The gospel reading this morning is the beginning of the chapter of Mark known as the Mini-Apocalypse.
The Apocalypse is that series of events which signals the end of time as we know it, the end of time as we know it- and the end of this world as we know it.
During that time - the times of the end - it is written that the faithful will suffer terrible persecutions as evil strives to destroy all that is good; and at the end of that time evil itself will be totally destroyed.
The Apocalypse is a time of judgement. A time that we all, in one way or another, will enter into or experience, whether we are in heaven or on earth, whether we are interceding for the faithful before the throne of God, or whether we are the ones being interceded for.
This week there was quite a discussion of this morning's extract from the Apocalypse of Mark. A discussion that centred for the most part on the horror of those days described by Jesus, and whether or not God would actually unleash the kind of indiscriminate violence. The kind of judgement that the thirteenth chapter of Mark and The Revelation to John describes.
Wars, earthquakes, persecutions, the end of things like the Temple in Jerusalem, deadly pollution and stars falling from the sky, it all sounds a little much to a lot of people - and they either don't believe it will happen - or they don't believe God would operate that way.
Will it happen?
Look around the world my friends - it has been happening since the day the curtain in the temple was torn in two - it has been happening since the day the stone was rolled away to reveal the empty tomb.
We are living in the end times:
- in the time when the wheat is separated from the chaff
- in the time when God's people are persecuted and harassed and killed,
- in the time when all manner of evils are loose upon the face of earth,
evils which has been intensifying from century to century as they struggle
to quench the light of God.
The question is not - is the time of the end described in the scriptures real? - no sane person can doubt that if they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear - but whether or not God judges the peoples and sifts the nations in this fashion? Whether or not it is God who permits the innocent to suffer as they wait the final day? And whether or not God will, in the end, erase evil from the world as totally as I erased the incorrect sums from the equations I wrote during the children's time?
One of the great mysteries of God is the mystery of God's judgement.
How is it that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? How is that God's judgement is balanced with God's grace? And how is that God seems to use violence to bring to an end the ways of violence?
I have no doubt my friends that the history of our planet over the last two thousand years is a history of the approaching end of all things and I have no doubt about who the author of the violence and the horrors is - nor should you!
Evil my friends calls down it's own judgement upon itself. Those who hate, end up swallowing up themselves in hatred. Those who are greedy - consume their very selves as they seek for ever more than they have. Those who are violent - perish by the very violence they unleash.
Like a giant sun whose light has gone out and which is collapsing into nothingness, so the evil about us will come to an end - for nothing can come of nothing unless God wills it otherwise.
What we see, how thousands of Christians are being killed each year in places like India, Pakistan, Africa and the Far East, all for no other reason than the fact they bear the name of Christ. - how horrors like those of Nazi Germany and Somalia and Iraq and Yugoslavia are loosed upon the world - upon people of every race, creed and colour - more and more frequently - how famines sweep the earth while food is discarded and fertile earth is buried under parking lots and shopping malls, cannot be blamed upon God.
But it can be seen to be used by God to accomplish his purpose. And it can be seen that out of what is happening around us new life will come.
Jesus says in today's reading from the Gospel of Mark, after saying how the temple - the largest and most important edifice of the last age - will be destroyed, and how there will be wars and rumours of wars, and how nations will rise against nations, and there will be famines and earthquakes. That such things must happen, but the end is still to come, that such things are the beginning of birth pains.
What we see about us is the ending of the old world and the coming of a new one.
And there is not only mercy in the coming of the new world. But there is a mercy in the length of time that it takes for the old world to cease, for the old world to consume itself to make way for the new.
There is a mystery to God's judgement and part of that mystery is this - that God permits evil to practice its arts upon the good - if it could not then none of us could be called free - and that while evil is practising its arts - an art that will surely lead to it's destruction. - God calls each and every one of us to change sides and to become citizens of that world that is yet to come - that world that he is bringing to birth in our midst.
What I am saying, and what the scriptures teach is that God offers mercy to who all who desire it, and that the time of the ending, - an ending that is inherent in those forces which seek to end all that is good is extended so that all might choose aright - so that all who desire it may be part of the new life that is being brought to birth.
God's judgement is a mystery - especially as it relates to how the innocent suffer with the guilty during the time of the ending - during this time we live in.
And how God balances justice and mercy in his judgements - so that evil does vanish away and what is good does triumph and brings forth new and everlasting life is not something that anyone can speak of lightly - as if all the answers are know, all we can say - as a people of faith - is that God will judge rightly - and God will do good, not harm.
A story - a parable if you will, about suffering and about the end times in which we live - that someone shared on the Internet as people discussed today's gospel reading.
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. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "I've endured terror ...beatings...torture....death!"
In another camp a black American boy lowered his collar, "What about this?'" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn, "Lynched for no crime but being black!"
In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. "Why should I suffer?" she murmured. "It wasn't my fault." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups! Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world.
"How lucky God was to live in heaven", they said, "where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred! What does God know of all that humankind had been forced to endure in this world? God leads a pretty sheltered life", they said.
So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a black American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child..
In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured.
Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth - as a man! Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.
As each leader announced his portion of the sentence loud murmurs of approval went up from the throne of people assembled. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence there was a long silence..... No one moved.... For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.
My brothers and sisters, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us today in a way that the gospel passage does not, that God has come among us - not to serve his sentence - for it is not he who has created the suffering in this world - but to serve ours - and to open to us the gates of heaven.
The mystery of God's judgement is found in the fact that he judges with great love - and while all that we are familiar with will be shaken to its core - and while there will be a time when the wheat will be separate from the chaff, a time when that which has gone around will come around. The wheat will be saved out, the good will transformed from one degree to another, and what will come around and pour out ever more blessings than this world can afford us - is a new world.
Christ Jesus lives to intercede for us - and calls us to live with him - both now as our old self passes away, and forever as we are reborn with our world.
As the writing of the letter to Hebrew's concludes in today's reading:
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
That day is approaching - ever and ever closer. Praise be to God for it. Amen
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