St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
Proper 28 Year B ▪ November 17, 2024
Mark 13:1-8
Years ago, my mother called me to tell me about an interaction she had in her front yard with door-to-door evangelists. I don’t remember the type of church it was, but mom listened to them because they presented themselves as Christians, and because she didn’t mind listening to people.
After having been particularly curious about a passage spoken to her by the visitors, my mother called me and said that what they were saying did not sound like anything she had read in the Bible. My mother said, “I’m not certain, but I don’t think that’s how that story goes. Can you check it for me?” I investigated, and mom was correct in her questioning. The text in my Bible did not reflect what she had been told by the visitors, nor what they showed her in what was presented as a Bible.
Not many Episcopalians can quote Bible verses, and that is okay. It is more important to, as our collect states, hear the scriptures, read them regularly, mark them, comprehend them, and inwardly digest them so that they are familiar, and not just words parroted out of one’s mouth—but truly integrated, living words that shape who we are and what we do in this world. In this way, we as Jesus’ disciples, safeguard ourselves against unwittingly being led spiritually astray by those who claim to speak with authority in the name of Jesus. My mother knew that what she was being told, and shown in a book, did not align with her knowledge of holy scriptures in the book.
In our gospel passage in the 13th chapter of Mark, Jesus said to his disciples, “Beware that no one leads you astray.” This is particularly of note because Jesus had just, in chapter 12, warned those whom he was teaching in the temple, to beware of the scribes—the religious leaders who were masters of Hebrew law and experts in the civic and religious governance of the Jewish people.
With such knowledge and power to shape the beliefs of the Jewish people, it makes sense that Jesus would urge those in the temple to be alert and aware. Scribes were powerful human beings—human beings capable of sin and corruption.
Jesus’ admonition to beware can also be applied to the distracted disciples who were in awe of the Temple’s massive stones, its grand size, and its surrounding buildings. But the great temple, Jesus said, would be destroyed; all will be thrown down. So, beware, disciples, do not get distracted by the manifestations of power structures in this physical world.
Curious about when the destruction would be, the disciples asked Jesus for a sign—a heads up. Looking closely at the text—and marking it for understanding—we see that Jesus did not give them a sign. Jesus, also, did not predict for them when the destruction of the temple would be; only that it would be. Instead of giving the disciples the sign they requested, Jesus did what he had been doing since he first called them to follow him; he instructed them.
The destruction of the temple, though intriguing to the disciples, for Jesus, it was a mere statement of fact. Jesus did not spend any time on discussing the temple beyond that. Seventy years after Jesus’ death, the temple was destroyed by the Romans.
Jesus’ focus was on keeping his disciples focused on their only task in the midst of the world crumbling around them, to preach the gospel. Jesus instructed his disciples, “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ And they will lead many astray” (v.6). It is to be expected that someone who did not know Jesus might have been easily deceived by someone claiming to have Jesus’ stamp of approval to act with authority. But, Jesus’ disciples, the first ones he called by the way, Peter, James, John and Andrew, did know him and were given authority by Jesus to act in the name of the anointed one.
Even so, Jesus knew that belief in him and following him, did not make faithful people, even his own disciples, immune to the distractions of the evil one and to being, unwittingly, led astray, especially when life’s trials can tempt people, in their desperation, to reach out for anyone that they think can be a savior for them, or anything that they think can save them. But no one and nothing in this temporary, created world can save the mortal body or the soul within it.
The litany of earthly birth pangs, of which Jesus spoke, has been a reality for humankind since before Jesus, during the time of Jesus and now in the current era in which we live. Wars are happening, at this hour, around the world. Nations continue to rise against nations. Natural disasters, and the scarcity of food and clean water, causing famines, hatred persists, and are all realities in our time, as they were then.
Jesus’ instruction’s purpose was to refocus the disciples, not on the things of this temporal world, but on the things of the eternal—God’s heavenly kingdom to come—which those beginning birth pangs are ushering in. Jesus’ disciples were called and formed to be vehicles for that life-giving Word. We, too, are so called.
In a reflection by United Methodist Pastor, Steve Garnaas-Holmes, entitled, “Birthpangs,” he writes, “[Jesus is] saying what he sees. It’s what I see. Things will get worse. Worlds may end. But this is not the final act: this agony is our birth canal, as we are torn from what we have known, not to an end, but to a new beginning…The world becomes something more. Our becoming will come with great loss but it is not unbecoming of us who are, after all, creatures of light.”
My fellow creatures of light, in these dark times of social unrest, political conflict, racial division, unjust structures that promote inequality and inequity, and systems that create realities of scarcity in the midst of abundance, let us, as individuals, and as the Church, use our prophetic voice to call out evil and discrepancies of justice—so that we, like Jesus, and the prophets of old, are saying what we see in this world, in our time, so that others might see them, too. And, in seeing the horrors, and living through them, we just may be refocused not on the temporal things of this world, but on the eternal things.
Let us not be led astray by powerful people, shiny and awe-inspiring things, or even the grief of the inevitable losses that we will all experience throughout our lifetimes. May we be focused on our kingdom-building work, rooting in God’s reconciliation, entering into the brokenness of human conflict, wielding the love of the gospel message, to fulfill our mission of restoring wholeness with God, and with each other, through Christ. And, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope in the blessed hope of everlasting life, through our Savior Jesus, without wavering, encouraging one another, and all the more as we see the Day approaching.” Amen.
