In this week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus offers apocalyptic predictions of disaster, but he also makes a promise: Apocalyptic disasters are penultimate, not final. Suffering and disaster are not the end. Something better is coming: God’s kingdom. We are given the promise of new life, life with Jesus that begins now and continues for all eternity. And in the disasters and catastrophes and suffering of this world, Jesus is with us. This is a word of hope!
For the story from Henri Nouwen, see this post on Ministry Matters. I also found helpful Debie Thomas’ essay here on this Gospel lesson and Meta Herrick Carlson’s God Pause devotional for November 12, 2021. This week’s readings are Hebrews 10:11-25 and Mark 13:1-8.
Do any of you have a favorite word? I have a friend whose favorite word is “kerfuffle” meaning a “commotion or fuss.” Another friend’s favorite word is “defenestrate” which is a fancy word for throwing someone or something out of a window.
Another good one I remember from high school English class is “pedantic” meaning to show off one’s learning. I appreciate “pedantic” because it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy—using pedantic in a sentence always seems like showing off your learning.
Anyway, one of my favorite words is “penultimate.” Penultimate means the second to last thing in a series. Not the ultimate thing, the last thing, but the almost ultimate, the not-quite-final.
In the calendar of the church year, this is the penultimate weekend. Next weekend is Christ the King Sunday, the end of the church year. But this weekend, we’re still in ordinary time, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost.
In our Scripture readings appointed for this penultimate Sunday, we find Jesus and his disciples in Jerusalem admiring the architecture. The setting here is Tuesday of Holy Week, two days after Jesus triumphantly entered the capital city on Palm Sunday, and Jesus is spending the morning teaching in the courtyards of the temple.
We heard some of that last week. At the end of chapter 12, he was watching the people come to the temple to give their tithes and offerings, and he pointed out the gift of the poor widow who gave all she had.
Now, as they’re leaving the temple grounds, one of the disciples looks around and says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” These guys are not used to being in a big city. They’ve probably been to Jerusalem before, but still, downtown Jerusalem and especially the temple are impressive.
On our youth mission trip to Chicago a couple summers ago we went to the Sears Tower, and it’s overwhelming standing on the street looking up at it. It’s sort of that feeling.
The temple’s nowhere near that tall, just 10 stories, but remember, 2,000 years ago without modern construction equipment, there’s just not many buildings that get that tall. (source)
And Jesus says, “Yes, that’s pretty impressive. Those buildings are great. And they’re all going to eventually fall apart. Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
That’s hard for them to imagine. First, because the stones they’re looking at are huge. Most of them are between 2 and 5 tons, and the largest stone in the western wall of the temple is estimated to be somewhere between 250 and 300 tons.
So physically, it’s hard to imagine it being knocked over. But more importantly, in the disciples’ Jewish understanding, the temple is God’s house on earth. This is where God the Creator dwells.
The temple had been destroyed once before, and it was almost the end of the world for God’s people. Enemies had captured their nation, and the survivors had been taken away into exile. Miraculously, God had intervened and rescued them from exile, but even hundreds of years later, it was still a traumatic memory. And here’s Jesus saying it’s going to happen again.
A little later, Peter, James, John, and Andrew pull Jesus aside and ask him for some more details. How are we going to know when this is happening?
And Jesus starts describing all sorts of generally terrible things. Wars, earthquakes, famines, basically, life as we know it falling apart.If you keep reading past these eight verses, Jesus describes persecutions, families being torn apart, really bad apocalyptic stuff.
But here’s the thing: Jesus says all this stuff is penultimate. It’s not the end of the story. It’s a little frustrating that our reading ends at verse eight, because unless we keep going, we miss the whole point of what Jesus is saying. This is not just inevitable doom and gloom, but a promise.
Verse 31, I think, is the key. Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
Jesus’ point is not that all this bad stuff is going to happen and everything falls apart and that’s the end; his point is that everything in this world—everything other than God’s promises—is temporary. Everything in this world will fall apart. The biggest buildings, the most powerful nations, political parties, retirement accounts, our very bodies, all of it will wear out, fall apart, be torn down.
So if any of that is where we’re putting our faith, then we’re in trouble. Don’t be led astray into putting your eternal hope into something that’s temporary. Even the temple, this church building, the earthly traditions and institutions where we worship God, even that will eventually pass away. The end is coming.
Sometimes people look at the news and try to match what’s happening to these signs Jesus described. That’s a waste of time, because this kind of thing is always happening. I found some statistic that “of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.” I suspect even that’s optimistic.
There are always natural disasters. Jesus doesn’t explicitly mention pandemics, but every time there’s a pandemic or plague, people wonder if it’s the end of the world.
The point of this story is not to look at disasters and identify the timing end of the world, but to recognize that they are no more than penultimate, that the suffering and disasters of this world are not all that there is.
As God’s people, we are called to have faith, to look for Jesus present in the midst of suffering, in the midst of pandemics and wars. To trust that Jesus’ words have not passed away, that God is faithful to God’s promises. And even in the worst times, we are called as Christians to proclaim hope, to proclaim God’s promises. We know this world cannot save us.
We’ve seen the suffering, the violence, the pain this world offers. We’ve seen how the best intentions of humans go astray.
The only hope we have is for God to get involved. And that’s what God has done. We are called to look for God’s Spirit at work in the world, to name the good that is happening, to name the promise that this is not the end.
It’s different than looking for a silver lining, or saying suffering must be part of God’s plan. Bad things in the world are bad things. Martin Luther said theologians of the cross, people who recognize God’s love revealed in Jesus’ death and resurrection, theologians of the cross should call a thing what it is. Famines are bad. Earthquakes are bad.
But they’re penultimate, not ultimate. And we know what is ultimate.
I want to share with you a story from Henri Nouwen from a book he wrote about dying. He imagines a pair of fraternal twins talking with one another in the womb:
The sister said to the brother, ‘I believe there is life after birth.’
Her brother protested vehemently, ‘No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing to do but cling to the cord that feeds us.’
The little girl insisted, ‘There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light, where there is freedom to move.’
Still she could not convince her twin brother. After some silence, the sister said hesitantly, ‘I have something else to say, and I’m afraid you won’t like that either, but I think there is a Mother.’
Her brother became furious. ‘A Mother!?’ he shouted. ‘What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have. Why do you always want more? This is not such a bad place, after all. We have all we need, so let’s be content.’
The sister was quite overwhelmed by her brother’s response, and for a while didn’t dare say anything more. But she couldn’t let go of her thoughts, and since she had only her twin brother to speak to, she finally said, ‘Don’t you feel those squeezes once in a while? They’re quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘What’s so special about that?’ ‘Well,’ the sister said, ‘I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our Mother face to face. Don’t you think that’s exciting?’
The brother didn’t answer. He was fed up with the foolish talk of his sister and felt that the best thing would be simply to ignore her and hope that she would leave him alone.
The unknown is scary. Transition is painful. Even imagining the loss of what we know is hard. But everything we know is penultimate.
And our hope is in the only one who is ultimate: Jesus Christ our Lord, who has defeated death, and who gives us new life, life that lasts for eternity.
I’ll end by repeating the last three verse from our Hebrews reading, our instructions for how to live in these penultimate times in preparation for eternity.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Amen