3/26/23 Sermon
I don’t know why it’s happening to me. I suspect it has something to do with becoming middle-aged and realizing that I’m not longer young but I’m not really old yet. It’s a weird feeling to be too old to be young but too young to be old. I wonder if it had something to do with turning 40 in the midst of Covid but it seems worse now at 42. Maybe it has to do with the shootings last summer or the health scares of my parents, or realizing that my kids are no longer children, watching the grey and white whiskers spread throughout my beard, noticing the wrinkles in my own face deepen or maybe it’s just the natural progression of my maturing. But more and more I find myself longing for moments of solitude where I can just sit and think and reflect on my life so far.
It’s funny when I really think about it. I don’t think I really imagined what my life would be like at this point past 40. Part of me is a little surprised I’m still alive. But it feels like completely uncharted territory in many ways. I put on Facebook a few weeks ago that In my 20s, I thought I should be taken seriously but I was full of crap. In my 30s, I knew I was full of crap in my 20s but thought I learned from it and thereby should be taken seriously. Now in my 40s, I think I’m full of crap and wonder why anyone would take me seriously…
I’ve changed and grown and learned so much since my 20s. And yet, when I reflect back on my life, I see things I could have done better, I see things in myself now that I don’t particularly like. I see other things that I wish I could change and do differently, ways in which I could have been a better father and husband and minister, and different strategies I maybe could have used to accomplish some dreams that I’m not sure I can ever get back.
Sometimes… Sometimes I look at my life now and I wonder if its still possible to change, to start over, to become different and do things differently or am I stuck with the way I am now with these character flaws and the unhelpful ways my neurodivergence Torpedoes some of the things and relationships in my life. Could I wake up tomorrow and be an almost completely different person? I know that’s not the way it works, but let’s say its like in the movies and some genie or fairy godmother came to me and offered the choice - I could wake up tomorrow and be me exactly as I am now and I’d stay that way or I could wake up tomorrow still being me but with my ideal body, my ideal discipline, my current character flaws gone, my brain working the way normal people’s brain works, and all my addictions and bad habits gone. Would I make that choice? Would I still be me? Would I actually enjoy and be fulfilled by that life? I don’t know if any of this makes sense to anyone but me, but I wonder which I would choose…
See, the problem I’m finding is that everything has a cost, everything comes with a trade, everything needs a balance. And so what I worry about is if I take out the struggle, if I remove the pain, if I try to even out the roller coaster of life - what is it I lose for doing that? Like I’ve had my heart just shattered before. Not just broken but completely shattered and disregarded. But it happened because I loved those people deeply and looking back on it, that love was something so beautiful and so powerful to me that I’m so grateful I got to experience it. Is the cost of giving up that heartbreak and never feeling it, not loving as deeply or fully in my life? That pain, that hurt shows you that you really cared, that something or someone really mattered and meant something to you. And so I wonder if I lessen the pain of life, do I also lessen the joy in life?
Or what about my self-perceived failures? What if I take those away? If everything I touched was a success, would that success truly mean anything to me or feel good? Or what if I did switch my brain out for one that was far more self-disciplined and self-motivated. One of the symptoms of my current brain which is now called “neurodivergent” is that it both wanders everywhere but also gets stuck in a hyper-focused state sometimes and I can’t really regulate it - its an all or nothing kind of deal with me - and I can’t choose what my brain is going to decide to get stuck on.
It makes me really curious about millions of different topics and questions and ideas and it makes me studious almost to the point of obsession about the ones I find most intriguing. I’m lucky where so far, my brain’s almost always interested in ideas around existence and being and meaning and ultimately God and how we relate to whatever this God is or understand this God to be. Would I be a good minister or theologian if my brain were different than it is now? Would I be boring? Would I have had the curiosity to discover passions that I never would have thought I had?
Who would I be if I got everything I wanted? It’s actually really hard for me to imagine a life where I got everything I wanted. And what I find is that it may actually be more interesting to live in a world where I don’t get what I want. It turns out that not getting what you want is a lot more interesting to me than getting what you want.
They call passages like this one in Mark that we read apocalyptic and we’ve taken that to mean that it’s talking about the end of the world. In fact, many translations when working on texts like this one or in Revelation translate it as the end of the world or the end of times, but it’s actually better understood as the end of ages. Not the literal end of the world but the end of the world as we know it. The word apocalypse when directly translated from the Greek means a lifting of the veil - that something that was once shielded from our eyes or something we were blind to is suddenly revealed.
What’s interesting - at least to me and maybe to Martin Block - is that technology and science are talking about similar concepts today as we see AI advance. They don’t call it an apocalypse or the end of times because that would scare the bejesus out of people, but instead they call it an event horizon - we’re approaching a time where things have advanced and changed so much and so dramatically that our traditional predictive models of what the future will be like no longer work. We can’t see what’s past the event. I suppose being middle aged now is an event horizon for me. I don’t know what comes next and that’s what’s caused me to look back and evaluate in order to hopefully glean some information and insight as to what the future holds for me.
Some biblical scholars have argued - and I agree with them - that Jesus, the writers of scripture and their audience had no real understanding or grasp of the world literally ending. It wasn’t like today. Today we live in a world where it can literally be destroyed by the push of a button. We could very literally, and very concretely destroy all life on this planet in a matter of minutes. But that wasn’t the case back then. Unlike us, they couldn’t conceive of the world actually being destroyed and not existing. And so when Jesus and other figures from scripture are talking about the end of the world, what they mean is something much closer to an event horizon or for our old members - the dawning of the age of Aquarius. The world as we know it now will be gone and something new will emerge in its place and what emerges is something unrecognizable and beyond our conceptions and wildest dreams.
Many people argue that this is a place where Mark and Jesus get it wrong. Jesus says in here that the generation he’s speaking to won’t have passed away before this apocalypse - this end of the ages - this event horizon happens. And they’re correct that Jesus may be wrong if we think it means the end of the world - because after all, we’re still here. But what if Jesus means it more of how we’re talking this morning? That its an event horizon? That its the end of the world as we know it and not the end of the world’s existence? He may be on to something. Jesus changed the course of human history. That isn’t a statement of faith. That’s a statement of fact. He forever altered the trajectory of Western Civilization and the world. Whether you believe he was the messiah or not, Jesus may be the single most influential figure in the world and his teachings are taught in every language in every country sometimes at great risk to those teaching it.
Now what’s kind of scary is that it sounds like Jesus is talking about what’s happening right now - wars and rumors of war, earthquakes and strangely devastating weather patterns, the threat of annihilation for all life on this fragile rock. I find myself sometimes telling Jesus in my prayers that if he’s coming back, now’s the time to do it or it may be too late and it reminds me of the joke that Jesus once called the pope and told him he had good news and bad news… When the pope asked what it was, Jesus said, the good news is that I’m back. Then the pope asked what could the bad news possibly be and Jesus replied, I’m in Salt Lake City. But history’s shown us that every generation at least since the time of Jesus think this is going to happen in their time - that the end of the ages or the end of the world is going to happen in their lifetime. I want to argue that the apocalypse already has happened and that’s what we recognize in Easter.
But the bigger issue I struggle with is the idea of a utopia. Plato created a utopian society once as a thought experiment in the Republic and he didn’t feel that there was any need or use for artists because we no longer would need what they could express and give to us. A world without art sounds miserable to me. And the more I think about it, the idea of Utopia or everything being perfect sounds downright boring to me. But I think utopia misses the point of what Jesus is saying here. He talks about struggle, great struggle and suffering happening with the end of the ages, with this apocalypse or event horizon. He talks about a time of great suffering but then it releases into something better, something much better.
And the truth is if I look at my life like I’ve been doing lately, in order for me to really know and appreciate the moments that feel like heaven, in order for them to really feel like heaven, I need all the failures, struggles, heartaches, sleepless nights, and second-guesses that have gotten me to those moments - those sometimes fleeting glimpses of something much better and fulfilling. We tend to focus on the concept of a better next world and forget that its the struggle of this world that forges the better next world.
I don’t know if any of this makes any sense. I’m worried that it doesn’t. But I guess what I’m trying to say in a very long-winded way is that so often in life we feel that our struggles and sufferings are things that hold us back or something to be avoided - sometimes we try to avoid them at all costs. So often I hear things like the goal in life is to be happy or that God wants you to be happy as if the purpose is to minimize pain or suffering and somehow if you have that pain or suffering or regret then you’re doing it wrong. You aren’t living life the right way.
But the more I study scripture and the more I reflect on it and my own life, the more I realize that’s about the furthest thing from what Jesus teaches. Suffering, struggle, loss, pain, regret, failure - these are all a part of life. They’re an integral part of life. And without them, we can’t experience or appreciate the stunningly beautiful, wonderful, joyous experiences of life. If we ignore them or try to avoid these moments of suffering and hardship, we somehow lessen the moments of heaven we experience. It comes at a cost.
So just know that when we suffer or struggle or fail or regret, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve done anything wrong. It means we’ve invested and cared. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not living life the correct way. It means that we are experiencing the fullness of what life has to offer. And it doesn’t mean that God has turned God’s back on you. It usually means that God is drawing nearer to you and reminding you that perhaps the best is yet to come. We just can’t give up 5 minutes before the miracle happens.