Birth pangs - 13 November 2015

When you hear of wars and rumours 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 birth pangs. [Mark 13:7-8]

Jesus has a premonition of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.  As the disciples are admiring the great stones and the beautiful building, Jesus senses what lies ahead.  In the year 70 CE, Titus and his Roman legionaries raped and pillaged Jerusalem with hideous effect and suffering.  Jesus gives his disciples a kind of apocalyptic check-list -- you’ll find it in Matthew and Luke as well as here in Mark – and it still applies in our day, 20 centuries later.  Wars?  Yes.  Rumours of wars?  Yes.  Earthquakes?  Yes.  Famines?  Yes.  False teachers?  Yes.  Pestilences?  Yes.  Persecution of religious believers?  Yes.  Betrayal within families?  Yes. 

Then he says two things we might find puzzling.  He says all this is just birth pangs – it is the beginning, not the end.  The analogy of birth suggests that the end might be something good.  Secondly he says:  Don’t be afraid.   There are different Greek verbs in use here.  The one Mark chooses actually means, Don’t panic.  It is a time for steadiness and clarity.  Luke has another word which is more like don’t be dismayed, don’t spiral into despair.  But again we are reminded that Jesus, right through his teaching, frequently says, Don’t be afraid… why are you fearful…?  Living in fear is problematic for Christian discipleship.  Love, writes John, casts out fear.  To have become a person of faith and love is to be taking leave of our fear of life and death. 

Nevertheless, anyone in a sane mental state would be alarmed at what the Romans inflicted on people, or what other tyrants have done through history, or what is happening in our day in Syria, in Libya, in parts of Burma, Burundi, Nigeria…  In our recent memory, in Ireland, in Israel and Palestine, in Iraq, in the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea…  Abominations and atrocities.  We now have whole peoples on the move across Europe, where sometimes they are welcome and sometimes certainly not, rejected and humiliated.  Ancient Christian churches are being cruelly persecuted and hounded.  The never-ending battle against famine and disease has become desperate. 

Don’t be afraid, says Jesus.  I think we are allowed to be slightly concerned.  Perhaps it’s more that it is no longer fear for ourselves.  It is seeing others suffer, especially children… what this evokes, I find, is not so much fear as rage.  Women being stoned to death in Afghanistan, surrounded by sanctimonious and ignorant men…  Convicts in American prisons waiting years to have their sentences of death confirmed, and being clinically drugged to death so that some victim’s family can feel something called closure…  It is barbarism and there is as much of it as in the days of Titus.  Many forms of racism including the mindless poison of anti-semitism are on the rise again. 

As Jesus said once in another place, It shall not be so among you.  We do not live that way.  We choose otherwise.  We choose Christlikeness, and the strength of the Holy Spirit of Christ.  This is our life, and this is our prayer in stillness and silence.