November 19, 2006 Des Moines
TEXT:  Mark 13:1-8

 

Voices of Distraction

Thirty Five years ago, Motown superstars “The Temptations” released a disconcerting, cautionary song warning that… 

Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within.
 
Smiling faces, they sang sometimes don't tell the truth;
… tell lies and I got proof.
 
Beware of the handshake that hides the snake
Beware of that pat on the back
It just might hold you back.
 
Your enemy won't do you no harm
'Cause you know where he's coming from
Don't let the handshake and the smile fool ya
Take my advice I'm only tryin' to school ya.
(BARRET STRONG, NORMAN WHITFIELD (c) Copyright 1971 by Jobete Music Co., Inc.)

 

Beware!  “Beware,” counsels Jesus as he and his disciples leave the Temple gates, “of distractions that just might hold you back.”

            Some might argue that this very chapter is a distraction, having more in common with the Book of Revelation, it seems, than with the rest of this gospel or the others that capture the story of Jesus.  Containing many of the spooky, end-time prophecies that main-line believers tend to avoid and fundamentalists love to parse for clues of dates and times, Jesus does, in fact, use vivid imagery to prepare his followers for challenging times ahead.  “Beware,” he tells them, “of distraction.”

            Distraction!  So how, at the beginning of this week of Thanksgiving, might we take Jesus’ words seriously, but not fantastically?  How might we read these paragraphs instructively – usefully – but not wildly in ways that lead us off the path which Jesus is trying to clear?  What I hear Jesus urging his disciples to do is keep their heads, their focus – and their balance.  Distractions will come from every corner – not just in the guise of smiling faces, but from inside your own heart, and outside in the shape of things that seem well and good.  All kinds of things can lead you astray, and Jesus urges us to keep our bearing.

            The passage begins innocuously enough with the disciples oogling the beauty of the Temple – what I might call the distraction of material goods.  “My, my, what big stones you have!”  This second Temple had been widely criticized when it was built back in the 5th century BC by those who could still remember its predecessor – the one that Solomon had built in all its fantastic glory – but it must, nonetheless, have been an architectural, structural work to behold.  Perhaps because of its history, perhaps because of its importance in the life and faith of Israel, perhaps simply because it was a striking facility, or perhaps because there was an awkward lull in the conversation and no one could think of anything else to say, the disciples called attention to the building they were only now leaving. 

It isn’t all that different from a government salivating over the newest weapon system on the drawing board, or us drooling over the stacks of Christmas catalogues jamming our mailboxes this time of year.  It is the hungry, almost addicted distraction of appetites and acquisitions that seduce, but fail to ultimately deliver the satisfactions we have imagined in them. 

Seeing the glimmer in their eyes, Jesus works to readjust the disciples’ attentions from the architecture and the stones to what is ultimately the authentic Temple of heaven.  “It isn’t the glory of the edifice,” Jesus suggested, “but the Spirit of the Holy that animates its halls and the people who gather within them.”  Don’t get distracted by “stuff.”

But the distraction of the material is only replaced with the distraction of speculation – of what might be and when it might become.  Here are books and charts and graphs that pinpoint the day of Christ’s return.  Here are the Millerites, the followers of a preacher named William Miller who used his literalist reading of scripture to pinpoint October 22, 1844 as the date of the second coming.  By the time the date arrived, something like 100,000 Millerites had set everything aside in order to be ready – many who had abandoned farms, sold homes and left their employment, to preach the gospel of the last days chronology. 

Here is Hal Lindsey whose popular book The Late, Great Planet Earth published 35 years ago, warned that things are going to get a lot worse, that the world as we know it is soon coming to an end, and that many will scoff at the predictions.  Here are all kinds of theorists and social observers who have tried to develop end-time calendars out of the verses of chapter 13, arguing that every word and image has a present and literal application – except, apparently, for the ones near the end of the chapter that caution, “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  Here, in other words, are the scores of books and preachers and movements from before Jesus’ time and since who have been distracted by speculation.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically evil in looking ahead – we prepare and we anticipate and dream and set our sights – but a preoccupation with the future engenders a neglect of the present, the only real place where our movements and actions, our convictions and compassions can make any difference.  If we are living in the future, we have abandoned the present, leaving it to be the ghost town of neglected and forsaken opportunities.  Prudence regarding tomorrow demands neither blindness nor carelessness toward today.  In fact, mindlessness toward the present only breeds problems that come to full-term in the future.  “Don’t be distracted by speculations that will spin you into useless dizziness.”

But if consumerism and speculation are common distracting voices, they are whispers compared with Jesus’ final caution:  fear.  “Wars and rumors of war.”  For we are surrounded by fear-mongers.  The political system has learned that fear sells – or at least elects.  Blow fear in our ear – fear of imminent attack or moral decay or economic ruin or “the loss of our way of life” – and we will follow you anywhere.  Beneath every rock is a scorpion; behind every cloud is a storm; inside every food is a toxin; within anything different, a terror, a travesty, a torment, a thief out to get from us everything to which we are entitled, everything we’ve worked so hard to build.  “They don’t look like us.  They don’t talk like us.  They don’t worship like us.  They don’t dress like us.  They don’t love like us.  Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid!”  And we are…

…are so fitfully distracted. 

            “But pay attention,” Jesus cautioned.  When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

            These things are normal, and a part of the very normal coming to be of what is to come.  And if it is painful, at times; if it is, indeed, scary, know that the same is true for every mother who has ever given birth to new and squalling life.  That is simply what happens when the old must stretch and pull and create the space for the wonder – the wonder for which we have waited and prayed and prepared – to pass into being. 

            Don’t, then, be distracted.  Do not be afraid.  It is not all hell breaking loose – quite, indeed, the opposite. 

It is all heaven being born.  Thanksgiving, indeed!