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What do you think about when I say, “end times?” Do you remember stories of people told to sell all and await the day of judgement at a particular place? Is there a scary soundtrack underneath the images of horsemen and beasts and horrors from the book of Revelation? Is it something that you push off as unimportant with a wave of the hand?
Whatever you think when I say, “end times,” Jesus is talking about it in our lesson today. In the story of Jesus in the gospel of Mark, chapter 13 is his last lecture before the events of that final Passover night, and his arrest, beating, trial, and death. This is Jesus trying to give last minute instructions about life “after.” And it’s not a very cheery prospect. “Wars and rumors of wars…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 birthpangs.” (Mark 13:8).
And we, Christians for millennia, have fallen right into the trap. We obsess about the bad things that are happening to us, or in our world. See, this is what Jesus was talking about. It’s coming. The END TIMES! Or, if we don’t get that extreme, we let seep into our bones, into our perception of the world, this mentality of fearfulness. Of seeing the very worst things that surround us—and of focusing on them. I think it might even be part of the mantra of each succeeding generation: “The world is changing. It’s going to hell in a handbasket!”
Words are very powerful. They help to create reality, or at least reality as we perceive it. This week I was listening to an interview with Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology, who is often called “the mother of mindfulness.” Now Dr. Langer’s work suggests that how we think about something, how we look at it, how we even talk about it, can change the way we view it. For instance, she says that actions by a person can be seen in more than one light. “Some people might call me gullible, when what I really am is trusting. Some might see another as rigid when really they are stable. Or what might be seen as impulsive, could be termed spontaneous.” Our view of something can change depending on what words we use to describe it.
So let’s come back to our text for the morning. I was fascinated that Jesus decided to picture what was happening in the “end times” as birthpangs, labor, travail. Why might he have used that word? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that our conception of end times has been skewed because we have focused too much on the moment of labor pain, instead of why there is labor in the first place. And that is to birth a child.
No one in their right mind would want to be in labor with no possibility of something spectacular at the end of it. From the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus talked about a new way of being that he called “the kingdom of God.” That was what he preached, ““The time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:15)
He told stories about what the kingdom would be like—and they often turned everyone’s expectations upside-down. The kingdom was about finally being right with God and right with each other. It was what we should want for our world. It was what we needed to pray, daily—Our Father, who art in heaven, thy kingdom come. This kingdom stuff was revolutionary, and made Jesus very unpopular with religious and political leaders. For the kingdom to come meant change, fundamental change, cataclysmic change.
But how does the kingdom come? How do we get from here to there? It isn’t easy. There are no magic wands, no different flats waiting in the wings to be rolled out on stage. It isn’t something that is waiting for us, in heaven. Jesus’ kingdom becomes, here, on earth, with all of us. Jesus knows it will take upsetting the status quo—for nations, for individuals, even for the earth. And he talks about difficult times to come. But remember the context. Childbirth. The end times are not about the destruction that may have to happen. It is the end of an era but the beginning of something else. A new day. A world walking together in God’s footsteps. The Kingdom.
So what do we do? The next time someone talks of end times, or tries to make us focus on fear, listen to Jesus. Don’t get bogged down in all the negativity. That is not what is important. For the kingdom of God has drawn nigh, it is not far.
That should be our focus,
That is what we work towards,
That is our prayer:
for a new day to dawn,
for the kingdom to come,
in God’s time.
May it be so.
Alleluia. Amen.
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