Mark 13:14-27

I assume the Boy Scout motto has not changed since I was in scouts. The motto I grew up under was “Be Prepared”. In scouting we had to be prepared for all kinds of stuff. I remember one campout over a long weekend really hit just about everything. Not everything went wrong, but enough went wrong for me to question what I was doing camping out in the middle of nowhere. We had gone up into the mountains for an extended weekend. Normally we went out Saturday, camped, and came back Sunday. Friday night was travel to the place where we would begin and end our hikes. Anyway, we had some extra time. So instead of changing our camp each day, we went to a spot and then day hiked out and back. On one of the day hikes my friend was slicing a piece of salami and ended up slicing his thumb to the bone with his knife. So we had to bandage him up, and hike back to camp.

Later that night we were thinking about how cold it had gotten, despite the clouds. My friend Russell said that if it was going to rain, it wasn’t going to rain, but snow. Which probably isn’t a big deal for scouts here, but for us, it was a disaster. When we got up in the morning, we panicked. Turns out we were prepared for someone cutting themselves, but not for snow. Our leader made us get up and out as quickly as possible. I image we left that place a mess; all of our stuff all over because we couldn’t see it under the snow. I myself used to hike in my dad’s old work boots rather than proper hiking boots, and those things really had no traction left, so getting up and down the mountains was really a slippery thing. The scout motto really would have done us well, but we couldn’t anticipate everything, I guess. We were prepared for a lot, but not snow.

Jesus wanted His disciples to be prepared as well. And so He told them a number of things to help prepare them for His absence. And His words still prepare us in His absence. We ought to always be prepared for Christ and His Kingdom.

When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that this will not take place in winter, because those will days of distress un equaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

But in those days, following that distress,

“’the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;

The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Let’s pray.

This is some of the last teaching of Jesus to the disciples. They are in Jerusalem for Passover; they have traveled long and hard to get to this place where Jesus has consistently irritated and angered the men in charge of the Temple. Jesus has done all His miracles, all His traveling and teaching, all the things that announced Him as the long-awaited Messiah. And now Jesus has to prepare the disciples for His absence. Jesus is going away, He will be killed, and buried, and the disciples will have to, very soon now, have to figure things out for themselves. Jesus has been getting them ready, preparing them, to be on their own, to be the present leaders of the kingdom of God while Jesus is in between earthly visits.

Make no mistake; this is a complicated text; easy to misunderstand and we in the 21^st century are not used to hearing this type of communication. It sounds very much like parts of the Revelation of John and the ending section of Daniel. Scholars call this type of communication apocryphal literature. We are not used to the symbolism used, and so we get confused pretty easily, at least I do. So context is going to be important to understanding the text; explaining the meanings is something we will have to do in order to understand what Jesus was saying to His disciples. So let’s give it a shot.

Let’s take a look at the first sentence.

The “abomination that causes desolation” is a phrase that is used several times in Daniel; specifically verses 9:27, 11:31 and 12:11. In Jewish history, the abomination that causes desolation referred to a specific action after Daniel, but before Christ. It is recorded in the first book of Maccabees, a book in the Catholic Bible but not in ours, that a Roman general went into the Temple and built an alter to Zeus, and put up a huge statue of Zeus in the Temple and declared the Temple to be not a Temple to the Jewish God, Yahweh, but a temple to Zeus. The general, Antiochus Epiphanes, also sacrificed a pig at the Temple and sprayed its blood everywhere, which was a horrible insult to the Israelites, as pigs were “unclean” animals. They were not for eating or for sacrificing to God. It was this event which triggered the revolt of the Jews under the leadership of the Maccabees, a family of priests. The Jews won their freedom for a number of years before being beaten back into the Roman Empire. But that was the last time someone defiled the Temple.

It is not known exactly what Jesus is referring to. Maybe the best guess is that during the revolution of the Jews from 67-70 AD, which resulted in the Romans destroying the Temple, a couple of years prior a group of Jewish Zealots took over the Temple, installed false priests and began mockingly doing sacrifices and such. There are a couple other options, like perhaps a Roman Emperor tried to have his own statue at the Temple, but perhaps this is the best guess we have. The larger idea is that when what is sacred becomes instead a place of mockery and cursing, head for the hills. If people ever become so depraved that a church is used for anti-church anger or sentiment, then it is best to get out while the getting is good. If the people had heeded this message in AD 68 when the mocking zealots took over, they would have avoided the final defeat of Jerusalem 2 years later.

I think Jesus is talking specifically to the people of that time. I am not one who thinks we should also be looking for someone to desecrate our holy house, and when that happens, to flee. I think Jesus was speaking specifically to specific people about an event that has passed. But, I think that advice should also give us pause. One of my professors connects this text to the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians, the main problem when the Babylonians invaded was that the people had turned their backs on God. The same problem could be said for Jesus death; and we know from the previous couple encounters with the Pharisees and chief priests that Temple worship had again come to be about money and prestige rather than about offering up themselves to God. Make sure your worship, like Paul says, is primarily about offering up yourself to God, not just stuff. Paul says we are to be a living sacrifice in Romans 12. Make sure each Sunday you offer, once again, your life to God. In fact, do it on a daily basis, on a moment by moment basis. We continually are to offer ourselves to God for His guidance, His leading, His use to expand his kingdom, not ever ours.

But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

Part of being prepared is knowing what has happened in the past so that we know what to look for in the future. But if people don’t believe what happened in the past, they won’t know what to look for or avoid in the future. If the people believed in Jesus, they would be looking and waiting, as we are for Jesus to come again. What know what Jesus was like, and what He did, and how He did things, so we will be looking for someone to do those same things. But many of the Jews were still looking for a military messiah, one that would kick the Romans out of Israel. Outside of Jesus, all the other people that claimed to be the messiah led revolts against Rome. Around Jesus birth there was at least 2 people who led rebellions, and several more during the 100 years following Jesus death. This isn’t a warning just to give a warning. The disciples and others listening were going to be confronted with false messiahs, who would give false hopes and dreams to entice their followers.

The question is always, who are you going to follow. Christ says, follow me, and you will be given purpose and you will be useful to the kingdom. Watch out though, that you don’t follow these others. Follow only me. Those people who promise freedom in this life from Rome or from taxes or from anything else, can’t really give you that freedom. Freedom is found in Christ alone. The truth is there are a number of false messiahs even now; one guy down in Miami tells his followers he is both the Christ and the Anti-Christ. Rev. Moon from Korea has millions of followers who think he is the Messiah. David Koresh and Jim Jones also told people wanting to believe that if people followed them, they could have it all.

We may think that the day will never come when we are forced to choose between God’s ways and other ways. But it may. And on that day we will either be prepared or not. When we prepare we should be preparing for the worst, but hope for the best. My family always had a number of bottles of water out in our garage, and a small cache of canned food in case of an earthquake. That was the reality of living in LA. We had to be prepared, and we had to know what to do in case of a big earthquake. The reality of living in modern times is that there will be people who will challenge our faith, who will want us to follow their ways and/or them. We should be prepared. Scripture tells us that we should be prepared to tell people about the hope we have in Christ in our hearts. Are you prepared to do that? And if not, why not? Because you haven’t thought it through, or because you haven’t committed yourself to Christ yet?

Jesus told His followers then and tells His followers now, be prepared. Invest in eternal things, not the ways and means of this life. Invest in God, and God’s ways of living and our world will change.

But in those days, following that distress,

“’the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light;

The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

This is the part that I never seem to completely understand. And to be honest, I think that’s how Jesus wanted it. Jesus has told us generally what to look for, but as for specific dates and so forth, I don’t think so. I think Christ honors us by giving us the basics, and then having us rely on Him for a more complete picture when it becomes necessary. The truth is that if we knew the date of everything, then we would feel comfortable messing around right up until the last possible minute. So God doesn’t give us what we don’t need to know. We know what we need to know. What we need to know is who we need to know. When we are in Christ, we are confident that nothing will come our way that we cannot handle in His power.

I was speaking with Peter Imbert about this sort of thing. He feels, and I think he’s right, that if we knew everything there was to know, we’d abuse it. If we knew exactly when Jesus was coming back, we’d wait and get out act together maybe a week before hand. We’d be prepared, but in the wrong way. We’d spend our lives having fun up until the last moment, repent, and then go into eternity. So I think Jesus deliberately vague because He wants us to live for Him and in Him, rather than on our own knowledge of how things work in the universe. We have to trust God, that God has everything under control and in His hands, rather than us having all that knowledge in us. I think we would abuse the knowledge if God gave us knowledge of exact end times, of exact happenings in the future. So many people are desperately afraid of the future; going to talk to dead relatives or gypsies or fortune tellers of all sorts. The future is going to happen and I don’t think anyone knows much about it beyond God. The future is about trusting God, or it is about living in fear of what might happen. And to me, that’s not living at all.

So I think being prepared means knowing God through Jesus. It means being prepared for your death now, even though we all hope our death won’t be for a good bit. It means being prepared for Jesus return, even though He hasn’t yet over the 2000 years we’ve been waiting. Jesus will return; we aren’t sure when. And so we prepare ourselves. We prepare ourselves by reading our Bibles and knowing what to look for when Christ returns, but we also prepare ourselves in our relationship with Jesus through prayer and following His directives in our daily lives.

Being prepared means that we know and trust God with our whole lives, with our whole future, and the futures of those we love. Because of Jesus, and His sacrifice, God has made a way for us to live in joy, light and love rather than in the darkness of fear. We have been told some things about the future, and little about what to look for, but I suspect that if we continue to seek and love God with everything we have and are, the future won’t be a scary place, but what we eagerly anticipate. If you live in fear of the future, what will happen and when, I would encourage you to let of those fears and cling more tightly to God.

Let’s pray.