the beginning of the birth pangs (on Mark 13)

Hi Friends! A little housekeeping and invitation here, this Monday morning:

1. Several of y’all have asked, as this newsletter approaches its first birthday (!), about whether or not your annual paid subscription automatically renews. The answer is yes, and you should get an email from Substack one week before that happens with options for continuing, changing or cancelling. You can find out more about subscription options here.

2. I’m scheming up an Advent Zoom study for four (or maybe five!) weeks in December. Advent is filled with apocalyptic readings, which I have always loved and which feel especially relevant and helpful right now. More details coming soon.

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Did you know that there’s an entire apocalypse toward the end of Mark’s gospel? Generally, scriptural apocalypses are assumed to be contained in the wacko book of Revelation and maybe a pinch or two in the book of Daniel, but we also get a heaping helping of end-times uncovering right here in Mark.

Chapter 13 is referred to as the “little apocalypse.” It’s the last time Jesus speaks in full paragraphs, his farewell discourse to his friends and followers. And here, again, Jesus is trying to warn them about what is barreling toward them: destruction, persecution and a new world order.

(hi. hello. some of us reading this text this week see the same things barreling our way, right now.)

If you remember (and how could you forget, if you’ve been reading along all these weeks in Mark’s gospel), Jesus has spent a LOT of time trying to explain, warn and open his disciples’ eyes to the enormity of what is happening all around them. And if you remember (and how could you forget, when the SAME SCENE plays out again and again and again), the disciples do a pretty awful job at listening and understanding what Jesus is saying.

This time, he’s not talking about only his own arrest, crucifixion and death. He’s talking about a bigger trail of violence and destruction: the temple will be destroyed. His followers will be arrested, tried and hated. False messiahs will be around every corner, chaos will reign, stars will fall from the sky, and the Son of Man will show up at last.

So, Jesus says, you know, you might want to…keep awake. Be alert. PAY ATTENTION.

Mark wrote his gospel thirty to forty years after Jesus died. That’s pretty early, in the scheme of biblical texts. When he wrote, the temple in Jerusalem, the center of religious life for Jewish people, was being utterly trashed and destroyed by the occupying Roman armies.

That would be devastating in any context, but it’s also important to know that this particular iteration of the temple had literally JUST been finished. Herod the Great started building it in 20 BC, and it was such a massive project that it wasn’t completed until 80 years later, in 60 CE - just 7 years before the Romans destroyed it. This temple was enormous. ENORMOUS. And it was torn down to the ground.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus predicts this destruction. You can imagine how silly that prediction would have sounded, as his listeners watched workers figure out how to move gigantic blocks of stone (35 feet long by 18 feet wide by 12 feet high!) into temple towers. THIS building is going to be destroyed? The one we’ve been building for decades? The one made of immovable stones? No way, Jesus. You’re drunk.

Jesus keeps going, though. He says that not only will the temple be destroyed but there will also be all kinds of fake messiahs and leaders popping up, attempting to lead faithful people astray. And there will be wars, and rumors of wars, too.

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,” he says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

Destruction, fake messiahs, wars, earthquakes famines. But don’t worry, Jesus says. Literally: “do not be alarmed.” This is but the beginnings of the birth pangs.

I’ve never given birth, but I have heard a lot of stories about how the beginnings of labor get confused for heartburn, an upset stomach or even stress. It’s not always clear, even to the person about to birth a human being from their own body, that what’s happening is actually…labor. Birth pangs. Especially, I imagine, if its the birthing person’s first time giving birth: we’ve never done this before, so how would we know what birth feels like?

All this apocalypse talk makes me think of this reminder from Prentiss Hemphill, about how chaos is not always bad. (Click through and listen to them.)

prentishemphill

A post shared by @prentishemphill

“A lot of us can have an aversion to chaos or disruption, but sometimes chaos and disruption is exactly what we need in order to open up new possibilities and new futures, to breathe new energy into something.”

I think Jesus, in predicting destruction, persecution and oppression, was also predicting a new future. He saw, in the decline of the old structures, openings for something entirely untried, entirely different, entirely new.

Which is why his instruction is to “keep alert.” Yes, it will be hard and unimaginably hurtful. Yes, we will mourn and lament and grieve. Yes, people will be trying to claim our allegiance and manipulate our sorrow. But also - ALSO - and at the very same time, in the midst of those ruins, something new will be about to arrive, about to be born.

“Keep Awake” by Lauren Wright Pittman

I wonder if we might figure out a way to follow Jesus’ instructions, here and now. In the midst of current and coming destruction, persecution and oppression, can we keep our eyes peeled for signs of new futures? Can we be alert to the ways God is still, as always, doing what God does? Can we learn from others who have given birth before to experience all this chaos not as despair but as the beginning of the birth pangs of something bigger, broader, more just and compassionate that what has been?

I would, at least, like to try.