Mark 13:1-8

The structure I use for most of my sermons comes from Paul Scott Wilson’s The Four Pages of the Sermon. The format he encourages is to spend one page on the following: trouble in the text, trouble in the world, hope in the text and hope in the world. I’d like to use a truncated format of that for my commentary on Mark 13:1-8 today and examine some thoughts on those pages for you to wrestle with as you craft your sermon this week. I’d encourage you to check out his text as it has some excellent depth to assist in the preaching process beyond the simple four-page format.

Trouble in the Text

Our passage comes from the chapter just before things start to “get real” for Jesus’ journey to the cross, and therefore the disciples, as they watch it all unfold. Many have described this passage as a “little apocalypse” because of its prophetic nature dealing future thoughts from Jesus on war, natural disasters, and the destruction of the temple. That all starts as “one of his disciples” partakes in a very human response to beautiful architecture and admires the area around the temple. It’s certainly a beautiful place. Huge blocks of stone were used to create massive buildings in honor of worshiping Yahweh – no wonder he’s in awe.

I remember my first time visiting some of the world’s largest cities in 2017 while in Asia feeling that same way. Manila and Tokyo just left me in awe of how huge they were. They are massive metro areas, Tokyo having two of the tallest towers on the planet and roughly 38 million people in its metropolitan population. It was easy to spend most of our week in Tokyo with my jaw hitting the floor. Jesus quickly threw water on that disciple’s fire by foretelling a time when that temple complex would be destroyed.

Again, in a natural human response, the disciples want to know when and how that will happen, and in this case, the group who’s asking is Jesus’ smaller group of disciples, too. The ones that went up the Mt. of Transfiguration with him, the ones he really wants to communicate the inside scoop to. They figure if they go to him privately, then Jesus might give them a little special insight on the destruction forecast, since he’d done that before when they went up Mt. Tabor and were blinded by his radiance. As is typical of disciples, they just don’t understand what Jesus is talking about. Yet, we see that in this case, even the trusted, more intimate group of disciples will not be given the privileged information about when and how the temple will be destroyed. They are given something else.

Jesus instead tells them to look out for those who might come as false prophets. Again, we don’t find out much about the false prophets, other than they claim the title of “I am”, and that leads us to believe that they are power-hungry, position-hungry people, who, when the going gets tough want to take advantage of others to lead them astray. This passage closes out by Jesus telling some of the things that are to come, things like wars, where nations will rise up against nations, natural disasters, etc., and those are just a foretaste of what will follow after that, the very birth pangs of what’s to come.

Trouble in the world

When this commentary is published, we will have just finished that tumultuous season when we go to the polls in the country in which I pastor, the USA. As I write this commentary a good two months out, like that disciple, I wish I knew the future. The political polling seasons and social turmoil, are often the times when we like to start tossing out predictions of the end of the world. If our party does not get elected, then it surely must be the end times, right? It’s when we often see the viral proof-texting passages and memes spread like wildfire that like to try and position the other candidate as the antichrist. Rev. Benjamin Cremer has had a few recent viral posts that have spoken prophetically about how that is such a poor use of Scripture.

Like the disciples, we want to know the when and how of potential destruction, and who can blame us or them? That’s part of what it means to be human. We want to plan ahead. We want to practice risk-aversion. Yet, texts like the one today were never meant to be used as a timeline of predicting the future. I like what Pheme Perkins has to say about the prophetic passages in her commentary on Mark. She says that:

“they are diagnoses of the moral or spiritual health of the people. A prophetic word of judgement intends to promote repentance and reform, even though many of the people reject the prophet’s word. Destruction occurs only because the words of warning go unheeded. Thus prophetic speech is a form of instruction, not fortune telling.”[1]

“Prophetic speech is a form of instruction, not fortune telling.” That is rich. Like Jesus speaking back to the disciple, prophetic words are full of shock and awe. That’s for a reason. They should cause the hearer to reflect on what might happen if we don’t change. 4 years ago, the church I pastored on the Kansas side of the KC metro area at the time had the chance to host a panel discussion on a docuseries entitled I Am George Floyd. It was a documentary on growing up black in the predominantly white county our church was in there in Johnson County, Kansas. The panel brought in various black voices, including black voices from the local police department to share their stories and how we could do better as a society in combating racism. Unfortunately, the name of the panel was controversial enough for many “church folk”, including our own, to feel uncomfortable attending. Yet, for the many who did attend, it was a wonderful opportunity for us to hear a prophetic word on what might happen if the words of warning from black men in Johnson County would go unheeded. The choice was the attendees: either listen and act on their pain, or have deaf ears, neutrality was not an option.

Hope in the Text

In the middle of a tough “Little Apocalypse” in Mark, we find hope. First, in verse 8, Jesus reminds the disciples that finding themselves in the middle of all the social and political turmoil that they will go through when nations are at war, earthquakes are rattling the ground and famines are happening is not to be mistaken for the end times. Yes, they will be hard, no doubt. Yet, the story of Scripture is the story of a God who saves us in our wilderness moments, whether that is physical wilderness, spiritual, emotional, societal, or mental. Like God delivered the Israelites in Egypt, like God redeemed the world in Jesus, God desires to save us now.

The greater context of Mark 13 is a reminder to those who will be persecuted and face the potential destruction ahead of how they are to respond. They are to stand firm and share the Good News, even when faced with going before those who persecute them. 

Hope in the World

Our passage is a reminder that everything can be overthrown. The religious freedom we enjoy, the Churches we worship in, the temples we love, the cities we love, the empires we live in. All of them can be overthrown, yet the Kingdom of God cannot and will not be. Like the prophetic words of Scripture, that is instruction that will never fail us. The predictions of the end times will fail us, the kings, queens and presidents people love to place their hopes in to bring a country back to a place of spiritual revival (do we really want to go back to that place? I for one, am glad that the American culture has moved on from much of the division that existed outside and inside of the schools where people want prayer to return to) will ultimately fail us or pass away, yet not so with the Kingdom of God. It’s high time for the people of God to be people of the Lord’s Prayer. As we are, then the turmoil we see around us will not define us or shape us. Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. We have one focus, Church: giving testimony to King Jesus.

____________________________________

[1] Pheme Perkins, “Mark,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 8:686.