Things Fall Apart

Proper 28, Year B

Mark 13:1-8

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

from W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Are we ready for some apocalypse? Ordinarily, I do not gravitate towards texts like Mark 13; they raise too many unnecessary speculations and we can easily get caught up in their strangeness—the bizarre pronouncements and shocking imagery—and dismiss them outright. But, let’s just say, we are not living in ordinary times. A global pandemic, a racial reckoning, a continuous cycle of weather-related catastrophes, and a Presidential election which has left many of us shocked, angry, confused, and grieving…right now, apocalypse just makes sense. Things are falling apart. We’re living in the unraveling. We’re experiencing, perhaps more than ever, that the “centers” of our American political and religious institutions are not “holding,” if they ever have (they never have for the poor). We’re fearful for the future because a small-minded bully, who mocks the weakest among us, will sit in the Oval Office to carry out his vindictive agenda. What will be the fallout of this for us, our vulnerable neighbors, our planet? Will there ever be enough “guardrails” for a man this thin-skinned and volatile? More than once in this recent election season, we were told that if there’s going to be accountability for those who would hold the reins of power, if democracy is to continue, it’s not Congress that will save us, or the court system; it’s up to us—the electorate—to make our voices heard. And alas, the people have spoken—including a large swath of the American Church, who joined the flag to the Cross, and made absolutely clear, the Church’s idolatry of power. It’s no wonder we feel numb. We can’t unsee what we now see about ourselves.

What now? What does faithfulness to Jesus require of us?

Mark 13 is a call for the disciples of Jesus to brace ourselves, settle in, and live into this present moment. In short, to “get a grip.” The unraveling is necessary! God is birthing something new. Did we really imagine that the new creation would slip in quietly among the old one? Or that the powers of this age would go down without a fight? Suffering and patience will be required in our discipleship. Taking the long view. Allowing judgment to fall upon our most precious and long-held delusions about “Nation” and “Church” is needed, and in that strange way of Jesus, is part of how His disciples learn to walk by a deeper, truer hope.

This text in Mark 13 begins with one of Jesus’ disciples pointing to the Temple in Jerusalem, obviously very taken with its massive size and beauty. Jesus is not impressed, but rather pronounces that this powerful structure will be crushed by the weight of its own corruption. It’s coming down! If this disciple had been paying any attention at all to Jesus, he would’ve known Jesus’ gut-wrenching distress about the Temple and what it had become. Not a “house of prayer for all nations”, but a place of resistance to God’s desire for a truly reconciled people. No insiders and outsiders, but a people gathered up and gathered together into God’s ever-widening mercy. Beginning in Mark 11, Jesus has driven away the money-changers and cursed a fig tree till it withers to its roots. He’s told a parable about a vineyard owner who keeps meeting with resistance from his angry and violent tenants, and confronted the Temple scribes, who are long-winded in their prayers, but who short-change and exploit the poor. And then, right on cue, Jesus witnesses a poor widow putting in her last two cents into the Temple treasury, forsaking her own livelihood to support a religious system that has no regard for her. For Jesus, it’s the last straw! Judgment must fall on the Temple. Like the withered fig tree, it is already dead.

Ched Myers writes in Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus: “Faith entails political imagination (emphasis mine), the ability to envision a world that is not dominated by the powers.” Friends, what would it mean for us to allow our own delusions about being “the Church” to collapse, to let judgment come upon every false thing in which we’ve placed confidence? What beautiful, new life might grow in its place? As our political and religious centers give way, might this give space for fresh expressions of faithfulness to Christ?

May it be so. For these uncertain days ahead, may it be so. Yes, things fall apart, but Christ our Center still holds and His dream of a truly reconciled people remains firm. May we give ourselves to the good work of imagination and patient, hopeful trust.