Weird News, Bad News, Good News, Our News

Mark 13:1-13, 21-37

Those darn disciples—they just had to open their mouths, didn't they? The way Mark tells the story, Jesus tramps around dusty Judea trailed by the "Dippy Dozen," twelve dum-dums who just don't get it. When what to their wondering eyes appears but the glories of the Temple, they can't keep quiet about it. "Hah!" snorts Jesus. "This? Not one stone on another, you just wait and see." And that's when it happens. They open their yaps and pepper Jesus with questions, like impatient seven-year-olds: "When will this happen? How will we know? What are the signs? Should we take out extra insurance?" That's when Jesus starts to get weird: stars falling, sun snuffed out. Thanks a lot, disciples!

Well, folks have always loved weird news. Oh, yeah. Like moths to a candle flame. Just quietly observe at any grocery checkout. National Enquirer, The Star, and, of course the grand champion, The Weekly World News. Folks sneak a peek while standing in line. "Elvis was My Alien Lover!" "Psychics Predict Showers of Anchovies on El Paso!"

Oh, yeah, we love to take a peek at the future. "When?" we ask. "How will we know?" Life is precarious enough, so we cast about for some kind of comfort. If something else is even more out of kilter than we are, well, at least we're not that bad off. Forget "show me the money"—show us the future! Because we're all Chicken Little deep down. Will the Leonid meteor shower take out my house? Can high-tension electrical lines really do something to my body's bio-magnetic field? And remember that infamous Y2K bug? Was the threat going to be real, or was NBC just trying to make a quick buck off of our fears during the November sweeps? As January 1 approached, the crackpots started coming out of the walls. Remember the images on TV? Standing on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, midnight, New Year's Eve, faces upturned, waiting for Christ's return. Charting the wars and rumors of war, the earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes—who knows, maybe even number of hangnails in Cincinnati! Huddling behind triple-locked doors, looking at the world down the sights of a rifle. Show us the future!

Anxiety has produced a whole economy. Fear fuels a doom boom. And—let's be honest—some secret part of us just can't turn away. We're suckers for the latest false messiah to come down the road. Weird news? Oh, yeah. Show us the future!

Nope, says Jesus, I'm not gonna play that game. You want to know what's going to happen? Okay, here's the scalding truth: follow me and you'll most likely get hurt. The gospel is bad news first. Uncomfortable. Discipleship is no piece of cake. Christianity is not for the faint of heart. It doesn't hand you a "get out of jail free" card. I don't want you to be misinformed, says Jesus. I want you to know exactly what to expect. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Because, you see, some will try sugarcoating the pill. "You want to be a Christian? Fine, come on in! We'll feed you chocolate cake every Sunday, ice cream, cookies, pecan pie with a solid foot of whipped cream on top—the real stuff, not fake. Every Sunday, dessert time. You want to be a Christian, come on in, it's easy. We'll have a joyous time. Just pray and grow rich. Jesus is nice. The Holy Spirit is fun. And God is just a grand guy." Don't be misled, says Jesus. Some will blenderize the gospel soft, easy to digest. Don't be duped: discipleship has a cost. You will suffer for My sake. They'll shoot fire hoses at you, send dogs after you, herd you into jail.

They will drag you to death, chained to a pickup speeding down some east Texas blacktop; they will beat you senseless and then crucify you on a barbed wire fence beside a lonely highway in Wyoming. Faithfulness is costly; don't think it isn't.

Years ago, during the Iranian hostage crisis, a secretary took in an Iranian student when his funds ran dry. She argued with him when he saw no problem with the revolution in Iran. But she put him up, just the same. "How did you ever come to do something like this?" asked a friend in amazement. "Because I'm Christian, darn it! Do you think it's easy?"¹

That cute little baby whose birth we'll celebrate in a few weeks was dropped into a troubled part of the world, a land occupied by foreign troops. He was threatened with death almost as soon as he arrived. And anyone who decides to follow him can expect nothing less.

A character in one of Alan Paton's novels says, "When I ascend to heaven, I will be asked one question: `Where are your wounds?' If I say, `I haven't got any,' I will be asked, `Was there nothing worth fighting for?' And that is a question I don't want to have to face."² Whether it is defending the right of Hispanics to live free from fear in Nashville, or standing up against redlining in neighborhoods, or watching the legislature like a hawk, or arguing that if God calls women into the pulpit, then maybe we'd better listen—Christians will earn their stripes. Sometimes literally. If "by His stripes we are healed," then by our stripes we are revealed. Yes, let's be real, let's be totally honest here: there is a cost to discipleship. Christianity is serious stuff. The gospel is bad news before it is good news. Uncomfortable.

But the news is good, friends. What does Jesus say? "Don't worry, don't be misled, don't fret, be alert!" Because something good is coming down the road. Oh, yes! Count on it. The good news is on the way. Look, all this stuff going on in today's scripture, the heavens shaking, sun darkened, moon turning to blood, that's just the prelude. Just God trying to get our attention for the main act: salvation. When you see all this stuff, look out, `cause here it comes! When? Who knows? How? Who cares?

Some seminarians were once playing basketball in the school gym, when they noticed the janitor sitting in the stands reading. A few of them wandered up to him and asked, "What'cha reading?" "The Book of Revelation," he answered. "Ohhhh," they said wisely, nudging one another and winking. "And do you know what it says?" "Yes," he said with a smile. "God's gonna win." Exactly! Be alert, Christians, scan the horizon: God's gonna win! Look out, Washington, God's gonna win! Look out, Wall Street, God's gonna win! Look out, Pentagon, God's gonna win! Look out, Milosovic, God's gonna win! Look out, racists, God's gonna win! Look out, sexists, God's gonna win! Look out all you pious frauds who beat on God's other children with the backs of your Bibles, God's…gonna…win! That's why Martin Luther King could endure the beatings, the fire hoses, the jail time, the dogs, the threats to his life, and say on the very eve of his death, "I've been to the mountaintop! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"³ Yes, says Jesus, "don't worry, be happy," look up and see the salvation of God. Good news is on the way!

So can we keep our mouths shut? No way! It's our news to share! If we try to clamp our teeth shut, it'll pop out our ears! If that doesn't work, the very stones will shout it out. Our news to share. How? "Watch," says Jesus, "endure, keep on keeping on, hang in there, don't give up." Hmmmm. That doesn't sound exactly spectacular. From "sing and shout and dance about" to…endure? What's going on? How does plain "keeping on" share our news? Listen, did you hear? "Then God will send out the angels, and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven." Let's use a little bit of our Holy Ghost imagination for a moment here. Since we have been given the grace to "keep on keeping on" no matter what happens, we can pass it along. In God's divine wisdom, the power of grace passes through our hands. So every moment of our lives we can witness to this confident faith of ours, and thus "gather in" more of the "elect." By adding a voice of wisdom grounded in the gospel to the chaos of our world, we become those angels sent out by God, gathering folks from the four winds. Stand-ins for God, standing between the two Advents of Jesus Christ, his birth and his return. Alert as an exclamation point for the movement of the Holy Spirit across the rough waters of our world. Sending food, blankets, equipment, dollars to Turkey's rubble, to North Carolina's mud-soaked towns. Alertly watching meetings of the City Council. Giving a word of encouragement to someone just about ready to pack it in. Going about our everyday business as insurgents for the gospel. Absolutely convinced that our news will always beat the ten o'clock news hands down. Our news, because it's given to us. Our news because it's given through us. Ordinary people with an extra-ordinary announcement.

So, did you hear the news this morning? The weird news just won't show us the future; it can't. The bad news looks us in the eye and says, "get serious if you want to be Christian." But, oh, my sisters and brothers, did you hear? Did you hear the good news that God's gonna win? Our news, now, because it's been given to us! Our news, because it's given….YES!

Robert R. Howard

NOTES

1.William Willimon, The Service of God: How Worship and Ethics are Related (Nashville: Abingdon, 1983), pp. 95-96. 2. Adapted from a quote in Jacob J. Schacter's "Was There Nothing Worth Fighting For?" in A Treasury of Favorite Sermons by Leading American Rabbis, ed. Sidney Greenberg (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999), pp. 226-27. 3. "I See the Promised Land," in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1986), p. 286.