This is NOT the end

Proper 28 B November 15, 2009
1 Samuel 1:4-20 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:31-39; Mark 13:14-23

There is a big ad campaign going on now for the new movie, “2012,” about the end of the world. The apocalypse. The date has some connection to an ancient Mexican Mayan sun calendar, but the concept – well, apocalypse has been with us for a very long time. As a matter of fact, the gospel we read today, from the Gospel of Mark, is full of apocalypse. You could say that the whole Gospel of Mark is about apocalypse, about seeing the signs of the end times.

Mark wrote his gospel to people living in rough times. They were chafing under the rule of the Roman Empire. The combination of a heavy-handed military and local lackeys carrying out the occupiers' rule produced corruption and chaos. The Jewish people began a revolt in the year 66, which produced a four-year siege of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans. The city was defeated, destroyed, and what few people were left scattered to the four winds.

Bloodshed, anarchy, the near destruction of a whole culture -- these were the signs of the times to Mark, who wrote his gospel to help the small the community of Christians make sense of what was going on, to assure them that all this terror was really within the plan of God, and that they, the righteous few, would be vindicated in the fullness of time. This 13th chapter of Mark is called "the small apocalypse," but the whole gospel is apocalyptic, for Mark understood Jesus' coming as the end of time and the beginning of the reign of God.

Scary and final and the end: that’s what apocalyptic movies and stories are all about.

So why do we read the first lesson we read today, the story of Hannah – a barren woman who is finally going to have a baby – a story of new beginnings and hope? No woman would rejoice at the prospect of giving birth at the beginning of the apocalypse. What could it mean that these two stories, along with the song that Hannah sings about the birth of her son, are twinned in our readings today?

The clue can perhaps be found in Jesus’ last words of today’s gospel reading: “This is but the birthpangs.” Yes, what he has been describing, as signs of God’s coming, sounds pretty terrible, but he does not say, “This is the end.” This apocalypse is not like the beginning scene of that 1980s film, “Apocalypse Now,” with napalm exploding Vietnamese forests to the soundtrack of The Doors, “This is the end.” Jesus describes this apocalypse as birthpangs – as the beginning of something – as a time of something difficult, painful, risky, yes, but as the beginning of a new life. Jesus’ apocalypse brings hope.

So what is going on in this story of Hannah?

For a woman of her time and place, thousands of years ago, in a nomadic tribe, life was not good. She had a loving husband, a roof, or rather a tent, over her head, food to eat – but no children. Her husband took a second wife, who produced lots of children – and this made Hannah even more miserable. This lesson is poignant – Hannah is open in her grief at being childless. She feels doomed, and everyone around her seems to agree: God had closed her womb. This is not an apocalyptically terrible life, but it is powerfully symbolic of a wasted life, a useless life; Hannah, although loved by her husband, is a person of no worth.

Now Hannah was a good person, and Hannah prayed to God, and had an honest conversation with Eli, the priest at the Temple. But note that Hannah did nothing extraordinary next. She did not repent, or accomplish a heroic task, or do anything other than be Hannah – and God granted her request. God opened her womb. God allowed her to conceive a child with the husband she loved. God loved Hannah, and heard her request, and turned her barren wasteland of a life into the hoped-for new day. Hannah’s apocalyptic birthpangs ended her misery, and brought her new baby into the world.

The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus lived and worked and walked among people who were miserable. They were poor and homeless and lived hard lives. You could say that their lives were like Hannah’s: barren, bitter, hopeless. If bad things happened, what could be worse than the lives they were already living?

The hope that Jesus brought to them, and brings to us, is the message that it will not always be this way. Life might be hard now, but it is the birthpangs of something much better, something new and hopeful.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus invites people to follow him “on the way.” Along this way, people who are sick are restored to wholeness, people who are broken are restored to their place in their communities and families. People who choose not to follow Jesus, turn away sorrowful. Jesus doesn’t require much from us, in the Gospel of Mark, but we must pay attention. We must take some initiative. We must at least take up our beds and walk.

To do even that simple thing might feel like the birthpangs of the apocalypse, might feel like the hardest thing we have ever done, but the promise, at the end, is life, in all its rich, abundant newness.