This is the Second Sunday before Advent, observed in the Church of Ireland this year as Remembrance Sunday. The readings are (to read them, go HERE):
1 Samuel 1:4-20
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10: 11-14, (15-18), 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
There’s something that happens when you’ve been a priest for a while: you start associating certain Bible passages with particular seasons of the church year, or even with certain special days. It’s because in the church’s three-year cycle of readings, one has had to preach on a certain reading every time it shows up, so one has run into it more than a few times.
As an example, when I read the readings for today, the passage from Hebrews jumped out at me. I hear this passage and I immediately think of Good Friday. That’s because it is one of our readings every single year on Good Friday, the day that we remember Jesus’ sacrifice of himself on the cross for the sake of humanity. What the passage is saying is that before Jesus came, as God on earth in human form, the priests of the Temple in Jerusalem had to keep making sacrifices for the people as payment for sin. (They sacrificed animals.) But once Jesus had come, and once he had gone to his death on the cross on Good Friday, we no longer have to do this. You do not have to take a bull or a sheep to your priest, and I do not have to kill it on the altar in order to cleanse you from your sins. (Thank God!)
Each year we hear this passage on Good Friday, to say that we now can approach God in “full assurance of faith”: assured that through faith in Christ, and his once-for-all-time sacrifice on the cross, we are offered forgiveness of sins and the promise of new life.
And today we read this passage as a regular Sunday reading on a day that we remember another type of sacrifice. Today is the day we commemorate as Remembrance Sunday, when we remember those who died in World War I. As I understand it, Remembrance Sunday has in some respects been expanded a bit, to remember all those who have died in conflict for the sake of their country. They have offered their lives as a sacrifice. In many cases, in many countries, people live in peace because some who have gone before them had the will and the courage to offer their own lives for the sake of their country.
World War I has been called “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, it did not. War has continued, as we all know.
But it is an interesting line to consider when we hear Jesus say to his disciples, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” “The war to end all wars” versus “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” The end of conflict versus the beginning of some sort of struggle. The disciples have been admiring the large and magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, the centre of the faith, the centre of power. But Jesus describes to them a time to come when the Temple will be torn down, as it was about 40 or so years later, when it was destroyed in the year 70 A.D. The disciples want to know when this destruction will take place — what will be the sign that such a horrible and unthinkable act is going to happen? Jesus does not answer this question about timing. He just says that there will be tumultuous events taking place: wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes, famines, and false prophets — people who come claiming to be leaders and to be speaking the truth, but who are just leading others astray.
Our lectionary (the official reading for today) stops there. But Jesus continues by telling his disciples that they will have to make sacrifices. They will be betrayed by those who supposedly love them; they will be brought before rulers; they will be persecuted, all because they believe in Christ. “You will be hated by all because of my name,” Jesus says to them.
“The war to end all wars” versus “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Our world would seem to be in birth pangs now, with wars and forest fires and climate change and false leaders and a pandemic. Perhaps something new is being born, perhaps we are being asked to sacrifice some of our old ways of living so that a new way might come into being. This is actually what followers of Jesus for the past 2,000 years have been asked to do: to set aside an old way of life, just as the people set aside the sacrificing of animals on an altar in order to atone for their sins. For the past 2,000 years, followers of Jesus have been asked to let go of all that seems to give them life but really doesn’t, in order to find new life in Jesus. As he said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” [Mark 8:35].
“The war to end all wars.” So was said about World War I. Unfortunately, as we all know, it did not end all wars. Something more is needed to end all wars, and that is a peace not brought about through treaties and truces and ceasefires. What is needed is a complete change of heart on the parts of peoples and nations — namely, a willingness to cast one’s lot and one’s life into the hands of the Lord God Almighty. Not just a willingness, like a nonchalant, “Oh yes, I’m willing to do that,” but a desire that is so strong that it takes over one’s entire mind and heart and being, so that any other option is just unthinkable. It’s the Great Commandment: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. It is a willingness to accept the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for all of humanity — that means accepting that we ourselves have been set free and washed clean, if we wish it.
We seem now to be witnessing the beginning of birth pangs: the birth into something new. Perhaps so. Perhaps it has always been so, for each age has tumults and strife and demands placed on its people. But let us not let this opportunity go to waste. Let us ourselves be willing, with heart and mind and soul, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of new life in Christ, that perhaps we as a people and as nations might know a greater peace, the peace that passes all human understanding, which comes from God alone.
‘O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come.
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.’
— The Rev. Canon Liz Beasley