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PERICOPE STUDY
-CENTER FOR THEOLOGY, LRC
Pentecost 23
November 16, 2003
The Gospel: Mark 13:1-8
And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!" And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?" And Jesus began to say to them, "Take heed that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he.' And they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. 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.
1 The end is near … the end of the church year, that is. Next Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, and then we are into Advent. For a Lutheran of an a-millennial persuasion, the eschaton has always pretty much been just that, the eschaton. When we get there, we'll know it, as to cosmic telos. There will be signs that are read and signs that are misread. But apocalypticists still abound, especially on the evangelical front, and more than a few concern themselves with being "left behind," as one contemporary piece on the rapture puts it. In our own individual last hour, we pray that our Lord will support us by His power and receive us into His tender care, with grace and mercy attending us.
2 As to the social and cultural genre out of which "the Way" emerged, Schweitzer thought that the gospel Jesus is "hopelessly shrouded in Jewish apocalyptic," making the task of mapping the "historical Jesus" a task best left to the most careful scholarship, or not undertaken at all. In the century since Schweitzer wrote that, biblical scholars have done a much better job of discerning both the historical Jesus and the proclamation of the resurrected Lord. The shroud that covers all humankind has been lifted, as Isaiah wrote in the lesson two weeks ago; the shroud of apocalyptic that Schweitzer saw around the earthly Jesus has been at least partially lifted by the new questers and by continuing faithful scholarship.
A few odds and ends
3 One recalls C. H. Dodd, with his "realized eschatology" or "eschatology in the process of realization," with the Word's incarnation signaling God's decisive move toward settling the future of humanity. The resurrection is the future; the future belongs to God. Whether we have our three score years and ten, or a half a dozen - as persons or as earth - we are called to faithful witness and equally faithful service as disciples of Jesus Christ, baptized children of God.
4 One recalls Jean Baptiste Clamence in Camus' The Fall: "You need not worry about the final judgment, mon chér. It takes place every day." Camus, himself no believer or only cryptically so, having fought in the French underground against the Nazi evil, cast Clamence as a "judge penitent" in an Amsterdam bar. To customers at the bar, he listened in patience and declared in melancholy. Softly crying in the post mortem wilderness of a Europe gone mad in malignant ideology and its resultant gore, Clamence invoked Jesus in Matthew 25: Dividing the aspirants between sheep and goats, the eschaton surprises both those on the right hand and those on the left as having made their own placement on an "every day" basis: "as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The signs of the end are, for Jesus in Matthew 25, less earthquake than still small voice - the voices of hungry children, lamenting bereaved, suffering cancer patients, and grousing prisoners. Far from violent and cataclysmic, the apocalypse is incremental and subtle, cast in deeds of love and mercy. Do not worry, mon chér.
5 To those concerned about being "left behind," both Dodd and Camus call attention to the message: the One Who is always coming (o ercomenos) meets us not only from the past and from the future but also in the present. Bishop Curlin, late of the Western Carolina diocesan miter, tells of being in Calcutta with his friend Mother Teresa, taking a sabbatical of labor among the poorest of the poor with one of the best of the good. As he was one night praying in the chapel, the diminutive nun of giant stature approached him silently and touched him on the shoulder. "Would you like to see Jesus?" she asked. Uncertain as to her purpose, the Bishop followed with little hesitation. He found her in a nearby sick room, cradling in her arms a dying man whose features were eroded by leprosy, a bit of humanity barely alive and slipping away. Ecce homo! As you have done it unto one of the least of these ….
6 "they will lead many astray" - In an entirely different vein are the plethora of voices declaring that God is doing a new thing. End times or not, false prophets - or at least prophets speaking as truth what the bible declares to be false and sin - abound. And in the church, yet. How do we know the signs? What we need is discernment. That is, how to distinguish among spirits, as to zeitgeist vis-à-vis Heilige Geist. In whatever time we are, that discernment is sorely needed.
From the Ancients
7 Origen: Believers as Temple - The temple was not overthrown all at once, but gradually as time went by. Similarly, every one who welcomes the Word of God into himself is something like a temple. If, after committing sin he does not completely fall away form the Word of God, but still partially preserves in himself traces of faith and accountability to God's commands, he is a temple partly destroyed, partly standing. But he who after sinning has no care for himself but is always prone to depart from faith and from life according to the gospel, till he completely departs from the living God, he is a temple in which no stone of doctrine is left upon any stone and not thrown down. (Commentary on Matthew, 29; p. 181)
8 Augustine: Reading the Signs - There is no discrepancy in the Gospels as to facts of the end time, although one may supply details which another may pass over or describe differently. Rather, they supplement each other when compared, and thus give direction to the mind of the reader. (from Letters 1999 to Hesychius 25, p. 181)
9 Origen: Experts at Impersonation - Christ is truth. Antichrist falsifies truth. Christ is wisdom. Antichrist deftly simulates wisdom. All genuine excellences have a correspondence with Christ. All pretended virtues correspond with Antichrist. For each variety of good which Christ embodies in himself to build up the faithful, the demonic will find a way of mimicking in appearance to deceive the faithful. (Commentary on Matthew, 32, p. 181)
10 Augustine: The Common Condition of Nations - As to wars, when has the earth not been scourged by them at different periods and places? To pass over remote history, when the barbarians were everywhere invading Roman provinces in the reign of Gallienus (AD 260-268), how many of our brothers who were then alive do we think could have believed that the end was near, since this happened long after the ascension of the Lord? Thus, we do not know what the nature of those signs will be when the end is really near at hand, if these present ones have not been so foretold that they should at least be understood in the church. Certainly, there are two nations and two kingdoms, namely, one of Christ, the other of the devil. (from Letters, 199 to Hesychius 35, p. 182).
11 Origen: Ecological Crisis - Just as bodies become sick before their death if they do not suffer violence from without, and in all cases the way of separation of soul from body comes through weakness, so it happens with the whole course of the world creation. When the creation begins to decay, having as it has both beginning and end, it must grow weak before its dissolution. At this point the earth may be frequently shaken with earthquakes. The air having received some diseased contagion may become overrun with pestilence. Moreover the vital energies of the earth itself may suddenly fail and strangle its fruits. These destructive forces may polluter the regenerative capacity of all trees. (Commentary on Matthew, 34, p. 182).
All quotes from the ancients are from: Oden, Tomas C. and Hall, Christopher H., editors. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, II Mark. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998.
JLY - 11.10.03
TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
16 NOVEMBER 2003
HEBREWS 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God," 13 and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet."14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testified to us, for after saying, 16"This is the covenant that I will make with them after these days, says the Lord; I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds." 17He also adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 18Where there is forgiveness of these there is no longer any offering for sin. 19Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
The writer of Hebrews is remembering the annual sacrifices for the sins of God's people on Yom Kippur, and he must have grown up with a deep consciousness of the meaning of the rites connected with that day. Perhaps he had lived in Jerusalem and from childhood had gone with his parents to be part of that ceremony when the two goats were presented to God and one of them was chosen by casting lots to carry the sins of the people of God out into the wild (Lev. 16). He would also sometimes have witnessed the sacrifice being made every day at the temple. Both of these rites were marked by repetition. Those sacrifices were never final, for when the next year came another set of goats was brought, one to be a sacrifice and one to carry sins way, and every day new sacrifices were brought and placed before God at His temple. It was a system that never ended.
But this writer now believed that Jesus had made an end to it, not by simply calling off all the rest of the sacrifices but by the offering of a sacrifice which completed the series, a sacrifice that never had to be repeated. If the writer lived in Jerusalem perhaps he had also witnessed a sacrifice, not on the day of Atonement in the middle of the year but at the time of Passover and deliverance at the beginning of the year, when Israel celebrated God's freeing them from their slavery in Egypt. At that time a lamb was offered and shared in the meal that celebrated that freeing. And at the time one year a sacrifice was offered by the final High Priest, who was himself also the sacrifice, the Lamb. And when He had finished with the sacrifice of his faithful service to God and of his life, the need for further sacrifices was gone and he sat down at God's right hand because that one sacrifice had done it all. There is no need for any more sacrifice to redeem people. We are not made holy by anything we give to God but by God's living forgiveness which has taken care of all the debt and we pay nothing more.
That will always be the hardest thing to accept, that we need pay nothing more. We are always embarrassed by gifts and feel that we ought to pay something. We may be able to accept a gift if we can do something in return. Maybe it will not equal what we have received but at least it will show that we would pay for it if we could. To receive and not be able to pay back at all is to confess that we have nothing and there is no way we can be compared with the One who has forgiven us everything. Even our gratitude is a confessing that we are nothing and nothing about us has any value except that which comes from the One who has given Himself as a gift for us. If we come out of the process better people than we were before, it is because He has put His perception of what is right and wrong into us and in answer to our perception that we have sinned and want to do something to make up for it His only answer is that He has forgotten our sins. He does not remember that we told a lie yesterday, that we worried about the future, that we did what was wrong because it felt good to us until it was finished and then we felt only guilt. It burdens us and we want to do something to make up for it. God only says to us, "I don't remember that. Just don't worry about it. Don't bring me any sacrifice to make up for what you have done. If you bring me any gifts don't do it because you feel guilty but because you want to share with someone else and have fun doing it.
Offering for sin is now out of place. It has no meaning when all suffering for sin has been finished by Christ. There not even any suffering for me any more and what He does is take care of things while He waits for what he has finished to have its full effect on the Day that is coming.
So further sacrifice makes no sense but neither does sinning. What sense can we make out of rebelling against a God who cannot remember our sins? And since we are not faithful people and find at the end of the day that we have sinned even when we resolved not to do that again, let us trust in the forgiveness and not come trying to do something that will make up for our sin. Simply trust the forgiveness he has promised, the forgiveness resulting from the sacrifice of our High Priest Jesus, simply letting God do in our lives what He has promised to do. When we get together let us also encourage one another to forget what we have done wrong and see how it makes more sense to do better tomorrow and the next day and the next. Maybe we have only two or three more days to go because He has said he is coming and that will be the end of our getting confused about this, the end of our struggling that is so unnecessary. Till that day I can remind you of the reality of forgiveness and the uselessness of trying to do more than Jesus did to gain God's favor. And I can tell you of the joy of being able to do something without worrying about whether it is enough. Everything necessary has been done and now you can enjoy your service to God. It is not sacrifice but a giving that is fun. I will remind you: Have fun while you wait. And you remind me.
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