And First… (Mark 13:10)
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Mark 13:10
At the turn of the 21st century, a great many exciting things happened. One of the most exciting was one that affected Brisbane pubs: the short-lived era of the cheap pub steak. If you were able to scrape together five dollars, you could go to one of any number of pubs and get a relatively decent steak. There was one pub in particular that had not only the cheap decent steak, but was also just a really nice old building. One day, that building’s owner changed hands, and the new owner apparently wasn’t too interested on owning a pub. Soon afterwards, the pub was closed, having been irreparably destroyed by a mysterious fire the night before. The shock and tragedy has long since passed, but the ruined building still stands there, a stark reminder that if you want to knock down every stone and build something new, there is a process that has to be followed.
The entire created universe is more exciting than a pub selling cheap steaks, and Jesus is being asked when will the great redevelopment happen. Rather than giving us a specific time to put in our calendar, he answers by telling us the process that has to be followed. All these things will happen – but first, the good news must be proclaimed.
One of the main points Jesus wanted to get through to everyone when considering this topic was: keep awake, keep watching. Read the signs of the times. Don’t worry so much about the ‘how’; look instead at the ‘why’. Focus on the process that God is working through. This process has the good news placed right in the centre; the purpose of everything is the gospel, and the purpose of everything that happens is in order that the gospel message is spread out, far and wide. The disciples were thinking big picture, about the end of the world and all of that. Yet it is also a pattern that continues right down into the microscopic of each of our lives. And Jesus is greatly concerned about the individual lives of his people.
There is a certain pattern in nature, a mathematical equation known as the Mandelbrot Set. When it is plotted onto a piece of paper, it reveals an amazing series of patterns. If you the zoom in on it, it reveals the same pattern again, in miniature: and so the pattern goes, all the way into infinity. In the same way, we can see Jesus’ teaching on future history as the broader version of our own individual future history; the pattern of the universe is being played out in an almost infinite number of times in the lives of every Christian.
When things happen in our life, we want to try and understand the why. The how question seems to be assumed: we are rich because we have money, or poor because we do not have money. We are unwell because we are sick; we are well because we are healthy. So, ask the why question: why are we rich? Why are we poor? Why are we sick, or healthy? What is God saying to us, and doing in our lives, that we find ourselves living in such circumstances?
We can take the pattern Jesus showed to his disciples about future history, and discover the same pattern in our own lives. Here is the line upon which this pattern develops: “and the good news must first be proclaimed”. The good news is this: the Father is bringing us close to God through Christ, and the Holy Spirit applies the fruit of this relationship in our lives. Or, to put it even shorter: God is making us into new people.
And so when we come to those moments and situations in our lives, and we are floundering about trying to figure out the answer to the why question - ‘why is this happening?’ - follow the lines of the pattern: the good news must first be proclaimed. We are being made into new people, and there will be not one stone of the old person left on top of the other. The entire old structure is coming down, and a new and better one is being put in its place.
A useful thing to help us is when the Bible gives us the type of virtues that God is looking for in his people: people of faith, filled with hope, overflowing with love; and this is just the start. People who have strong knees to carry the cross, and soft hearts to carry it with joy.
I was talking to someone once and the conversation turned into sharing with each other the woes of our lives. I thought I had a pretty good sob story, but this person had copped it even worse in life. After sharing with me the massive weight of adversity this person was facing, they turned to me face-on, and asked me what I saw. The first thought that came into my mind cannot have been my own; it had to have been Holy Spirit speaking. Because, having heard all their problems, and seeing the emotional distress it was causing them, I saw the face of Christ; I saw someone who was blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Experience is how we learn things. I was talking to a fellow trumpet player recently about Remembrance Day, and how we don’t need to practice the Last Post. Even if we never play a note for the other 364 days of the year, we can always pick up the bugle and blast out the Last Post. This is only the case because, as students, we played it over and over and over again – it has become second nature. God isn’t magically zapping faith, hope and love into our soul as a one-and-done job. Every day we are being led along the lines of the pattern of Christ, to grow into the new person, through repeated practice. We are being made into new people for whom faith, hope, love and all the other virtues are simply the natural way of being.
The new person that God is making each of us into follows the same pattern. Faith, hope, love, and everything else that adorns the Christian and glorifies Christ are not things we can switch on or off; they are becoming second-nature, a force of habit, the pattern of our souls down to infinity, through repeated use. Every life circumstance we find ourselves in comes into clarity when we remember God’s process: that first, the good news must be preached. The Father is bringing us close to God through Christ, and the Holy Spirit applies the fruit of this relationship in our lives. God is making us into new people.
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