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Remembrance Sunday
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 13:14-23; Daniel 12:1-4a
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
Mark 13:14-23; Daniel 12:1-4a
✛
The End of All Things
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In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
A friend and fellow Manhattan Rector emailed me Friday afternoon, which is when I normally write the first draft of my sermon. He wished me good luck with the apocalyptic lessons assigned us this week. Today is what we could call Apocalypse Sunday. A biblical Apocalypse is an unveiling, a revelation of the forces at work in history and of the End of all things, as in today’s reading from the Book of Daniel and the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Both the prophet and the Gospel prophesy trouble for the short, near term, but good news for the long term, the End.
For the prophet Daniel, the bad news was his vision of a terrible persecution of Judah. This came to pass under Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, a late and regional successor of Alexander the Great, in 167 BC. Antiochus demanded religious conformity on pain of death. He set up a Greek gymnasium in Jerusalem, forced Jews to eat swine flesh and other ritually forbidden food, and to profane the Sabbath. He put up an image, the “abomination of desolations” on the Temple Altar. The enforced apostasy produced a revolt, led by the hero Judas Maccabeus, who miraculously routed the king’s army and restored autonomy and religious integrity to Judah. The Feast of Hanukah celebrates Maccabeus’ victory and the Re-Dedication of the Temple.
In the Gospel of Saint Mark, the bad news involved destruction for Judah. It soon came, and it was total. In 70 AD, the Roman General and Emperor-to-be, Titus, put down a Jewish attempt at independence. The Temple, so admired in Jesus’ day, was pulled down to the ground. Jerusalem was burned; its land salted and renamed Aelia Capitolina. The small Christian community in Jerusalem, following the counsel of Jesus in their Gospels, fled east of the Jordan River in order to survive.¹
Both apocalyptic prophecies provide survival guidance for the faithful in the short term of tribulation. Go your way. Keep the faith. Do not pick a fight with the authorities, but be clear about who your true Lord is. Do not be over-curious about speculative matters concerning the End-times. Do not believe the claims of people to be the return of the Christ – these will arise as false prophets and false Christs, will work wonders, and will lead many astray. They would mislead even the elect, except that now you, the faithful, have been fairly warned. When the tribulation knocks on your door, do not sell your soul to cling to this world; rather, stand firm and face what you must, or flee to the exile that is appointed you. The Lord will be with you.
The apocalypses of history are the dramas of the kingdoms of this world, and in prophecy they lead to the ultimate judgment of God. In the End comes the Resurrection of the Dead, the final separation of the just from the unjust, of good from evil, and the life everlasting in a renewed creation, including a new heaven and a new earth. Our reading from Daniel contains one of the earliest clear statements of the Resurrection: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to everlasting shame and contempt. And those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
To return to a question implied by the email from my priest friend: Why does the Church have us reading these lessons? What do apocalypses have to do with us? On the worldwide scale the past century if anything has been apocalyptic, and has reared up monsters worthy of the most vivid biblical images: totalitarian, devouring tyrants slaughtering tens of millions, waging war not only on others but on their own people; plagues, pestilences and famines on vast scales; social decomposition and moral collapses; evil made more brutal by modern technology, especially nuclear fission. This twenty-first century seems well on its way to continuing the apocalypses: terrorism at home and abroad; clashes of cultures and civilizations; economic upheavals. It seems as though the pictures in the Book of Revelation are in motion.
In addition to these worldwide convulsions are the apocalypses we experience in the people, places, things and events of daily life. The experience of the death of a loved one – whether sudden, untimely and unexpected, or long and drawn out, an ordeal of old age – is certainly an apocalypse, the shaking of the foundations of life. And an apocalypse will come to each of us in due course: our own death.
Our Lord Jesus Christ has already fulfilled the Apocalypse, and in so doing has accomplished the world’s salvation. From noon to three o’clock on Good Friday the sun darkened, the earth shook and the rocks were split, and the temple veil was torn in two from top to bottom. It was literally the End of the world. God incarnate underwent the desolating sacrilege, crucified between two criminals. But the Son of man was lifted high upon his cross to draw the whole world to himself. In the End every eye shall see him, shall see the price of his love and the value he places on us, his glorified wounds, as he comes to his world in triumph to judge the living and the dead.
Our Lord counsels his disciples to watch and pray, to live each day as a gift from God. We are to keep repenting, to persevere in doing good, to go wherever the duties of love take us. We are to believe in God and in his promises. We are to be ready to give others a reason for our hope. Take heed, says Jesus, I have told you all things beforehand. And we can take comfort in the words said to Daniel, who was disturbed by what he was given to see. “Go your way to the end; and you shall rest, and you stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
Each century, each generation, each human life, has its tribulations. Yet God’s Kingdom stands, Christ’s Church persists, and the Lord has preserved witnesses for himself in every time and place. Come what may: the Lord is King; his Name is I AM, and he has overcome death. Christ is risen! In the world, our Lord said, you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; for I have overcome the world.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
________________________
¹International Bible Commentary, F.F. Bruce, editor, p. 1175.
