Pentecost XXVI: End Times?

Our gospel pericope [Mk. 13: 1-8] is remarkable for several reasons.  Let us unpack this episode.  First, let us say that the passage touches strongly on apocalyptic, which simply put means end times.  The Bible contains two apocalyptic books, Daniel, which was controversial when chosen rabbinically for the Jewish Canon, and Revelation, which made it into our New Testament by one bishop's vote; Augustine had to break a tie.

Before engaging our Gospel passage, I need to make a couple of preliminary comments.  It is important to understand that Mark's Gospel was likely released in the form we have it, shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70.  Also, the apostles were all Jews; and as such, would have been to the Temple for every pilgrimage feast, and on other occasions, since age twelve.  Now to the text.  When Jesus shows the Temple to his followers, they act as though they have never seen it.  They are dazzled by the grandeur of the buildings.  That sets Jesus up to state unequivocally that no stone will be left upon another. But that too reflects a research error, as  the Western Wall stood, and still does today.  The purpose of the tale is retrojection, to allow Jesus to predict the destruction of the Temple and its spiritual replacement by Himself, for us who are his followers.

But what about end times?  When do you think the world will end?  We know that our sun will go nova in five billion years and destroy what remains of the earth.  But well before that, the earth will have become too hot to sustain life as we know it.  And we can likely back up the calendar even farther, by noting that today's world economy, rooted in greed and exploitation  --  human mismanagement -- is already causing the earth to lose some of its ability to sustain life.  So we don't know when the world will end, but realistically we experience the end when our own personal earthly existence is over, and life is short.

In the meantime, in whatever time you and I may have left, there will continue to be evil -- hunger, murder, natural disasters, sudden illness.  Bang, your world is over, because life hangs by a thread.  However, what is important is that God is with us through everything we face and, as long as time runs for us, God makes new beginnings possible.  And that is our ground of hope.

In the film, the Shawshank Redemption, Red says to Andy, "Hope is a dangerous thing.  It can drive a man insane."  Andy corrects, saying, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of all things, and no good thing ever dies."