Okay, deep breath time.
Today’s Gospel reading from Mark 13:9-23 can feel like quite
the kick to the head.
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father, his
child … and woe to those who are pregnant … for in those days there will be suffering,
such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until
now ….”
Jesus makes reference to something called “the desolating
sacrilege,” which is a callback to the Book of Daniel, but to our ears may
sound like the forgotten sequel to the Lord of the Rings.
Everything in today’s Gospel reading should make you
uncomfortable. It should make you
squirm. It should make you want to get
on Facebook and pull up puppy videos or videos of kittens sleeping in odd
places.
Everything about today’s Gospel reading is dark. It is doom and gloom. It is heartbreak and suffering. Jesus is describing the “end times” here, the
end of the world. And it sends quite the
message on this, the day before Thanksgiving, doesn’t it?
So, what I want to do today is pull us back from the edge so
to speak—pull us back from worries about the global apocalypse. We get enough of that every time we turn on
the news these days. Climate change,
wildfires, storms, suffering, nuclear war, the global economy, the stock
market, caravans, disease—over and over we are bombarded by horrible
apocalyptic images whose sole purpose is to make us afraid.
And even if we somehow manage to avoid being manipulated
into acting on our fears, we still run the risk of what’s called, “compassion
fatigue,” that is being so overwhelmed by images of suffering that we shut down
and lose our ability to empathize.
So, I want to pull us back from all that a little bit. Don’t get me wrong. The world is a very scary place right now,
but before we can think about changing the world, about making a positive
impact on a large scale, we have to narrow our focus, a little bit—I want us to
be selfish for a minute and take a look at our own lives.
How can we apply Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel reading to
our own lives, to those times of tragedy that come to all of us, to those times
when we feel like it is the end of our world?
Four years ago, on November 17, my mom called me from the
hospital. She had gone for a simple scan
of her abdomen. She had been in pain for
sometime and thought she might have an ulcer.
The scan revealed something much, much worse. She had a mass on her pancreas. And as if that news alone wasn’t dire enough,
the doctor told her she also had a larger mass on her abdominal wall and
lesions on her spleen and liver.
Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer is about as apocalyptic a
diagnosis as you can get. It is the end
of the world for you and the end of a world for everyone who knows and loves
you.
My mom lived for seven weeks following her diagnosis—seven
weeks that I call both the longest and shortest seven weeks of my life. She suffered in unimaginable ways.
The last seven weeks of her life seemed to unfold like some
Shakespearean tragedy, the details of which are too horrible for words. In fact, I am reminded of Hamlet’s father’s
ghost who refuses to go into detail about the Hell to which he is confined,
saying, that the tales he could tell, “would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy
young blood.”
In reality though, my mom’s suffering those finals weeks was
more biblical than Shakespearean.
And the difference was the presence of God.
Today’s Gospel reading ends with Jesus describing the “end
times,” but if we go on to read further in the chapter, the very next thing
Jesus describes in verses 24-26, is a time “after that suffering” when, “they
will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.”
There will be suffering.
There will be pain. But then there
will be Jesus.
God was present with my mom during her final weeks.
He was there in the nun who counseled her in the hospital.
He was there in the little old man, who wheeled himself into
my mom’s room to give her communion. My
mom would later tell me she could feel the presence of God wash over her as she
took communion that day.
God was there in the social worker, who before she left,
asked permission to kiss my mom on the forehead and then whispered to her, “I
have a feeling no one has taken care of you in a long time.”
I have no doubt that God was taking care of my mom those
last weeks.
God was there with me too.
He was there in the phone calls from friends and family when
I needed them most, at any and all hours of the day.
He was there in the random strangers who took time to pray
for my mom and for me.
There were moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it,
moments I thought I would break emotionally, spiritually and physically, and
yet somehow, through the grace of God, I found the strength to keep going.
Suffering and pain—but at the end, Jesus.
But not just at the end, but all the way through.
Look again at our appointed psalm for today, Psalm 3:3-5,
“But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my
head. I cry aloud to the Lord, and he
answers me from his holy hill. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the Lord
sustains me.”
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
And if you need something to be thankful for, be thankful for this, God
is with you, always. When you woke up,
God was waiting. He was watching over
you while you slept. God has you,
through every apocalypse in your life.
Amen.
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