Lectionary reflections – Mark 13:1-8

Mark 13:1-8

The talk of massive building and tumbling stones brings to mind images. The fall of the Berlin Wall. September 11. It reminds  me as well of Reinhold Neibuhr, who reminded up again and again of the Tower of Babel nature of all human accomplishment.

On a personal level, I think of it as a metaphor for the walls we construct in our own lives and our own psychology. When they fall, how terrible it can seem. Even when the collapse is necessary.

There is a link here to birth pangs. Pain and blood – and even terror – are part of birth. New life comes only this way. I’m wary of making the leap from the tumbling walls to birth pangs too easily. The metaphors do not fit so easily side-by-side. If we try to force that, we miss the ways they differ.

And we risk dropping the false messiahs out of our reading all together. How do these three come together and hold together? Falling stones. False messiahs. Birth pangs. They all are signs of the final act of the Christian story, but they are also signs of nearly every day. There is not an age in history that is not over-run with all three.

There is something beguiling and misleading about trying to read the signs of the times. At every moment and in each of us, the apocalypse is present or on the cusp of emergence. We can never know when it might happen.

And this last thought throws into mind two more bits and pieces: TV is full of ads at the moment for the movie about the prediction of global destruction in 2012. I recall the interesting things people did in 2000 to prepare for the collapse of the Internet.

I’m a lot more free association this week than usual. But these are some thoughts on Monday.