Claiming a Front-Row Seat

The Rev. Sandy Selby – St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron

Proper 28, Year B – November 19, 2006

Texts: Daniel 12:1-4a (5-13) and Mark 13:14-23

 

            About three weeks ago I was in Jerusalem. As the Bible suggests, it is a city built on a hill—actually, several hills. The highest of them all is the Mount of Olives, which reaches more than 200 feet higher than the Temple Mount, which contains the remains of the Temple, the holiest place for Jews. The Mount of Olives is a long mountain, extending for about a mile into the distance.

            When you stand in the Old City and look out at the Mount of Olives, you see several churches that have been built around the site of the Garden of Gethsemane.    The other thing you see on the Mount of Olives are graves—row upon row of them, looking out over Jerusalem. One of the reasons people are buried on the Mount of Olives is that burial inside the Old City is forbidden. But more than that, people are buried there because of the belief that in the end times, at the general resurrection of the dead, the dead will rise to gaze on the Holy of Holies in the Temple. When that happens, the people who are buried on the Mount of Olives will have a front-row seat.

 

            Early Old Testament writings do not express a belief in life after death. It is really not until the book of Daniel—written in the 2nd century before Christ—that we see a reference to the resurrection of the dead.

Daniel is part of apocalyptic literature, from the word for “revelation.” Apocalyptic books like Daniel in the Hebrew Bible and Revelation in the New Testament focus on the end times, the last days, featuring a cosmic transformation and the judgment of the dead. This worldview maintains that the present age is controlled by forces of evil, but those forces will be destroyed at the end of time, when God intervenes in history to bring in God’s kingdom, an event thought to be imminent.

 

Not surprisingly, such literature is written during times of crisis as a way to encourage people in danger by depicting retribution for the oppressor and hope for the oppressed.

            In the case of the book of Daniel, the oppressor is the Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled over the Holy Land in the 2nd century before Christ and tried to suppress Jewish worship and assimilate Jews into Greek society.

 

            Today’s reading, from the last chapter of Daniel, depicts the deliverance of the people by the archangel Michael. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” The prophetic promise of future justice encourages the beleaguered Jewish people to remain faithful in the face of affliction.

            The apocalyptic worldview extended into the time of Jesus and is seen in several places in the New Testament, including today’s passage from Mark. There, Jesus appears to be speaking most directly about the destruction of Jerusalem. And as in Daniel, he encourages faithfulness at a time when the world seems to be falling apart.

 

            Both writings suggest that the righteous will survive the ordeal and find a place with God—a message that consoles those who watch as their worlds fall apart.

            These works are a response to difficult questions: Does our suffering mean that evil forces have the last word? Has God forgotten us? Have the righteous died in vain?

 

            Why are we reading these lessons now? Because we are winding down the church year. Next Sunday, the feast of Christ the King, is the last Sunday in our liturgical year. After that we move to Advent. The readings direct us to end times, the close of history, and the coming of the Messiah.

            The readings are difficult to hear, difficult to interpret in our own times. Jesus says, “…in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be.”

            We must keep in mind that Jesus appears to have believed that the end of the world was imminently at hand. Paul’s writings anticipate the same thing.

           

            For many people, the events of our own times suggest to them that the end of the world will soon be at hand. They interpret the apocalyptic writings of the Bible—the popular Left Behind series of books and movies is an example. Apocalypticism always flourishes when people feel that their lives are out of control; it feeds on fear. It comforts people by depicting a very specific vision of the world in which things are black and white, and in which the righteous will triumph and the evil will suffer the pangs of hell.

            There is no question that we live in frightening times, and in many ways our world does seem out of control, with terrorism and violence becoming a fact of life. We may not be able to connect easily with the readings from Daniel and Mark, but the types of questions they address are questions that remain today: Does our suffering mean that evil forces have the last word? Has God forgotten us? Have the righteous died in vain?

 

Daniel and Jesus tell us two important things about how to handle times of trial.

First, remain faithful. Jesus warns his disciples about false messiahs and false prophets that will produce signs to lead the elect astray. In our own time, we can be led astray by people and messages that would take us away from God’s path. We do well to keep our eye on the cross, to be faithful.

            Scripture tells us to stay the course—not to return violence with violence, not to react to fear with responses that are based on fear. This is a time for fundamentals, not fundamentalism.  Pray, study, and listen for the word of God within and around you. Be in Christian community. Be faithful.

 

            Second, do not abandon hope. Vaclav Havel says, “Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope is…an ability to work for something because it is good.”

 

            Be faithful, and go forth boldly to work for that which is good. That is what we are called to do, as we await the coming again of our Lord.