Mark 13: 1-8

William Willimon told about a student mission trip to Honduras. A group was working in an impoverished village at a health clinic. Each night they built a fire and sat around the fire singing with villagers. One night a student had the bright idea that they all go around and share their favorite Bible verse. Of course, some didn’t have much of a favorite verse – some mentioned John 3:16 or “The Lord is my shepherd.” And then a Honduran woman said through an interpreter that her favorite verse was from Mark 13. “Not one stone will be left, there will be earthquakes and famine and fire.” She said, “That passage has always been such a comfort to me.” Willimon was stunned. How could this possibly be a comfort? It sounds more like Jesus having a really bad day. How could a warning of coming apocalypse be comforting? But then a nurse told Willimon, “I was talking with that woman. She has given birth five times and three of her children have died due to malnutrition.”...

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One time, I was sightseeing with a friend in Washington D.C.; I had been there a number of times before, but it was my friend’s first time. As I watched my friend be amazed by one monument after another, my memories of my own first visit came rushing back, and as we moved around the city, like the unnamed disciple’s reaction to the temple, my friend and I were caught up in the narrative shaped by the architecture and design of the monuments, parks, and memorials of the US capitol. After a number of years of living as an ex-pat, all of a sudden, being there, I felt “proud to be an American!” For the moment, my critiques about national policy and practice were forgotten… Until we got to the National Archives Museum, which often has exhibits about the struggle by certain groups of Americans, especially women and ethnic minorities, to have the rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution… there, I was reminded of my nation’s sins, and the stark reality that things continue to not be the way they ought to be in the Kingdom of God.

In a church much like this one, a woman stays behind in the pews after the service. She is sitting at the back, off to the side, so no one notices her as they are tidying things up. Eventually, the priest comes back into the sanctuary to retrieve something and hears her crying. When the priest asks what’s wrong, the woman tells her story: she and her husband have been trying to have a child for over a decade. They have been through every fertility treatment, including intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization, as well as complementary alternative therapies like acupuncture and yoga for fertility. Nothing has worked. This week, the woman’s specialist told her that she is entering perimenopause. The couple also had to take out loans from family to pay for the treatments and she is utterly depleted—financially, emotionally, and physically. Quietly, her husband joins them and puts his arm around his wife. He says to the priest that they have prayed faithfully to God for the blessing of a child. They have attended church, have tithed, have volunteered in their community, and have even bargained with God that they would dedicate their child to a rigorous Christian upbringing, sending him or her to an expensive, private Christian school, no matter what the cost. In essence, they felt like they had done everything in their power as faithful people and they felt as if in some way, God was punishing them. Their desire to become parents had ended up causing them more pain and isolation than they ever could imagine. The priest listening to this couple’s story felt deep compassion for them. Immediately, the priest thought of the parallels they had to Hannah’s story, except for this couple there has been no happy ending, so how would sharing that be comforting?...

I find myself wondering if perhaps you, like I, cannot help but think of what we have experienced these last few years. For at least where I live, while the bricks and mortar of places of worship may still stand, there was a long stretch of time when no one went into them at all, and only then to be sure nothing needed tending. No, for long months on end we did not enter for the purposes which we had so long taken for granted. The organ stood silent. Cobwebs gathered under the pews. The memories of the voices of one another began to fade. The communion ware stayed stored in cabinets unused for months on end…

Human history has given way too many examples of how bad, how broken every human being has the capacity to become. One recent story that came to mind has really upset me that I’m sure a lot of you have heard about as well. In fact, tt was just about a year ago when I shared a story in a homily that had gone viral. It was a heart-warming tale about how this woman had run out of gas off a dangerous highway; a homeless man who was nearby saw this, told her to stay put and took his last $20 went and purchased gas for her so she could get home safely and long story short, the woman and her boyfriend shared this on facebook, launched a go-fund me page where they could raise funds to help the homeless man out and ended up raising over $400,000. A few months ago, I saw a follow up to the story that the homeless guy was claiming that the couple had stolen the money meant to get him back on his feet and were vacationing and purchased a new car with it. I remember commenting when I saw that saying “Please God no… I really can’t take hearing such awful news.” That launched law enforcement to conduct investigations on the whole thing. So you held out hope that – even if this kind hearted couple proved to be crooks that at least maybe someone would help this guy and he would get the funds to help him turn his life around. This past week there was another follow up that the couple and the homeless man were arrested for making the whole thing up. As the prosecutor in the case said “they hoodwinked a lot of people.”..

Mary loved her job. She was a high-powered executive with a company that was expanding at a phenomenal rate. She worked hard to get where she was. She poured all her energy into her work. She barely had time for a personal life, but that didn’t bother Mary. She knew there would be plenty of time for that after she had gotten where she wanted to go. Ten years and she was already playing with the big boys. She was a mover and a shaker. She loved her work and as good as she was at her job, she just didn’t see it coming. She was stunned when the announcement came. Apparently, the company had expanded a little too quickly. Bankruptcy put an end to the life that Mary loved. Mary’s world ended the day she lost her job...

Hoping skills are important because the situations Jesus describes to his disciples are ongoing. God will work God’s purposes out within human history, within time and space, on this earth, until God brings about the new heavens and a new earth. The disciples ask Jesus when this will happen, and Jesus answers them by not answering them. Instead, he tells them to be faithful, not fearful, to set their minds on trusting and being aware, rather than worrying about a calendar. Jesus’ words are meant to put an end to any speculation about when the end of time as we know it will happen. Jesus says, don’t worry about knowing when. That’s not yours to know. But there are things you can know. The things we can know are hoping skills. The first of these hoping skills is to keep the Big Picture Perspective—the really big picture perspective, the God’s eye view of human history...

My friend was conversing with me as my mother once did shortly after my father’s death. He was speaking with me, but his eyes were focused to his side, where he seemed to be studying a future that seemed much too stark. Sometimes people want to be consoled or at least do not resent it, yet they cannot take their eyes from the terrors they see coming. He was back in the hospital in what is sometimes called a swing bed. Aptly named because his future might go either way. Maybe he will get better and be able to return home. Maybe not. Maybe this room or someplace like it will be home for the rest of his life. We talked about living day to day, about putting one’s trust and confidence in the Lord. I would have said that this is what our faith is all about. We ready ourselves for the coming trials, which no man or woman can avoid. We put our trust not in ourselves but in the Lord...

William Willimon told about a student mission trip to Honduras. A group of was working in an impoverished village, running a makeshift health clinic. Each night they built a fire and sat around the fire singing with villagers. One night a student had the bright idea that they all go around and share their favorite Bible verse. Of course, some didn’t have much of a favorite verse – some mentioned John 3:16 or “The Lord is my shepherd.” Some quoted other verses.

At the end of her story “Revelation”, Flannery O’Connor offers a vision of the future of God’s kingdom. Mrs. Turpin, the main character, is an opinionated, petty aristocrat in a small southern town. She had everyone classified, from (in her words), “the “[blacks] and white trash” on the bottom, on up to the nice Christian ladies like herself on top. But something shocking happens to her one day in a doctor’s office that turns her world upside down. I won’t tell you what it is; you’ll have to read the story. At the end of the story we find Mrs. Turpin, humbled and shaken, leaning on the rail of a hog pen, contemplating this new revelation of herself. She experiences a glimpse God’s coming kingdom...

Jesus does not see her giving because she is being exploited by religious propaganda. In fact, she is not giving to the Temple at all, she is giving to God. Perhaps she is giving out of gratitude. That may sound crazy, after all she is poor and now has nothing, but who says you cannot be grateful for life even while you are poor. I remember sitting with a client in a transitional housing program. He was a recovering alcoholic, a combat veteran with PTSD, a string of DWIs. His morning routine was to write down his gratitudes. He said, “First, I am glad to be alive, since I should be dead given everything I have done to myself. Second, I’m glad to be sober. Third, I’m glad I slept in a bed in a dry place. I write down these three things every morning to remind myself how lucky I am. That’s how I stay sober and do what I need to do.”...

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"Morgan Wooten was a basketball coach. He coached at DeMatha High School in the DC area. His teams won 1274 games while losing only 192 times. He was considered by everyone who knew him to be one of the great ones. Well, everyone except his grandson. Wooten is one of only three high school coaches in the Basketball Hall of Fame..."

("Bruce Larson once wrote that the neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to see in his church. It is an imitation, but a good one, dispensing spirits instead of the spirit, escape instead of what is really real, but one thing is true of such places as we used to see on the old 1980s TV series Cheers...")

("Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the local newspaper. It read, 'Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before. He died a very rich man.' Actually, it was a mistake...")

"The world ended that day. With that phone call. That startling news. That deepening realization. The world ended that day. Or at least it ended as you had known it. I am so deeply aware of this right now for I am in the midst of a stretch of funerals. Some expected. Others not. All leaving those they loved living with a before and after like they have never known before..."

("A couple of weeks ago we were gathering in the classroom where we come together for Confirmation each Wednesday. Some were done with the service project earlier than others so Jim, one of our adult leaders, volunteered to wait with a handful of young people who were the first to return. I walked in a few minutes later ---while the group was still small. Pretty soon Jim was asking me to 'test' Joe, one of our 8th graders...")

When I was growing up, I think my Dad would save his longest prayer of the year for Thanksgiving Dinner. We would sit there silently with our hands folded, one eye squinting to see the rows and rows and piles and piles of food, the smell of roasted turkey hanging heavy in the air. I think my Dad may have been trying to teach us something about gratitude and patience, or more likely he was just torturing us. Either way, it didn’t matter. We’d be gobbling all that good food up soon enough. But I was a rather finicky young eater. Sure, I was hungry like everyone else, but not for everything on the table. So in the millisecond after the prayer ended I had to move quickly to fill my plate with the things I liked. I could live without most of the stuff in the vegetable family, same was true of the canned beats and the gelatin-ized glob of cranberry. I loved the drumstick, and I would eat some corn, and I liked a baked potato with butter and sour cream, but there was no way, under no circumstances, would I eat peas...

"So what I am telling you is exactly the same as what I am telling everybody else: there is only one game plan, love, love and more love. Forgive, forgive and more love. Keep yourselves on the ready at all times, lest you be lured back into the ways of suspicion, division and retaliation. Hold on tightly to the hope that you've put your hands up to..."

("Gregory L. Fisher in Leadership magazine tells of teaching a class at the West African Bible College. One day the class was discussing the Second Coming of Christ. A student asked Fisher a question that took him by surprise. The question was this: 'What will he say when he shouts?' Fisher wanted to leave the question unanswered..." and other quotes)

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"who isn't awed by buildings? The icons of cities are their buildings: the Eiffel tower is Paris; Big Ben is London; the Capital Building is D.C.; the Brandenburg Gate is Berlin. I pick travel destinations, in part, for the buildings I want to see..."

On August 23, 2011, Louisa County, Virginia, was rocked by a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. We expect such seismic activity along the Pacific coast but rarely think about it happening elsewhere. Earthquakes in Virginia are rare; however, due to the geological nature of the Eastern Seaboard, the quake’s shocks were felt as far away as Florida and Ontario, Canada. It was particularly sad, not just for Episcopalians, but for many Christians, to see the damage this quake did to the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, better known as the National Cathedral. Who could have envisioned the pinnacles of the towers crashing into the pavement below or great towers completely twisted? The earthquake only lasted 10 to 15 seconds, but in that time a tremendous amount of damage was done. Who could have imagined it?...

("Mother kept a little plaque on her wall that read 'Keep Looking Up'. I now have that plaque in my desk next to my nameplate. I have looked at that simple line so often that it has been hard wired into my soul. Keep Looking Up, expectant for a better world at peace and in prosperity for all...")

("In 1936, a movie was made of the Broadway play The Green Pastures. The movie, with an all-black cast, would undoubtedly be politically incorrect today because it presents some rather stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans. But the play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930...")

Life is such a rhythm of flowing and ebbing, beginning and ending, receiving and giving, falling and rising, emptying and filling, dying and living – we all know the feelings! Ecclesiastes sums it up in his way, as everything having its time with us. Modern singer of stories Harry Chapin adds, All my life’s a circle; Sunrise and sundown; Moon rolls through the nighttime; Till the daybreak comes around. All my life’s a circle; But I can’t tell you why; Seasons spinning round again; The years keep rollin’ by. Then comes a verse evoking this time of harvest journey, of coming of age, of maturity in life and faith – time of both rest from our labors and revival for them, time of drawing to ends implicit with new beginnings – time of grasping as much full meaning and purpose to life-in-faith as we possibly can, with all the help of our elders and saints! – time of enduring to the full and whole ends of our lives, however unusual, unexpected, enlightening and exhausting attention to such time can be – as witness the book about dementia our sister Pat Smith offers us, Who Are You, and What Have You Done with my Mother? -- time of what Mark here calls “the Day approaching,” time of the church liturgical year commonly known as “Christ the King,” traditionally “reigning in glory,” less imperially “rising in fullness and wholeness,” expressiveness and inclusiveness of all of creation...

Maybe it is, as it says in the opening to the old Dickens novel, with every ending, every beginning again, both the best of times and the worst of times. Whatever it is, it is our time, brothers and sisters! This is our time under God! Walter Wink introduces his last chapter with this quote from the play A Sleep of Prisoners, by Christopher Fry – Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise Is exploration into God, Where no nation’s foot has ever trodden yet...

("'They shall either be converted or wiped out,' wrote St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) of the Slavic pagans in the Baltics. It would be convenient to dismiss his chilling words as an abberation, but that would only be a comforting illusion...")

("Kathleen Norris, in her most recent book The Cloister Walk, reflects upon her experience of time when she was living in a Benedictine abbey: 'Gradually, my perspective on time has changed. In our culture, time can seem like an enemy; it chews us up and spits us out with appalling ease...")

"At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly - not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. 'Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?' snapped a young brunette...

("Some while back in a sermon, Barbara Brown Taylor related a story from her childhood when she was growing up in the American South. Every day after school Barbara and her siblings were supervised by an African-American babysitter named Thelma. Thelma was remarkable for how little she ever talked to the children")

Louise Mahan had attended a biblical storytelling workshop in 1985. Two years prior to this she had become parish minister of a congregation which had suffered the loss of their church in a fire. For two years they had been fighting and arguing with the insurance company. With every small victory seemed to come two other defeats. “By the end of the second year, we were all discouraged,” she said. “The burned out hulk still stood, the insurance settlement was woefully inadequate, we were meeting in a church building where we were only tolerated on Sunday afternoons – the litany of woes could go on and on.” During the workshop the group told the parable of The Sower. Commenting on the parable she says she had always disliked the parable - because she had always thought of herself as the 'dirt’. “But as I learned it and told it and heard it told, it suddenly came to me that I was not dirt, but the sower, and that my congregation was filled with sowers.” With great excitement she returned to her congregation and on the first Sunday following the workshop, while they worshipped on the lawn, she told the congregation the parable of The Sower...

"There is a castle in the north of Italy. I am told that if you ask, the friendly gardener will open the gate and give you a tour of the grounds. I am also told that the grounds are kept in perfect order and in each and every season of the year they look their very possible best. The same gardener has been there for many years and not once had the owner of the castle visited him..."

Jimmy Allen grew up in the church and he raised his family in the church. His father was also a minister, his best friend was a minister and his son entered the ministry. That son married a woman named Lydia, a paediatric nurse and the daughter of his best friend...

"The English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley saw the great statues of Ramses II fallen near Luxor and wrote his poem, Ozymandias: 'My name is Oxymandis, king of kings: Look on my works, yet might, and despair! Nothing beside remains..."

This past Sunday was the day for Stewardship emphasis in the New Jersey-shore congregation of one of my good friends. The preacher that day told of the show business beginning of the late George Burns - in case you did not know, it was in a Presbyterian church. It seems that, when little George was seven years old, growing up in New York City, he and three friends had a singing group they called the Peewee Quartet. Each year, a department store in the city would sponsor a talent contest as part of their annual picnic; local churches were invited to send one act each, to compete in the contest. There was one particular church in George's neighborhood that had no one to send, so the pastor asked young George if he could arrange for the Peewee Quartet to enter the contest on behalf of that congregation. The boys agreed, and not only did they enter, they won first prize. The church received an elegant purple communion-table cloth, and each of the boys received a new watch, each one costing the (then-) princely sum of 85 cents. George ran home to his mother, who happened to be hanging laundry up on the rooftop. "I don't want to be a Jew any more," he announced. "And why not?" she responded, without seeming flustered in any way. "I want to be a Presbyterian," George went on. "I've been a Jew for seven years, and I've never gotten anything. I've been a Presbyterian for fifteen minutes, and already they gave me this watch." "Fine. You can go off and join the Presbyterians," said his mother, wise in the ways of the world, and not especially concerned at the request. "But first help me hang up this wash."...

("It was January 27, 1986. We were getting ready. The whole nation was getting ready. It was going to be a great day. All eyes were watching the television sets. It was going to be the 'all time greatest' space launching. We had a schoolteacher; a woman; an astronaut. It was one of the most exciting days in American history..." and other doomsday illustrations)

("Leonard Sweet, describes the time of change we are experiencing as being like a tsunami that is rushing towards us—a tidal wave of change that cannot be stopped. In fact, he calls it a Soul Tsunami, because of the massive spiritual challenges and opportunities it presents..." and a T. S. Eliot guote)

("A poet has summed up God's Light in Christ beautifully: 'God hath not promised Skies always blue, Flower-strewn pathways All our lives through; God hath not promised Sun without rain, Joy without sorrow...")

I recently saw the movie "Bruce Almighty". Now, whether or not you are a Jim Carrie fan I highly recommend you see the movie. There are some theological concepts that are well portrayed in this movie. Probably one of the best concerns free will, the ability to choose. Jim Carrie does not like his life as Bruce very much. He wants more out of life and so he prays to God. He is mad at God for his position and wants to know why God made it so. As a result God answers his prayer by giving Bruce God's power for a short time. He can do anything he wants except mess with free will. People have to be willing to choose. They have to be free to choose what they will do, good or bad. They are free to choose what they will express of their feelings, anger or love. They have to be free to choose what they will believe, God is alive or there is no God. As the movie unfolds Bruce turns out to be pretty self-centered...

A father knocks on his son’s door. “Jaime,” he says, “Wake up!” Jaime answers, “I don’t want to get up, Papa.” The father shouts, “Get up, you have to go to school.” Jaime says, “I don’t want to go to school.” “Why not?” asks the father. “Three reasons,” says Jaime. “First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school.” And the father says, “Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty; second, because you’re forty-five years old; and third, because you are the headmaster.” Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest, tells this story at the beginning of his book, “Awareness.” He uses it to send home his message that in order to lead a spiritual life one has first to wake up...

("During the last few years, we have had a number of movies that portray a pending millennial doom to the human race. Such movies as 12 Monkeys, Waterworld, Armageddon and The Matrix have all used religious symbolism as a backdrop to present their end of the world scenario...")

"How do you spend time? How will you live this day?"...)

("There's a story told by Mary Hollingsworth about the noted director, Cecil B. DeMille. When they began working on the movie Ben Hur, DeMille talked to Charlton Heston, the star of the movie, about the all important chariot race at the end. He decided Heston should actually learn to drive the chariot himself, rather than just using a stunt double..." and another illustration)

("Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers, writes a beautiful passage in his book Magnificent Defeat. He says: 'The gods are dying. The gods of this world are sick unto death. If someone does not believe this, the next time they happen to wake up in the great silence of the night or of the day, just listen...")

("A man came to the Buddha and asked, 'Are you a god?' 'No,' the Buddha answered. 'I am not a god.' 'Are you a spirit, then?' the main asked. 'No,' said the Buddha. 'I am not a spirit.'...")

("At the age of 20, Art Berg was a very happy man. Everything was going right. He was a gifted athlete and had started his own tennis court construction company. And he was engaged to a beautiful woman. Leaving California one Christmas eve, he was headed to Utah with a friend. He was going to meet his fiancee and complete their wedding plans...")

("On Sunday, May 18, 1980, Mount Saint Helen’s exploded in one of the most spectacular eruptions in recent memory. The eruption sent more than 540 million tons of volcanic ash raining down over 22,000 square miles, covering Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, and sending ash drifting as far away as Virginia...")

("The largest of the churches that were predicting the imminent end of the world disbanded this week—not with a bang or a whimper, but an apology. 'We are sorry for creating problems to the nation and the established churches by misinterpreting the Bible,' said a statement by the Mission of the Coming Days church released through newspapers this week...")

("Only 12 kilometres south of the popular Taizé monastic community in France, is the town of Cluny. Cluny was a thriving monastic centre from about the tenth to the twelfth centuries, with around ten thousand monks. The cathedral at Cluny was most likely the largest edifice of Christendom until St Peter's Basilica was built in Rome five centuries later...")

"This scene must have been like my experience standing at the base of the World Trade Center towers in the fall of 1993 sometime after the parking garage had been bombed. Looking up, I saw those towers reaching to the heavens. Bystanders commented on how foolish those bombers were to think they could bring down those towers..."

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("futurologists are usually historians, poets, novelists and scientists. They are people like Aldus Huxley who wrote a famous book BRAVE NEW WORLD. In the book, the future was controlled by science and technology. Babies were bottled in test tubes...")

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