When everything crashes

Sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, year B
Bible reading: Mark 13:1–8

This week we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What a fall that was twenty years ago … a fall that reverberated, not just through the whole Communist world, but through the whole world. It was the fall of a great evil and there was great rejoicing.

But most crashes are not accompanied by great rejoicing. The stock market and financial crashes of the past years have been greeted with great distress. The crash of the twin towers on 9/11 drove the world into great fear. The police officers knock bringing the somber announcement of a fatal crash plunges people into deep grief.

All these are signs that not all is well in the world. All these are signs that sooner or later everything we see and treasure is going to crash, including ourselves. Here we have no abiding city.

The theory of evolution suggestions that everything has been around for a very long time. This theory can fool us into thinking it will all last forever. But even this theory speaks of the survival of the fittest, meaning that the weaker things keep crashing as they are gobbled up by the stronger. Long before Charles Darwin drew his conclusions from the study of nature, Jesus had made it clear, not only that the stronger will destroy the weaker, but that in the end all will be destroyed. The first heaven and the first earth will pass away, and sadly for water lovers, there will be no more sea … And I will make all things new. If this is so, doesn’t it affect our attitude to life?

  • If everything is going to crash, doesn’t it change the way you approach things?
  • If you’re going to lose everything you can see, and gain everything you can’t see, doesn’t it change the way you make your investments?
  • When kingdoms fight against and destroy kingdoms, and a Kingdom comes that will last forever, doesn’t it change the way you view everything?

Sadly, for most people, it doesn’t. Just as there are climate change skeptics, so the world is stacked with end of the world skeptics. In Mark 13 Jesus sets to work to shock people into reality. The end of the world is not just the talk of street corner preachers, but here it is from the lips of the Son of God, from the One who made the world and all things, and knows their purpose and their end. Jesus is not a religious nutter, so we dare not ignore his words, or else we join the company of fools who say: ‘there is no God’.

We often speak of ‘the calm before the storm’. That means that everything continues about the same until suddenly all hell breaks loose. The truth is that all hell is breaking loose in most countries of the world, and even for many people in our own country, but we seem to live oblivious to these signs of worse things to come. We’re like a woman who doesn’t know she is pregnant, and when she starts getting her first birth pangs she doesn’t recognize what’s going on, until the pains increase in severity and frequency, and the baby is born on the lawn between the house and the car shed.

Jesus speaks of storm before the calm. Jesus says that when his Kingdom comes it is accompanied by catastrophic events:

  • The magnificent temple will be destroyed, and never be rebuilt, and worse still replaced by a Mosque, the symbol of a false God, and a false religion.
  • False Messiahs will come making false claims, none greater than the false claims of materialism, whose beguiling claims have enraptured us all.
  • Wars and rumours of wars will fill most news bulletins along with stories of nations against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms. All this is the sign that the Kingdom of God is breaking in. When Communism was falling 20 years ago, there was a big headline: peace is breaking out everywhere. But within about five minutes, it was all back to the old pattern of war as usual. The human heart is so filled with greed and vengeance that it is bent on destruction and seems to have no solution to the problems of the world except violence and bloodshed.
  • There will be earthquakes and famines, and every other kind of cosmic disaster. If this alone is not an obvious enough wake up call, what is?
  • There will be persecutions. People will suffer for their faith in Jesus. In no century have more Christians suffered and been imprisoned and been killed for their faith than in the last one. And this one could be worse.

So what shall we do in the face of all these signs of the coming of God’s Kingdom?

  • Like the Essenes of Jesus’ day, we could run away and hide in our churches.
  • Like the Zealots of Jesus’ day, we could take up arms and fight God’s cause.
  • Like the Sadducees of Jesus’ day we could just join the flow of society.
  • Like the Pharisees of Jesus day we could follow God and judge everybody else.

What does Jesus call us to do, as this world crashes and his Kingdom comes?

  • Watch out … be on your guard … be alert … read the signs all around you. Do not be alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.
  • The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. The coming of the kingdom of God is such good news for it will never pass away. So turn away from all the failing kingdoms, and put your trust in Jesus Christ, be baptized and believe in him and enter his kingdom and follow him as his disciples.
  • Boldly confess your faith in Jesus, even if this means being arrested, standing before unbelieving judges. Even if it means ridicule at your work place, or by unbelieving members of your family, or your circle of friends. And don’t just speak words about God, live a courageous, counter cultural life, like Jesus.
  • Wherever you go, let your words and life be a witness that can help others see God and his kingdom, and be drawn from false hope to the true God. The Gospel must first be preached to all nations. It may not be too late to join a mission team taking the Gospel to Cambodia or some country that has not heard of Jesus. It is certainly not too late to give generously to support those who go out on mission to the ends of the earth. Those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever, says Daniel in today’s reading.
  • All who stand firm to the end will be saved.

All who leave the crashing kingdoms of this world and believe in Jesus Christ and are baptised into his kingdom will be saved. How good God is. He sends Jesus to rescue us from the sinking ship of this world and join him in his kingdom which lasts forever and ever. Amen.        

Pastor David Christian