First Reading: Daniel 12:1-3
1“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. 2And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
Psalm 16
1Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you; I have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, my good above all other.” 2All my delight is upon the godly that are in the land, upon those who are noble among the people. 3But those who run after other gods shall have their troubles multiplied. 4Their libations of blood I will not offer, nor take the names of their gods upon my lips. 5O Lord, you are my portion and my cup; it is you who uphold my lot. 6My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage. 7I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; my heart teaches me, night after night. 8I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand I shall not fall. 9My heart, therefore, is glad, and my spirit rejoices; my body also shall rest in hope. 10For you will not abandon me to the grave, nor let your holy one see the Pit. 11You will show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, and in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Second Reading: Hebrews 10:11-25
11Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 16“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” 17then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. 19Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Gospel: Mark 13:1-13
1As {Jesus} came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” 2And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” 3And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. 6Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains. 9But be on your guard. For they will deliver you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. 10And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. 12And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. 13And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”
Preparing for an Unknown Future
The Greeks had two words for “life”, and both appear in the New Testament. One is bios from which we get the word “biology.” Biological life describes physical life. It’s not true life, or life with meaning, it simply describes existence. This is life in terms of functionality and extension. We take air in, we expel CO2. We take in food, we expel waste. Bios deals with the skeleto-muscular part of who we are, not the thinking, spiritual part, of our being. The other Greek word is zoe.
Zoe is used to denote true life, the quality of life. It describes spiritual life with God as the source of life. While bios is temporal, zoe is eternal. The one deals with the body and the other with the soul. But this eternal life also has quantity, for it extends through eternity. To distinguish this type of life, zoe, from the former, bios, the New Testament uses “eternal life.” And just as there are two kinds of life, there are two kinds of death.
The bios type of life ends in physical death. The body declines, deteriorates, and dies. This is in accord with the natural order of creation, after the fall of humankind. Once sin entered the world, all living things were subject to death, including Homo sapiens. If a human were only a physical body, the person would come to an end at their last breath. If this were the case, death would have the last word and would be the ultimate victor over life. But there is another kind of death.
The Bible speaks of death in terms of separation from God. In Ezekiel we read, “The soul that sins shall die” (18:4). And in Romans 6:23, St. Paul writes, “the wages of sin is death.” Sin is the dreadful agent that separates us from God. To be apart from God, from life, love, joy, and peace, is to be dead. Does this mean that the soul is exterminated or extinguished? If so, there would be a merciful nothingness. However, the Bible teaches that a soul apart from God, living in death, is in hell, a state of misery. In the New Testament, Jesus talked about Hell in terms of, “Outer Darkness” (Matthew 22:13), a place of “Wailing and the gnashing of teeth”, (Matthew 13:42), “a place where the worm never dies and the thirst is never quenched”, (Mark 9:48), and so forth.
Paul describes the condition in hell: “They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). And in the Revelation of St. John we read, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (21:8). As there is eternal life, there is also everlasting death.
To save us from this second death, God gave His Son to die for us and to reconcile us with God in whom we have eternal life. The scriptures repeatedly assure us that God has no desire for a single soul to perish, to be lost, or to go to hell. In the passage we all know by heart, John 3:16-17, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” And in 2 Peter 3:9, we read, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” In Christ, God the Father gave His very self to prevent people from going to eternal punishment. With these passages in mind, let’s consider, for a moment, that the world really was coming to an end. How, do you suppose, the headlines of our major newspapers would read?
One day at lunch a group of reporters, bankers, brokers, and PR types at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. speculated on how various news media would print the story of the end of time. Here are some suggested headlines: The Los Angeles Times: No traffic on freeways tonight. USA Today: We die! The Wall Street Journal: Market closes early. And Sports Illustrated: The fat lady sings. Our lesson from St. Mark’s Gospel is part of the apocalyptic literature of the Bible.
In very vivid terms it describes the last days of planet earth. Some people get a chill just thinking of the possibility of the end of the world, or the so-called Rapture, or the Second Coming. Each time predictions are made, there are people who sell their homes, cash in their life insurance policies, and turn toward the heavens for signs. Of course, none of this is new. For centuries there have been innumerable theories as to when and how the world might end. Some of this has been written down for our amusement.
For example, in 960 AD, a German theologian calculated 992 as the most likely year. As the time approached, panic was widespread. In 1665 a man named Solomon Eccles was jailed in London’s Bridewell Prison for walking through Smithfield Market stark naked, carrying a pan of blazing sulfur on his head, and prophesying doom and destruction. Although the end of the world didn’t follow, the Great Fire of London did, in 1666. In 1874 Charles Taze Russell, founder of the sect that became the Jehovah’s Witnesses, concluded that the Second Coming had already taken place. Russell declared that people had 40 years, or until 1914, to enter his faith or be destroyed. Later he modified the date to “very soon after 1914.”
In 1967 Anders Jensen, the Danish leader of a sect known as the Disciples of Orthon, convinced his followers that the world would end in a nuclear holocaust on Christmas Day. Jensen even appeared on the David Frost Show to announce this fact to millions of television viewers. Since 1967, many other date setters have come along including one, would be prophet, who set the date for this past September. Each one has been wrong. It makes me think of a minister in 16th century Germany named Michael Stiftell.
Based on his study of Revelation, Stiftell proclaimed that the world would end on October 18, 1533. When it didn’t happen, Stiftell was given a thrashing by the townspeople. What we need to remember, anytime we encounter these date setters, is that Jesus Himself said, not even He knew the date, only the Father in heaven, (Matthew 24:36), but that doesn’t seem to discourage some dooms day prophets from speculating. I like something that J. David Bianchin wrote in Leadership magazine. He pointed to a basketball game to make his point.
In the 1987 NCAA Regional Finals, Louisiana State University was leading Indiana by eight points with only a few minutes left in the game. As is often the case with a team in the lead, LSU began playing a different ball game. The television announcer pointed out that the LSU players were beginning to watch the clock rather than wholeheartedly play the game. As a result of this shift in focus, Indiana closed the gap, won the game by one point, and eventually went on to become NCAA champions. David Bianchin went on to say that God doesn’t want us wasting pointless energy watching the clock. Instead, God wants us to be focused on today and to be about the business of God’s kingdom.
We don’t want to be guilty of clock-watching this morning, but we do want to take seriously Christ’s words about the last days. There are three significant things Jesus says about the end of time and His return. First, Jesus tells us that we cannot know the future. Jesus’ disciples fully expected His return in their lifetime. They were wrong. No scriptural truth is more sure than this one: Only God knows the future. Think of our own recent history.
For those of us who are fifty-five or older, would you have predicted, in your younger days, that within your lifetime a man would walk on the moon, and you would watch it on television? Moreover, would you have predicted that recoverable spacecraft would be in use ferrying people back and forth to an International Space Station? For those younger, would you have foreseen the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Basketball sized satellites being deployed in order for everyone to have internet connectivity, or missions, including planned manned missions, to Mars? With all the scientific and technological advancements, who knows what tomorrow will bring? A cure for cancer, another world war, or even a war that involves fighting on our home soil? Who knows? Only God. This brings us to the second truth, God does know.
None of us knows what will happen tomorrow, but God does. This is our chief source of comfort, God knows. In Richmond, Virginia sometime back a broad-minded judge let petty offenders roll a huge pair of dice to determine the number of days they would get in jail. After the judge’s death, his secret came out: the dice were loaded. At first thought, one might conclude that when God gave humanity freedom, He rolled the dice. How would humanity use its freedom – to build or to destroy? The complete answer is not yet clear, but thankfully, the dice are loaded.
There’s a form of science known as chaology, the study of chaos. The basic assumption of this discipline is that some things in life are basically unpredictable. For example, the weather. This discipline posits that our ecosystem is so interrelated that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing may ultimately affect weather over New York City. There are simply too many variables to ever give a completely accurate long range weather prediction. And yet according to computer models there are patterns even to these supposedly chaotic events.
The patterns are so huge and so complex that they only seem chaotic to us. The biblical testimony is that there is a basic pattern to all of life. You and I can’t fully discern it any more than a fish can analyze the water in which it swims. All we know is that we have an impact on what happens to this earth and in nature and if we refuse to be good stewards of this Earth as God commanded, irreparable harm will be the result. Our job is to take care of what God has entrusted to our care and keeping and trust God to take care of the rest. For now, there are things that are beyond our abilities to comprehend and control.
If we could, however, step out of space and time with God, we could see the pattern of God’s good creation, and we could see that all things do work to the good for those who love God, but for now we see through a glass darkly. All we know is that God knows and therefore things are all right. There’s a haunting story of a man who was the lone survivor of a shipwreck. He washed up on a small uninhabited island. He cried out to God to save him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none came.
Eventually he built a small hut and put his few possessions in it. Then one day, he arrived home to find his hut in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. He was angry and grief-stricken. Early the next day, though, a ship drew near the island and rescued him. “How did you know I was here?” he asked the crew. “We saw your smoke signal,” they replied. We don’t know the future, but God does. God will not forsake us. We can take comfort in the fact that we are in God’s eternal care. But what about in the meantime? What does God expect out of us while we wait for the culmination of God’s plan? Our task is the make the most of each day and opportunity that God gives us. In the words of the Robin Williams character in the movie, The Dead Poets Society, “Carpe diem” or seize the day.”
The question for us to ponder today is, are we making the most of the days God has given us? As we about the business of God’s kingdom, or are we to busy building our own? Someone has noted that the average American expends about 40 hours of leisure time per week: 15.2 hours are spent in front of the TV. If the same time were invested in walking, in one year you could walk across America from coast to coast. If the same time were invested in education, you could earn an MBA in two years. If the same time were invested in a part-time job that pays $20 per hour, you could earn $47,424 in three years. How much time do we spend being about the Father’s business?
Someone else has noted that if you get up just one hour earlier each morning you will add the equivalent of over two additional months of productive workdays each year. We all need to consider this for a few moments. There are some today who are concerned about their future in the workplace. The world is rapidly changing. Companies are downsizing. Technology is replacing human labor. Middle management is disappearing, and more and more jobs are requiring skilled labor.
There are some who think that Social Security and Medicare will be bankrupt in a few years. I don’t know what the future holds. Neither does anyone else. But one thing is clear: the better prepared we are, the better our chances of living a full life. All of us need to use the time God gives us wisely. We need to be faithful stewards of our time, our resources, and efforts. How do we spend our time, working for God and His kingdom, or are we focused on building our own? Jesus told the parable of the prosperous king for a reason (Luke 12:16-21). None of us knows the future, all we have is the day God has entrusted to us.
Of course, there are two investments of time that pay the highest dividends. The first is the time we invest in our family and friends. We need one another. The second is the time we spend with God. God is our primary resource for coping with an unknown future. Dr. Robert Schuller tells a remarkable story about Christy Wilson, a missionary-educator in Afghanistan. A few years ago, there was a near wipe-out of Afghanistan’s leading industry, sheep breeding. A fatal disease had entered the flocks and stubbornly resisted efforts to eradicate it. With the entire sheep industry in danger of extinction, it meant that there was a loss of wool for clothing, leather for commercial products, and food to eat. In a country already suffering mass poverty, the potential losses were catastrophic.
Christy Wilson understands prayer better than most people. “What can I do?” he prayed. The answer came: “Write to your friends in the United States and ask them to send you some Long Island ducks.” This is what Christy did. Not long afterwards two dozen duck eggs were shipped air freight from New York. But they didn’t reach Afghanistan directly! The shipment was side-tracked and spent several hot days in a warehouse in Calcutta. When the package finally arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan, some of the eggs were cracked and smelled rotten. Christy prayed again, “Lord, let at least two eggs hatch, and let one of them be male and the other female.”
Twenty-two eggs proved to be rotten and infertile. Only two hatched. One was male and the other female. In a matter of months, they were reproducing, and the offspring multiplied. Then the miracle happened! The ducks began to devour the snails that crawled along the watering holes where the sheep went to drink. Amazingly, the fatal sheep disease disappeared! The snails proved to be the carriers of the disease. Today both the ducks and the sheep are in abundance.
As we move forward into this unknowable future, many of us are ignoring our most precious resource, our relationship with God through regular prayer and Bible Study and of God’s presence in our lives. There is a basic pattern to life, a pattern God alone can see. None of us knows what tomorrow will bring, so instead of worrying about the future and about things we cannot control, instead, let’s focus our time and energies on the work of God’s kingdom and placing our trust in the One who does indeed know and controls the future.
Amen