of wars, and rumours of wars, and earthquakes and famine represent not the end of things but the continuing beginning of things, they are birth pangs. Not apocalypse. Labour pains. And maybe, you have to be of the community to get it. With the idea of birth pangs, Mark is injecting an incredibly important note of promise and of hope into his telling of the story and understanding of life.
We’ve recently been hearing stories about birth in our Sunday readings, as today, for example, and Sarah and Esther, of our community, have had babies. Now I dare say that their knowledge of birth pangs is rather less theoretical than mine. But what I do know is that their birth pangs, like the labour pains of Scripture, implied hope and held promise. And Mark is inviting his people to feel past the birth pangs –breathe, breathe– to the possibilities beyond, and, more importantly, inviting us to help others to find a similar future on the other side, to serve as midwives for a better world. Midwifery is the principal vocation of the Christian.
Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus ends with the burial of Jesus. But his community picked up the thread of hope to describe the ministry of the first apostles, the women who would attend Jesus’ tomb. They picked up the thread of recollection in reflection of their own midwifery in the world Jesus loved so much. For all of his own ennui, Mark wants to tell his community that he is hopeful, and that he believes all of the pain of the present age harbours possibility.
Now, there are days when the rumours are confirmed, the aftershocks and devastations real, and the hunger unremitting. And those are days when Christians are called to offer a witness and an all-hands-on-deck experience of hope where something less than hope—maybe even despair—might otherwise prevail. Mark does not despair for these are birth pangs.
Birth pangs portend birth. Momentous birth. Birth pangs harbour promise. The promise that life will go on. And the thing of Mark’s Gospel, and Mark’s Jesus, is that that is what they believed. That’s the earliest witness … that I know … of Gospel truth. That life will prevail. That life will go on. And Luke will take the ball and run one way. And Matthew another. And John in a completely different direction.
When you hear … whatever you may hear … do not be afraid. This is but the beginning of birth pangs. And we all have a small or great midwiferly role to pray. And the promise, the Christian promise, is always a promise of new and continuing life. And you, my friends, and I, are called to cradle and support, to nurture, to foster, to love and to cherish whatever form life takes.
Mark was open to possibilities as must we be in the work of new and continuing life in this place.
Silence.
And may the church say “Amen”. Amen.
André Lavergne CWA (Pastor)
Honourary Assistant,
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener.