Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
“Protest Songs”
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (1 Samuel 2:1-10 / NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Mark 13:1-8 / NRSVUE)
If it feels like the apocalypse is upon us today, that’s because it is. And I don’t say this because the present situation in our country might make it seem like the end of the world is imminent; I say this because the passage I just read — these words of Jesus foretelling the destruction of the temple and the end of days — comes from the section of Mark’s Gospel that is commonly known as the “Little Apocalypse.” A version of this story appears in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well.
The term “apocalypse” tends to get thrown around a lot — especially during tumultuous times like the ones in which we find ourselves now — so it’s worth taking some time to consider what it actually means.
In our culture we typically think of the word as a reference to the violent end of the world, but in the biblical context it’s used to describe a specific literary genre. The word itself comes from the Greek word apokálypsis that appears in the opening line of the book of Revelation, where it is generally translated into English as “revelation.”
Texts of this type have certain things in common: someone having a vision (or revelation) with the help of some kind of otherworldly mediator, a journey to a non-earthly realm, the presence of supernatural entities like angels and demons, an emphasis on cosmic rather than human concerns, and a transcendent God who brings judgement, to name a few.
In light of these criteria, there are, technically speaking, only two examples of apocalypses in the entire Bible: Revelation in the New Testament and parts of the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Despite the scarcity of this type of text in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, apocalypses were abundant and really popular throughout the ancient Near East for a long time — especially during the period from roughly 250 BCE to 250 CE, which includes the time of both Jesus’s life here on earth and the writing of the Gospels. My point being, the writers of the Gospels would have understood the form of apocalypse in the same way that we today understand the basic framework of a horror movie or a sitcom.
No one can say with certainty why apocalypses were so prevalent during that five hundred year time span, but their popularity coincides pretty well with a series of big social crises that left a whole lot of people feeling powerless throughout that particular region. In the case of Daniel, it was the persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid Empire; while in the case of Revelation, it was the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, which took place right around the same time that the Gospel writers were doing their thing.
And so another essential common feature of apocalyptic literature is the idea that oppressors will be judged harshly (by God) while the oppressed will be vindicated and uplifted (also by God). Amidst a bunch of trials and tribulations, the existing world order will be destroyed and a new one will take shape — one in which the oppressors and the oppressed each get what’s coming to them. You can see why this kind of story would be appealing to people who are living on and beyond society’s margins; think of like a protest song with no music.
Today’s story from Mark’s Gospel might not be an apocalypse in the truest sense of that term (I mean, there’s no weird visions or supernatural stuff to found here) but it certainly has some of the other apocalyptic elements (that whole judgement and end of the world thing) — hence the name: “Little Apocalypse.”
As it begins, Jesus is leaving the Temple, right after witnessing the poor widow we heard about last week giving her last two pennies to the treasury with the hope that her donation will be used to God’s work in the world. But the scribes (or at least some of them, anyway) are pocketing gifts such as hers for themselves. Jesus, of course, isn’t too happy about this situation.
When Jesus then exits with his disciples, the latter gaze with reverential awe at the enormity of the Temple complex and all it represents, “Look, Teacher, what large buildings!” And what is Jesus’s response? “Not one stone of it will be left upon another; the whole system is comin’ down” (which, for the record, ended up being mostly true).
They then retreat to the Mount of Olives with the Temple off in the distance to continue their conversation, and the disciples proceed to ask Jesus a pair of rather obvious questions: When is all of this going to take place and what’s actually going to happen?”
And while Jesus’s non-answer to the first question is completely unsatisfying, he does go on to describe all of the things that are to come: wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines — all of which sounds great, doesn’t it? Then again, maybe how it sounds depends upon one’s perspective.
Was it going to be awful? Yes, for a while, but this wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning; you see, in apocalypses there’s always light at the end of the tunnel for those who are living in darkness right now. It’s kinda like the Steve Miller Band sang back in the 1970s: “You know you got to go through hell before you get to heaven.” And besides, for many people in Jesus’s time, things were already pretty hellish, so what did they have to lose?
I mean, if you happened to be a Jew surviving under the thumb of imperial Rome — enduring poverty and religious persecution, and paying exorbitant taxes to support your own oppression — the overturning of the existing order (even a violent overturning) might not have seemed like such a bad thing. Though, if you were a Roman you likely felt differently.
And if you happened to be a poor widow giving last two cents to the temple treasury to help people in need — people like yourself — while you watch the temple authorities who took your money buying nice things for themselves and strutting around like they owned the place (because they did own the place), the collapse of the entire temple system might have seemed like a pretty good outcome. Though, if you were a scribe you probably felt differently.
As so as the framework of apocalypse has made it’s way down through the centuries, it appears (at least to me) that something kind of strange happened with it.
In a purely worldly sense, one was way better off being aligned with the oppressor and not with the oppressed, which seems like kind of an obvious thing to say. But in a cosmic sense, the opposite was true — like I said earlier, an important feature of apocalypses is that everyone eventually gets what they deserve.
So it should come as no surprise to anyone, then, since this construct is part of the dominant culture’s shared history and tradition, that society’s oppressors often go to great lengths to convince themselves and others that they are, in fact, the oppressed — because this enables them to perpetuate systems that enforce their dominion over others, on the one hand while occupying the moral high ground, on the other. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some questions for those people.
Does being asked to think about your role in the oppression of others really oppress you?
Does the presence of people who don’t look like you or talk like you or love like you really oppress you?
Does the thought of everyone having sovereignty over their own body really oppress you.
Does the idea of others reading thoughts and opinions that you don’t find acceptable really oppress you?
Does someone living into their identity, whatever that may be, really oppress you?
If we’re going to look to our religious history and traditions to support the things we say and do, then let’s go all in, shall we? Let’s read this apocalyptic idea of everyone eventually getting what they deserve in the broader context of what both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament tell us about how God might see things.
“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9)
“Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.” (Deuteronomy 24:14)
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
“When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12)
But reading these verses, which seem to convey pretty clearly whom God sees as oppressor and oppressed, and then witnessing how some people who claim to be believers in God and followers of Jesus choose to speak about and act towards the foreigner, the poor, the worker, the disabled, the non-male, makes me think of an absurd exchange from the movie entitled A Fish Called Wanda.
In it, the character of Otto, who purports to be well-versed in philosophy and other such things is summarily dressed down by his partner-in-crime, Wanda, for his complete lack of understanding of what he claims to have read; she says to him, “Now let me correct you on a couple things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself!” And the London Underground is not a political movement!” Similarly, these days I often see how some “people of faith” are behaving and wonder whether we’re even looking at the same Bible.
Some might hear all of this and say I’m misinterpreting scripture, that I’m infusing it with my own “woke” perspective. Yeah, okay.
All I can really say in response to that is this: Let’s take it up with Jesus the next time we see him.