Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
RCL - Proper 28 B - Sunday 15 November 2009
Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
Wheatfield - A Confrontation, Battery Park landfill(c) 1982 Agnes Denes --- Greenmuseum.org
In September 2001, our monastery in Grahamstown was having some retreat days. My office was in a little hut next to the Prior’s little hut. Usually, we were very careful about the silence so I was a bit taken aback when I heard Timothy exclaim, “Oh, dear God.” I ran next door and he pointed to an email from our Brother Carl Sword who lives at 33rd and 3rd Avenue in the City. Carl had written something like, “We’re under attack - planes are flying into the Towers.”
Forgetting the retreat we ran up the hill to where we hide the TV and turned it on and we saw what was happening. For ages we sat stunned and unbelieving. People telephoned; emails came flooding in; the word got to us that no one we knew had been killed. People spoke to us with love and sorrow but the message was almost always – you can’t really be surprised, can you?
The world gathered around the United States in those days waiting to see how this nation would react… with courage? Yes; with compassion? – for our own, yes; with determination to go ahead? – Yes. But we have, in my opinion at least, let the damage go to the heart of the nation. Fear rules us, mistrust directs us and we look for the enemy under every bed.
We’re not alone – the whole world seems to be nuts. Airport security seems disproportionate – no terrorist worth his salt would fly economy – and yet first class passengers walk on the plane unscathed. Have a dark skin and call yourself Jamal and see how easy it is to move around. Or be a woman in a veil and try to ignore the suspicious stares.
The thing is that this is nothing new. It was new for us – but nations and people since recorded history have faced destruction and sorrow and have had to live through it as they were able. Some well, some not so well.
Empires come and go. Economies thrive and collapse. Fortunes are won and lost - it’s the nature of things. History shows that power – that kind of power - never lasts. But somehow we are always taken by surprise.
The Church is no different. Nothing new is going on. We still have people lined up with daggers drawn over who can be in and who has to be out; who can be ordained and who not – and for what reason. My tradition can beat up your tradition; my communion is closer to purity than yours. Our bread is more really Christ than yours.
What a sad state of affairs. It’s enough to make you give up hope.
And that’s a lead line if I ever heard one!
Because that’s exactly what this passage – the little apocalypse – is about. Temples collapsing; traditions coming a cropper; wars, treachery; destruction; things falling down and, as usual, on the heads of the poor.
While the rest of us switch to First Class and walk on unscathed.
The disciples were worried – they had taken refuge in what they saw. Things were beginning to look pretty shaky. “Look at the size of these stones”, they say – “our buildings are bigger than theirs”. And Jesus says to them – don’t count on these things. They aren’t what will keep us in life.
And then he instructs – and we never seem to listen, do we? He tells them that terrible things always lie ahead but they are not to follow the path that frightened, arrogant, murderous people would lead them down.
Jesus points them to a way that doesn’t cave in and says to them, “Follow me!” He leads them into a darkness that can never win. He leads them – and us if we will go – through the darkness of the cross to light. He leads us past armies and nations and doomsayers and privilege to where hope lies. And then he stays with us. And that’s where our hope lies. For hope is relying on the end that will surely come and that has already started. Hope is what marks us as Christ’s. Hope is staring at destruction and knowing that resurrection is constant; and that the future is rooted in that resurrection.
If we are faithful to Jesus, we will see destruction; we will suffer; we will grieve the misery of God’s people. But if we follow Jesus we will do more. We will look on all that misery and defy it; we will move into life and hope and compassion. We will see not the armies of destruction but the face of Christ. If we look beyond our safety we will know Christ in the faces of Afghanistan, of the Holy Innocents of the squatter camps of South Africa; the faces of the crack houses just down the road. We will smell the fragrance of God’s love in the unwashed women of the streets or the children who sweat with the fear of the night to come. We will walk into the dark and we will shine.
We’re going to hear more doom and gloom in the next six weeks... Advent’s coming. We can hear only that or we can down the distance we can hear a song – a song that swells in the darkness:
Glory!
Glory to poor farmers,
Glory to the people huddled in stables;
Glory to downtrodden people in occupied territories;
Glory to families fleeing the Herod of their days;
Glory to teenaged soldiers mutilated by war.
Glory to young single mothers.
Glory to men unmanned by life.
Glory to widows and orphans.
Glory to God!
Amen.
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