Manato Jansen’s Homily from November 17, 2024

Apocalyptic texts don’t always provide us with the most uplifting
images. And this week we’ve got two! Our Hebrews lectionary text
finds itself bookended by Daniel 12 and Mark 13. It’s an apocalypse
sandwich that is difficult to stomach…

Today’s gospel text is often interpreted solely as a prophetic
voice of what is about to happen to our world today. However, biblical
scholar Joy J. Moore reminds us that Mark 13 was an account of what
has happened to the first century readers and early church. A couple
decades after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the Romans stormed
the city of Jerusalem and decimated the temple, leaving no stone
upon another. And it’s not just this Mark 13 text – the texts of the New
Testament were all composed under the Roman occupation of
Palestine and the Mediterranean. However, with the loudness of
modern-day apocalyptic interpretations of this text, perhaps even
heard in churches that you grew up in, and with some resonance to
what we witness in our world today, it is hard not to feel like we are
living in what Jesus described and says lies ahead: “When you hear of
wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed… the end is still to
come… nation will rise against nation, and empire against empire.”

We don’t have to look far. Today, the impact of empires like the
United States on peoples less powerful in the world is immense. We
enjoy peace here at the expense of exploiting outside of our borders
and hoarding wealth within. Nations like ours are rising against
nations, hungry for dominance on the world stage, often at the
expense of human rights and climate justice and rescue. So, despite
the fact that this gospel text is not a prophecy about an end to our
world now, this text is valuable to us, because in that historical context
of chaos and empire and destruction on the horizon we witness
Jesus’s reaction to the disciples who look at their cities and temples in
awe and seek the answers to the signs and time of the end of their
world. The way Jesus answers the disciples here is worth
contemplating.

Two moments in the story: First, in response to the disciple
impressed by the strong, sturdy foundations of the holy temple, Jesus
says, “all will be thrown down.” Second, when the now-anxious
disciples whisper to Jesus in private, “tell us when, and what will be
the sign of this?” Jesus does not answer their questions. He says
instead, “Beware that no one leads you astray.” In a world where we
are currently witnessing parallels to the Mark 13 account – famines,
earthquakes, genocides and the decimation of our human and
more-than-human kin, what would Christ in our presence mean if he
said to us now, “beware that no one leads you astray”? How do we
keep watch?

In my own recent experiences of witnessing and navigating
social divisions, climate catastrophes, misogyny, racism, human rights
abuses around the world on a scale never before documented in such
detail, political aggression toward a weakening democracy, economic
anxiety and suffering in our communities, and the shocking power of
greed that ignites and feeds and controls these horrors, I’ve noticed
that in my grief, the most tempting force that invites me astray is the
comforts of easy, individualistic, complacent, Christianity. A
Christianity practiced with closed fists. Small. A safe kind of living that
might give us the perception of peace and quiet. Sophia Magdalena
Scholl, a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, who was
active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi
Germany, warns us about turning to this kind of smallness: “The real
damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest
[ones] who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their
little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with
no sides and no causes… Those who don’t like to make waves — or
enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are
only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small.”

I believe our Hebrews text today warns us to steer clear from
this kind of complacency and inactive apathy that Sophia warns us
about, prior to her execution. Hebrews 10 resists inaction through its
assertive invitation to commitment to community. Hebrews 10
encourages us to gather, for the love of God, like this. Hebrews 10
invites us, “people of God, since the blood of Jesus makes us
confident to enter the holy place by the new and living path opened for
us through the veil… let us enter it filled with faith and with sincerity in
our hearts… Let us always think how we can stimulate each other to
love and good works. Don’t stay away from the meetings of the
community, as some do, but encourage one another; and do this all
the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

I know we are holding a lot here together this season. In this
room, we may be worried, angry, numb about the future and our
society, grieving the precarity of our rights and sense of belonging as
queer, BIPOC, trans, low income, as women, immigrants. All on top of
the other things in our personal lives that are heavy: disease,
interpersonal challenges, mental health, death of our loved ones. We
hold the family of our earth, and its humans and more. And holding the
weight of all of this tempts us to retreat into smallness.
But beloved, “Don’t stay away from the meetings of the
community.”

The book of Hebrews was addressing Jewish Christ-followers of
the early church who faced persecution and ostracization. Like the
gospel of Mark, this text was written prior to the fall of Jerusalem and
its temple. And as the text refers to the “day drawing near,” we can
only imagine the experience of worry and oppression as the Roman
Empire’s presence and power continued to encroach on their lives.
But amid the weight of this oppression and grief and chaos, the text
reminds us that we can approach the throne with full assurance
because of Christ. Thus, let us have confidence, and provoke our
fellow Christ-followers in this day, too, to love in good deeds, and to
meet together as a practice of resistance, to be enlivened, energized
in unity, and to not give up. When Christ says “beware that you are not
led astray,” perhaps it’s not just the powerful people of our country and
world that we should be wary of. Perhaps it’s all that which makes us
retreat, lose hope, and become comfortably small, all that which takes
advantage of chaos and makes it worse.

It is a weighty task sometimes to pull ourselves out of that
despair, and I think that’s why we need our Hebrews 10 invitation. We
need to be reminded that we are not alone, but invited, perfectly, into
the House of God in faith and hope. Because of love, rooted in love,
we are called to stimulate one another in this holy space that we
gather up. In times like these for our world, Christ calls us to beware of
that which snuffs out his radical call of love. In times like these for our
world, the written letters to the early church send their stories of
reassurance, invitation, and commitment amid all that feels too large
to hold.

So, we gather as Hebrews calls us, to rehearse, to be
empowered, out of our stalling. But we may still wonder how we even
begin to hope in that which we can’t always see. When our optimism
fails us, how do we practice a deeper hope that is more wild than
optimism? Our gospel text can give us some wisdom here too: let us
turn to the last words of our gospel reading today: Jesus says: “This is
but the beginning of our labor pains.”

Labor pains. What if we think of the journey of deep hope, rooted
in love, as labor pains? It’s something we would rather not experience.
It’s wild, scary, uncertain, painful and overwhelming at times, we’re not
sure exactly how things will turn out. It is personal. The sensations are
intimate. It is relational.

Labor pains. They can fill a room with groaning and screaming,
and it’s not quiet. But rooted in love, it’s the hope for what could be
beyond the labor that pushes us through. The sacredness of birth. Of
new life. It is worth pushing through. Reverend Cody J. Sanders talks
about the need for the church to reimagine hope as feral: not
domesticated to the structures and expectations of our human
systems. Hope that is not “captive to the ideologies of our present
empires.” So, Jesus does not leave us only with a warning. A healing
world, a more just world, is worth our wild, untamed labor of hope.
And, thank God, we are called to do it in community.

Beloved, “Don’t stay away from the meetings of the community…but encourage one another.”