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Mark 13:1-8
As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, `I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, 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 birthpangs."
Thank
you for welcoming me to Good Sam this morning, to share with you a message of
difficult times, new beginnings, and hope. I have been here since Wednesday
night and had the opportunity to spend Thursday evening, Friday, and Saturday
with a group of diocesan leaders who are working on addressing racism, racial
justice, and transforming unjust structures in society. We were blessed to be
hosted here at Good Sam for our Anti-Racism Training and Train the Trainer
workshops. Thank you for sharing your wonderful facility with us.
Let
the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be always
acceptable to you, O Lord, redeemer and light of the world. Amen.
Once
again, in today’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples, Peter, James, John, and Andrew have
a private conversation with Jesus, and in their typical, anxious way, they want
to know, “What can we expect? What will happen? Tell us.” Jesus is foretelling
the destruction of the temple, but not just the physical building of the temple
where not one stone will remain upon another stone, where all will be thrown
down. He is also foretelling, again, the soon-to-come testing and persecution
of his followers and his own impending Passion.
I
imagine, if I were a follower of Jesus, who knew him personally like the
disciples did, that I would be anxious, too, to learn of the good news that
Jesus is promising. What is the silver lining among the brooding storm clouds,
if all I’m hearing are stories of the impending disaster and destruction of the
things that are beloved of many, like the temple in Jerusalem, or closer to
home, like the shoreline communities in Staten Island, Long Island, and
Atlantic City, being wiped away and the familiar neighborhood landscape being
changed forever.
In
the verses that follow where we leave off in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says
to the disciples even more alarming and frightening things: “‘As for yourselves, beware; for they
will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you
will stand before governors and kings because of me, . . .’” That’s sort of
like the news of a week and a half ago, when the East Coast learned that another
storm, this time, a snowstorm, was on its way, and through the national media,
we saw photographs of already decimated, not yet cleaned up shore areas covered
in white snow, and we knew that most of those areas still were without power,
which meant no heat, no hot water and no hot food, and in some cases, no clean,
potable water.
Jesus
warns his disciples that they must beware of the promises of false messiahs and
false prophets. Don’t fall for messages from those who will lead you astray,
that will make you think there is an easy or cheap answer to the hard work and
suffering that must follow. It is in this chapter of the Gospel of Mark that
Jesus admonishes his disciples to “Keep alert” to the traps of shortcuts and
false hopes, because only God the Father knows when and how things will turn
out.
I
think that keeping alert and staying awake are about being prepared, not just
physically prepared with all your disaster supplies wrapped in plastic and
stored in high places against the possibility of flooding and lack of power,
but also prepared by being spiritually grounded in Jesus and being relationally
grounded in his Body. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples abandoned one
another and Jesus, falling asleep and leaving the few who remained in the
garden alone to face the soldiers who came to question them and to take Jesus
away.
I
think that we, generations after the disciples’ time, are called to be
relationally grounded in our portion of the Body of Christ, to be present and
alert to one another within our contexts, both local and global, to help one
another weather the war and conflict, the natural disasters, and the
human-created ones, that are our life on earth together, until we are brought
to the realization of the reign of God. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross
was followed by his resurrection, which we celebrate each Sunday with Holy
Communion. Jesus’ promise is that he will come again in glory, which we
remember in the words of the Creeds.
Jesus
is the silver lining in the clouds, the hope that we seek, and we, through our
baptisms, are His proxies to one another. The Anti-Racism curriculum, which I
have designed and keep continuously updated, is grounded in our baptismal vow
“to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of
every human being.” In our Anti-Racism Trainings, our goal is to help open the
doors and windows of our souls so that we can learn some practical tools for
living into “respecting the dignity of every human being.” That is our
preparation to respond to the Gospel call that is Mission Mark 4 of the
Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission, which were adopted by our General
Convention in 2009 and which form the basis for how we approached our budgeting
for the churchwide organization at this past July’s General Convention, and
which calls us “to seek to transform unjust structures of society.”
As
a member of the church’s Executive Council, which is the governing body between
the triennial General Conventions, I have the privilege of chairing the Joint
Standing Committee on Advocacy and Networking for Mission. Our standing
committee has been charged with the responsibility for overseeing the work that
the church will engage to seek to transform unjust structures of society as they
relate to the alleviation of domestic poverty, relying upon the strong network
of Jubilee Ministries and other peace and justice initiatives throughout the
church.
One
of the key truths we know about unjust structures in society is that many of
them are premised on the false notion that some people deserve privilege and
power over other people because of the color of their skin or the country of
their families’ origin or the myriad of other “isms” like homophobism, sexism,
ageism, ableism, classism, etc. Through our baptisms, as members of the Body of
Christ, we promise to be Jesus’ hands and feet to interrupt and to dismantle
unjust structures in society. We are called to pray, study, and act together
wherever we encounter injustice. Our preparation for the work of racial justice
comes from doing the study, having the difficult, awkward, and sometimes
pain-filled conversations, and doing the soul-baring self-reflection, that are
found in Anti-Racism workshops, in community with our fellow church members.
A
critical issue in the unjust structures of the U.S.A. is what is called the
“New Jim Crow.” Author Michelle Alexander, a civil rights attorney, wrote a
book bringing light and attention to this critical topic in early 2011, called
The New Jim Cross: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Did
you know:
·
That
there are more African Americans under correction control today – in prison or
jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the
Civil War began?
·
That
the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than
South Africa did at the height of apartheid?
·
That
in Washington, D.C., three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in
the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison?
The
causes of this are structural, institutionalized into the legal system and
rules and regulations of daily life – into the structures that organize how we
live together as a society. Here is a brief list of the leading causes of the
structural, institutionalized racism in our U.S. criminal justice system:
·
Zero
tolerance policies in schools that rely on policing authorities to handle
student discipline where we used to have in-school authority and intervention;
·
Minimum
mandatory sentences and three strike rules versus judicial sentences;
·
The
fact that 90% of criminal cases are plea-bargained, which leads many innocent
people who are the poorest to plead guilty when they’re not, because they can’t
afford adequate legal representation and they can’t afford the risk of
threatened long-term incarceration versus plea-bargained shorter sentences;
·
Unfairness
in sentencing, with the sentencing for pure cocaine versus crack cocaine
exemplifying the disparate sentencing for those in higher economic circumstances
than those in lower economic circumstances;
·
Private
prisons run by for-profit corporations that negotiate occupancy quotas into
their contracts with states;
·
Employment
barriers that involve check-box discrimination for those convicted of non-violent
misdemeanor offenses;
·
And
high parole fees, fines and non-dischargeable restitution judgments.
Jesus
warned his disciples to beware of false messiahs and false prophets. He told
his disciples to “Keep alert.” I think those two admonitions of Jesus to his
disciples in the Gospel of Mark have particular resonance for us, as I reflect
on what the Anti-Racism workshop participants learned and reflected upon this
weekend here at Good Sam. I invite you as followers of our merciful and
forgiving Lord, Jesus Christ, to beware of the false promises of safe
communities wrought out of the institutionalized, structural racism of a broken
criminal justice system that is badly in need of reform and that is built upon
the crushed hopes and dreams of everyone associated with that system, both the
perpetrators and the victims of crime.
Peter,
James, John, and Andrew asked Jesus in today’s Gospel, “What can we expect?”
and “How do we prepare?” I think we must follow the advice that Jesus gives in
His New Commandment in John 13:34-35, which tells us to love one another as
Jesus loves us, because by this, we will be known as Jesus’ disciples. That is
the standard to which we must aspire and attempt to live into. In the Old
Testament, in Micah 6:8, the instruction is to “Love Justice, Do Mercy, and
Walk Humbly with Our Lord,” and surely, no one has ever lived up to that
instruction as fully and completely as Jesus in his compassion for sinners, his
healing of the sick and the sick-at-heart, and in his obedience to God the
Father even unto death. If we profess to follow Jesus, we can do no less than
to also “Love Justice, Do Mercy, and Walk Humbly with Our Lord.” Amen.
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