St. John’s Lutheran Church
17 November 2024 + Advent 2 (Lectionary 33b)
Mark 13:1-8
Rev. Josh Evans
“There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others.
Certainty.
Certainty is the great enemy of unity.
Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.
Even Christ was not certain at the end.
[‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’]
He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross.
Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.
If there was only certainty and no doubt,
there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.
Let us pray…”
Cardinal Lawrence concludes, as he draws his homily to a close,
“…that God will grant us a pope who doubts.”
In the newly released film Conclave,
depicting the fictionalized account of the death of the pope
and the subsequent ritual – highly guarded and secretive – of choosing his successor,
it is these words – from the cardinals’ opening mass together before being sequestered – that I keep coming back to.
“If there was only certainty and no doubt,
there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.”
“Just have faith,”
the saying goes –
as if it were always that simple,
as if faith were something you could conjure up on your own
as a matter of sheer willpower.
As if.
It’s a lot easier to lose faith –
as I imagine might have been the case for the disciples,
as Jesus’ public ministry is drawing to a close
and his arrest and eventual death draws ever closer.
“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”
they exclaim in wonder,
marveling at the grandeur of the temple and the Jerusalem landscape.
“These buildings?” Jesus points, knowingly.
“Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
If your Bible is anything like mine,
you might see the heading above this brief scene:”
“The Destruction of the Temple Foretold.”
And the one immediately following:
“Persecutions Foretold.”
And being the good biblical scholars you are,
you might also immediately know that’s not right.
At the very least, you might wonder how such headings came to be,
and if you’re thinking that they’re not at all authentic to the original text…
you’d be absolutely correct.
Perhaps a better heading might be something like:
“Reflections on the Meaning of What Has Happened –
and What Is Happening to Us.”
By the time Mark’s gospel was written down,
the temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed
in the aftermath of the Jewish-Roman War.
Not one stone was left upon another.
All had been thrown down.
Persecution and uncertainty abounded.
It’s easy to “just have faith”
when everything is going well.
It’s quite another thing
when everything suddenly comes crashing down – literally –
when everything once so certain is broken wide open.
***
“I have a lot of faith.
But I am also afraid a lot,
and have no real certainty about anything,”
reflects Anne Lamott, in her 2005 book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.
“I remembered something Father Tom had told me –
that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.
Certainty is missing the point entirely.
Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort,
and letting it be there until some light returns.”
“Do not be alarmed,”
Jesus counsels his disciples,
both those around him and those hearing Mark’s gospel for the first time,
years later, in the rubble of the temple.
“This must take place, but the end is still to come.”
This must take place, but it is not the end.
The end. In Greek, the telos.
The ultimate fulfilling of the unstoppable reign of God.
I’m the first to admit that kind of faith
is a lot easier confessed in a creed
than believed in real life.
“Where is the spring?”
Anne Lamott asks.
“Will it actually come again this year,
break through the quagmire, the terror, the cluelessness?
Probably not, is my response,
when I’m left to my own devices.”
But here’s the thing:
Whether or not I have faith in the telos –
the ultimate fulfilling of the unstoppable reign of God –
doesn’t make it any less true,
as if I really had that kind of power.
As if any of us had that kind of power.
As if.
Again, from Anne Lamott:
“Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise,
just when you think all hope is lost.”
Just when Mark’s community thinks
this is surely the end,
Jesus promises:
The end is still to come.
***
The election of the new pope in Conclave is a case study
in what it looks like when certainty is broken wide open.
While any one of the cardinals can feasibly be nominated and elected,
it is four leading candidates who emerge early on –
each representing different, competing factions within the church…
each of whom, for reasons of scandal or otherwise,
fails to achieve the necessary majority required for election.
I won’t give away any spoilers, but suffice it to say:
What ultimately happens is a surprise no one would see coming.
Not even Cardinal Lawrence,
in his deeply personal and moving opening homily
extolling the virtues of a faith that makes room for doubt.
On this Second Sunday of Advent, as the candle of faith flickers bright:
Let us pray that God will grant each of us a faith that doubts.
A faith that is certain trusts only in itself:
this is surely the end.
A faith that leaves room for doubt leaves room for mystery,
and room to be surprised by hope.
A faith that doubts is a faith that trusts
in what God – whose faithfulness is great – can do:
for the end is still to come.
