Hear again the Collect for the Day: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life…”

Week after week, we sit quietly together and hear the holy scriptures of our faith as they are read aloud. We mark them…that is, we pay careful attention and take note, especially of those words or phrases or ideas which seem especially alive in our individual hearing, things that may particularly inspire or challenge or convict us on a given Sunday. We learn what things God seems to care most about; What Jesus taught and how he lived; How God sees us and how we might better see ourselves. 

Finally, having heard, read, marked and learned, we secret these sacred texts away inside our hearts and minds, so that we might inwardly digest them and absorb their wisdom. And, since we believe that holy scripture is holy precisely because it is both inspired and inhabited by the Holy Spirit, we digest and absorb that Spirit as well. This is one important way in which we embrace and hold fast, as the Collect says, to the hope of eternal life…our life with God and in God.

Today marks the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, and just as we sense the changes in the weather, so we also sense the coming of a change of liturgical season. Soon it will be Advent, the season of new beginnings, of waiting for new things to be born - in us, in the Christ of history and in the world around. As Pentecost draws to a close and Advent beckons, our readings remind us that before new things may begin, old things must come to an end. That’s right, folks…we’re talking about change!

The end of the season of Pentecost is a time to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest a special sort of ending. In today’s readings from The Book of Daniel and The Gospel of Mark, and to a certain extent in The Letter to the Hebrews, we encounter what is known as apocalyptic writing. It is an ancient form of writing, found in many religious traditions. Apocalyptic writing is commonly seen as a description of “the end of the world” (a term used by Jesus’ himself) because apocalyptic writings often overlap with eschatological writings, writings about “last things”. Indeed, some of the events foretold in apocalyptic and eschatalogical writings are so harrowing, so cataclysmic, reflecting such cosmic upheaval, that they must seem to be harbingers of the end of the world. 

But, in the Greek, the phrase “end of the world” actually translates “end of the eon.” It is more accurate and helpful to think of apocalyptic and eschatalogical writings as descriptions of “the end of an age.” This has two important and practical effects; first, it clarifies the biblical witness, so that we need not live in active dread of the literal disintegration of the cosmos into chaos…or of a God who would deliberately inflict this upon us. In this regard, it is important to know that apocalyptic writing is extremely symbolic and fantastical. It is not, generally to be taken as literal prophecy, but as an interpretive key to the unfolding of highly mysterious events of great import.

The second practical effect of this undertanding of apocalyptic writing is that those who hear, mark, learn and inwardly digest them may put aside needless anxiety about their annihilation, and concentrate on discerning the signs of coming change, the better to respond to them. Each generation of “the people of the Book” have engaged these scriptures to help them recognize the coming of the end of one age, prepare themselves to enter the next, and gird themselves to endure the transition.

Strip away the coupling with “last things” and the word apocalyptic, standing alone, means “the lifting of the veil.” These apocalyptic writings that we heard, read, marked and are inwardly digesting this morning are a record of God’s revelation of important changes at two critical and remarkably similar points in Israel’s history; The first was the effort of the invading Selucid emperor Antiochus Ephiphanes to impose Greek culture on Israel and put an end to its religious community. When he set up idolatrous statues of Jupiter in the Temple and promoted his profoundly offensive heathen sacrifices in place of Temple worship, he kindled the Maccabean revolt of 167 BC, which eventually expelled the occupiers and restored the theocracy of Israel for one hundred years. It was during this brief and religiously fertile period that Jesus lived, died, and established the Christian community.

The second event, an eerie parallel and culmination of the first, was the physical destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the wholesale massacre of the Jews by the occupying forces of Rome, in reprisal for the revolt of the Zealots. It is this catastrophe, forseen by Jesus, which is unveiled in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel. As a result, Judaism was all but wiped out as a cohesive, centralized religion in Israel, and the fledgeling Christian Church (at that time, still a Jewish sect based in Jerusalem) was freed from that historical association to become a true “world religion”. 

So behind the veil of symbolism and terrifying imagery, behind this sequence of critical events in the external world, we discover evidence of even more critical events in the spiritual history of God’s dealings with humankind. Behind the outward images of particular physical, political, religious and cultural destruction, symbolized by the Temple and anchored in time, is the timeless, universal story of human spiritual evolution and the unfolding of God’s mysterious purposes through an ongoing process of change. 

Change is all around us…personal, political, social and religious. How will this present generation of Christians read, mark and inwardly digest these apocalyptic texts in our own day? Can we avoid the fatalism of those who read them as specific prophecies of specific outcomes already determined, and allowing certain interpretations to dictate their positions on international relations and the stewardship of Creation? Can we, instead, be less inclined to specific conclusions and applications of these texts, and more inclined to a position of faith…trusting that the God who used the outward events human history to open a new frontier of spiritual development can and will continue to do so. Can we, moving toward this new season of Advent, adopt its signature posture of alertness and patient waiting, knowing that momentus change is on the wind, whetting our spiritual fingers to sense its direction, and above all, believing that (as the Bible says) “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to [God’s] purposes”? 

It is ironic that in our Church and so many of the churches today, the greatest passion seems to be found among those who resist what they see as the desecration, some might say the destruction, of the holy Temple of tradition. I submit that while there is always a need for discussion about holding fast to that which is good, much of the resistance is based on fear of the personal consequences of change, the adaptation that must always come, and the spiritual adventure that lies ahead. 

In this changing of the Seasons, I pray that we will find the courage to trust that God is still at work behind the apocalyptic veil, leading us into a future that is very well considered and very holy and very much to our eventual joy?

AMEN