A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

26^th Sunday After Pentecost/B • November 17,2024

Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8

Ring around the Rosie, Pocket full of Posies

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

Did you sing this when you were a kid? It’s an old, old folk song. It makes me think of happy children dancing in a circle and giggling when they fall down. Some historians today believe it may have originated during the dark tide of the bubonic plague. The “rosie” are the marks of the  plague, the ashes are the thousands of corpses burned. Some estimates are that about half the people in Europe, 50 million, died in a period of seven years. Whole villages were depopulated and it took Europe over a hundred years to begin to recover. I know this is a dark way to start a sermon, but today our gospel reading asks us to look at what happens when things fall down.

The poet William Butler Yeats asked this question in a piece called “Second Coming”. The opening stanza reads, 

What happens when things fall apart? Why does God let things fall apart?

Surely the place to begin is with our central prayer, which begins, “Our Father”. Hosea compares God’s love to a mother’s love. Now every parent knows there is a fundamental dilemma in raising a child: there is what’s right, what protects the child, yet there’s a need to give that child the freedom to grow and make mistakes and learn from them. I’ve seen this in my own parenting. When my older kids were young, we lived in a little village in northern Michigan. The kids could go off on their own and mostly did. I didn’t worry too much. Then there was the day I got a call: Jason is lying down in the middle of Route 22. Now our village had lots of tourists in the summer, so we all looked forward to the time in the fall when they left and things were quiet. My son and two of his friends decided to celebrate this moment by lying down in the middle of the main street through town. It was just one of those dumb boy things. Of course, there was a long discussion about why we never, ever lay down in the street, a discussion that began with, “What were you thinking? You could have been killed!”. As I recall, his response was essentially, “Well, we didn’t think of that.” As far as I know, he never did again. Should I have kept him home?

Throughout the story of God’s people, there are dumb, lying in the street moments. When Israel decides it wants a king, for example, we hear in 1 Samuel 8 about all the terrible things a king will do. Nevertheless, Israel insists on a king and God, sighing I imagine, gives them one. Much of the rest of the Hebrew scripture is devoted to the terrible things that result. By Jesus’ time, Palestine is a Roman protectorate, with a puppet king. Jerusalem is a big city up on its mountain. Over the previous century, the temple has been rebuilt into a huge structure. The rebuilding began in 20 BC and took about 40 years; it was still going on when Jesus and his disciples were there. Now these are guys from the rural north and I can imagine their reaction to seeing this temple. Mark says, “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” [Mark 13:1} It makes me think of the first time my mom took me to New York City and I saw the Empire State Building. Maybe you’ve had the same experience: going to the big city, seeing the big buildings.

The temple was meant to be a lighthouse of God’s love and justice, but it had become instead a headquarters for the rich to oppress the poor. We see that weaving through the sayings of Jesus over and over again. So when the disciples are marveling at the towers and the stones, Jesus replies that it’s all going to fall down. In reply to their comment, he says, “13:2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” [Mark 13:2] He goes on to say there are going to be terrible wars and conflicts. Everything is going to fall apart. Then he goes on to say something else: all of this destruction is not the end—it’s birth pangs, it’s the beginning of something new.  

What does Jesus finally say we should do when these things happen, when things fall apart? Keep awake. Stay alert. That message comes through parables, that message is explicit in this story. The verses we read this morning are part of a larger section which includes predictions of persecutions and concludes with a parable about the need for watchfulness. The final word: “Keep awake” [Mark 13:37b]

What this means is first, staying alert, watching for new ways to share God’s Word, looking for ways to invite others into Christ’s church. . I don’t know what your experience here was when the COVID 19 Pandemic forced closing of churches. I know that where I was, we didn’t handle it well. We hadn’t kept up with the technology to share our services with over the internet, we didn’t have active social media accounts, we didn’t have the capability to stream anything. The technology was there; others used it for various purposes, but we were a very traditional church. It reminds me of an incident in a Massachusetts church in the late 1700s. Then, the new technology was Franklin stoves: heat right there during worship. I remember reading the minutes of Annual Meetings at a church in Chelmsford, MA, where year after year this was brought up, year after year voted down until finally it passed, at which point a Deacon who had opposed it said that he was sure God would find a warm place in hell for people who needed heat in church.

In Albany, we were much the same about steaming and online ministry for a long time. We missed the boat. We weren’t alert to the possibilities; I think we often still aren’t. We miss the chance to invite others, share with others. Some of you know that I post my sermons online weekly. What you may not know is that every week on average those sermons are viewed about 30 times. That’s close to double the people who hear them here in this lovely place. What would it mean if we made a larger commitment to a digital ministry, to reaching out? We don’t know.

Keeping awake means keeping hope alive. Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Invention of Wings, tells two parallel stories. One is a biography of the Grimké sisters, Sarah and Abigail. Raised in the early 19^th century in the slave supported culture of Charleston, South Carolina, they became leading advocates of the abolition of slavery and later of full equality for women. The other story is fictional but just as important; it’s the story of Handful, an enslaved girl given to Sarah Grimké at an early age, who grows up with a mother determined to seek freedom. For more than 20 years, she and her mother pursue various strategies until finally she escapes north, to Pensylvania and freedom. Along the way, she and her mother are beaten, worked, defiled but they never give up hope. We honor our history here in many ways yet how often do we talk about our hope? Shouldn’t we be as focused on where we are going as where we’ve been? No one would walk a path facing backwards; we know enough not to do that. But do we know enough to turn around and look forward to where God wants us to go as a church?

Keeping awake means keeping connection. We often miss how encouraging our presence here is to each other. I’ve been here just about six months; already I can look around and see when someone is missing. I’m sure you can do it much better. Over the years, I’ve heard more excuses for why someone doesn’t go to church than I can count. They mostly come down to, “I didn’t want to go.” We seldom think: maybe I should go because someone else needs me there. One of the best things about this church is the way we honor connections. I never visit someone in the hospital or a nursing home that they don’t have cards sent from other members. I never visit without hearing how important those cards and our prayers are to them. I know in my own experience how much it lightened me when I was sick and received those cards.

 Keeping alert, keeping focused on the future, keeping connection, these are all ways of keeping awake. They are the way Jesus tells us to respond when things fall apart. He says these are birth pangs. Now, I think it’s a bit dicey for a man to talk about birthing. There are some things I’m totally clueless about: why someone gets up one day and decides to change her hair color, how to put on eyeliner, how to clean so it satisfies Jacquelyn. Birthing is one of those things. So this week, I’ve been asking friends who’ve had babies about their experience. I got some truly answers, but the best of all was close to home. When I asked Jacquelyn, she told me about birthing May, how there was a young woman in the next room screaming, how it was busy in the ward. I asked her if it hurt and she said, well, yes of course but you don’t remember the hurt, you remember the delight.

I think that says what Jesus hopes. Yes, things do fall apart; yes, things are going to fall apart. Don’t get attached to what looks impressive and big in this world. It’s going to fall because only God endure forever. Yet when things do fall apart, remember: it’s not the end, it’s birth pangs. Keep awake—alert, connected, focused on the future—and know that beyond what’s ending, beyond the birth pangs, there is the delight of God’s presence waiting.

Amen.

• A Particular Joy
• Get Ready!
• The Forest of Advent
• Give Thanks for the Appetizers
• All Fall Down