Roger Ray, pastor
November 27, 2011 Advent 1
Mark 13:24-37
24"But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
28"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32"But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."
There are very few times in life when the stark differences in religions can be seen as clearly as when I go downtown for the First Friday Art Walk and see the bearded, coverall wearing Mennonites holding signs on the street corners. You can almost forget that those sorts of religious beliefs are still around until you see them scowling at the largely college aged crowds moving from bar to gallery, to bar, to.... Another bar.
Women dressed like that.... Young men acting like that..... it is a wonder that more of the young Mennonites don't drop their signs and run to join the crowd. But they have a worldview.... Admittedly, it is a pretty dour, repressed and unworkable worldview but it's theirs and no one can take it from them... and, frankly, no one else wants it.
Though, in all seriousness, I shouldn't say that no one wants it. People under serious duress often come to the conclusion that the world is so messed up that it is surely about to blink out of existence one way or another.
I was invited to give a series of lectures in a preaching school in Ecuador a few years ago and after a full day of struggling either with my Spanish or the translator's attempts at getting my historical Jesus lectures into that delicate blend of Quichua and Spanish necessary to communicate with the rural preachers in the Otovalo area, when it came time for audience questions, all of their questions were about what I believed to be the signs of the end of the world.
The Quichua are so poor, so desperate, and they have seen little reason for hope in their earthly future during any time since the Spanish arrived in South America and so, for them, their best hope is that the whole place is just going to be blown up and God will give them a better, more just, happier world in which to live.
We have seen the rise of "end time" religions in America during times of war, or economic depression and there is a constant attraction to this kind of religion among those who find themselves to be perpetually locked in the under-class.
I'll confess that I sometimes succumb to these feelings myself, most recently when I learned that there was actually going to be a fourth Twilight movie but that may just be a personal fear of mine.
But talk about a coming cataclysmic end of the world is one of the things we religious folks inherit from our Biblical tradition. In fact, many New Testament scholars suggest that this text we have before us today, what is often called the "little apocalypse" in Mark 13 is the oldest fragment of our canonical gospels. It may have circulated around Jerusalem before the Romans destroyed the Temple and carried out a virtual holocaust against the Jews and the early Christian movement.
Most of the Jesus Seminar members tend to believe that Jesus didn't really say anything about a coming end of the world. I'm less certain of that. Most of the inter-testamental literature was apocalyptic. Certainly, the book of Revelation and an awful lot of early Christian writing was apocalyptic. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Jesus partook of that rather pessimistic view of history as well but, we resist believing that because those predictions were obviously wrong and we just hate it when Jesus is wrong.
But, we have our own prophets of doom these days that come to us from the scientific community rather than the religious community. Where I think the Bible gets this apocalyptic vision right is in the clear statement that human sin is pushing the world to an unnatural end. It's just that in the ancient world, people feared nature and now the tables have been turned and nature fears us. We have to recognize that the Bible teaches us principles of living but is low on specifics when it comes to dealing with uniquely modern problems.
When we first considering starting this progressive church, a few of us began to meet together to study Bob Edgar's book, Middle Church. Edgar was both a former member of Congress and a former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches and he was writing about what kind of church would be relevant in the future.
He came up with three core issues around which, he argued, the emerging church must focus: the achievement of peace, the end of poverty, and the restoration of the planet. Advocating for peace and working to end poverty should be no-brainers for those of us who have inherited the spiritual traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but the environmental piece is harder to get at.
There is no "thou shalt recycle" in the Ten Commandments but the principle behind it isn't hard to get at. Pollution almost always disproportionally affects the poor. We put toxic waste dumps in impoverished areas. Rising sea levels will primarily displace the poor. Rising health care costs resulting from environmental hazards hit the poor the hardest, that list can go on and on but in the end it isn't just about the poor, it is about the future.
One of the first fishing lessons I learned when I was a young boy in Kentucky is that you have to refresh the water in the bucket where you keep you live bait because the crawdads are constantly fouling the water in the bucket and they will die from their own waste in a matter of hours.
The larger truth for us, my fellow crawdads, is that if we continue to foul our only fish bowl then there will be no habitable world for the next generations. But pollution is a part of the economy and because of that, it is very difficult to change our ways. During the BP oil spill in the gulf last year, we went through weeks and weeks of intolerable corporate lies about how much oil was being spilled and how little affect it would have on the environment. Even while oil was still gushing into the gulf, tremendous political pressure was being applied for Obama to approve more off shore oil drilling before anything was done to increase safety standards.
We've approached the environment with all of the forward looking discipline commonly seen in a crack addict. Approving BP for any more off shore drilling would be like hiring Casey Anthony to babysit our kids.... Sure, she was found "not guilty" but like BP, I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean the same thing as "innocent."
A couple of months ago George Mason University did a survey on political groups and their beliefs about global warming. It is no surprise that the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Independents reported believing in human caused climate change while the vast majority of Republicans and Tea Party members did not. I don't want to sound partisan about this because I think what we see there is something that goes beyond politics, something deeper than politics.... What we see there is the ability to deny facts if those facts threaten your pocket book.
It is no great wonder that T. Boone Pickins, the well known Oklahoma liberal and environmentalist, believes that natural gas is the answer to our nation's energy problems. T. Boone Pickins owns about 40% of America's natural gas supply and so, he thinks you should want to buy some.
Once anyone acknowledges the hard science about global climate change then what necessarily follows is that we have to do something to change our impact on the environment but those who are making a lot of money off of burning coal and building cars want to keep saying that the jury is still out on global warming.
The church is often afraid to speak when speaking might alienate donors or members. And so, the loudest religious voices on any topic are the voices that are saying what their constituents' want to hear.
And when I mention loud religious voices, I always remember Jerry Falwell, who famous said just a few years before his death: The fact is that there is no global warming.... I urge everyone to go out and buy and SUV....today. Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
The first order of business of the church is to speak the truth to power and we cannot be afraid to bring this urgent message that the time to act on behalf of the planet is right now and no small symbolic measures should silence us or placate us.
This is not a time when collecting aluminum cans and buying a hybrid car can stem the tide of environmental destruction. We need to move rapidly towards alternative energy sources. We need to rebuild the infrastructure of mass transit. If using white shingles actually reduces home energy consumption by 20% then roofing choices in America should either be a photo-electric cell or a white shingle.... If you are more willing to kill the planet than to suffer some aesthetic loss of color coordination with your brick then you just don't understand the crisis we are in.
I don't want to talk about this in a way that would make me sound like the dooms day prophets on the street corners downtown, because I have hope but that hope is predicated on the people of faith having the courage to take the truth to the streets. We have to change the way we think, the way we live, the way we buy, the way we vote and the way we let corporations and governments know that we won't roll over and play dead when they lie to us because we want our children and our grandchildren to be given a chance to live. What we have to say to the climate change deniers is simply this: Science is not just a liberal plot.
