Grace Cathedral

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“God we are your children and you love us with a perfect love.”

In the face of hopelessness what do you do? Brené Brown writes that, “Hopelessness arises out of a combination of negative life events and negative thought patterns, particularly self-blame and the perceived inability to change our circumstances.”¹

This weekend I spent time with a friend who I have not seen in a while. She is Palestinian and told me that about 100 of her family members and friends were killed in Gaza this year. The extent of the tragedy left me so shocked that I was at a loss for words. She even looks different, more gaunt. The trauma has hollowed her out. It shapes every moment of every one of her days. She cannot escape.

This frame of mind, this feeling of horror, you too may have come close to it. Perhaps it was when you cared for a loved one who was dying, or when your career melted down, or when your mental health seemed particularly unsteady, or when addiction or loneliness washed away the foundation of your life or that of someone you love.

Jesus offers challenging words for us this morning. But our suffering makes them easier to understand. Near the end of our church year, near the end of the Gospel of Mark, we encounter what scholars call Mark’s Apocalypse (Mark 13). The word apocalypse means unveiling, revealing. It is when what is true ceases to be hidden.

As Jesus leaves the Temple for the last time, it is the global center for all Jewish religious practice. His friends feel awed by the size of the stones used to build it. We would have been too. They were 35 feet long, 18 feet wide and 12 feet high. Jesus predicts the Temple’s total destruction and gives advice about how to live as a disaster unfolds.

Before I share his words, let me tell you more about the destruction of the temple from the perspective of someone who was there. Born into a priestly family, Josephus (37-100) could trace his roots back five generations. On his mother’s side he was a descendent of the Maccabees who, for a while one hundred years before (164-63 BC), had overthrown the domination of Alexander the Great’s Empire to establish a Jewish kingdom.

At twenty-seven Josephus went to Rome and successfully persuaded the emperor Nero to release imprisoned Jewish priests. He made influential friends in the ruling family and returned back to Jerusalem. Not long after his return in 66 CE the great Jewish revolt seemed like it was about to usher in a new age of freedom. At first he disapproved, but when the cause seemed like it would succeed he joined the rebels and was chosen by the Sanhedrin as the military governor of Galilee.

But then the Roman General Vespasian brought sixty thousand troops down from Antioch. For six weeks Josephus and his men held off the Romans at the fortress of Jotapata. The Romans overran the stronghold and put nearly everyone to death. Josephus escaped only by hiding in a vast underground reservoir and then convincing Vespasian to spare his life.²

As Vespasian’s slave Josephus acted as the chief negotiator at the siege of Jerusalem. But the city refused to surrender and ultimately after 143 days the Romans prevailed with their siege engines and inexhaustible fighting force. Fire spread from the outer hallways of the Temple to the whole city. Josephus writes, “[The Romans] ran everyone through whom they met with…”³

Josephus’ wife and parents were murdered there along with virtually everyone he knew from his childhood. Because of the great number of pilgrims who were gathered within the walls he estimates that 1.1 million people lost their lives. Another 97,000 were enslaved and sent to the Egyptian mines or to die as gladiators. The Romans destroyed everything.⁴

After predicting this destruction Jesus sits with his original four disciples on the Mount of Olives. They ask him when this will occur and what signs will there be ahead of time. Instead Jesus gives three pieces of advice. This is the story Mark shares in the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction.

1. First, Jesus says “beware that no one leads you astray.” In our time we are particularly prone to confuse political agendas for theological ones. In so many ways politics and economics have become false gods in our time.

David Bentley Hart (1965-) is a contemporary theologian who writes about the contrast between the ideas of modern atheist philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Christian thought. Hart argues that in our postmodern world many sophisticated people believe that there is nothing more than power. When you probe how they think and talk you will discover that they believe that power is what we all long for, that those

who have power write the stories that ultimately determine what is true. For them, beneath power, there is nothing, only more power.

Hart writes, “the difference between [the] two narratives: [is, the first] one… finds the grammar of violence inscribed upon the foundation stone of every institution and hidden within the syntax of every rhetoric, and [the other] claims that within history a way of reconciliation has been opened that leads beyond, and ultimately overcomes, all violence.”⁵

I love what Hart writes later. He says, “We are music moved to music… partaking in the inexhaustible goodness of God… the restless soul, immersed in the spectacle of God’s glory, is drawn without break beyond the world to the source of its beauty, to embrace the infinite.”⁶ Let us not be led astray on our pilgrimage to God.

2. The second piece of advice that Jesus gives his friends is “keep awake!” (Mk. 13:37). Pay attention to the signs of hope and awe all around us. Every day our children’s high school began with mindfulness meditation. Imagine sitting in a room with four hundred silent, meditating students. It was powerful. It also created a disposition of gratitude that shaped their entire day. The practice taught them to respond rather than to react. It helped them to know themselves better and I think to know God.

This week Heidi and I met Tara VanDerveer (1953-) for forty years the head women’s basketball coach at Stanford and one of the most successful coaches of all time.⁷ She talked about loving basketball from the age of ten. In her ninth grade yearbook the boys’ basketball coach wrote that she was the best player of all the boys and girls. But there was no girls basketball team at her high school.

When Title IX opened up women’s sports, she became a coach. On Wednesday night she talked about three of her most memorable players. The first, I’ll call her Sarah, was a walk-on player who sat on the bench next to the water cooler and only rarely playing in a game. The coach gave each player an index card with the instructions to put down, “what is your role on the team.” Sarah wrote, “to share joy!”

The second player she talked about was on the 1996 US Olympic Women’s Basketball team. The team stayed the night in Kyiv, Ukraine and woke up early. On their way to the bus at 7 a.m. in bitter cold they passed some very lightly dressed women who were begging. Most of the players got on the bus but one was late. She stopped and by the time anyone had noticed had taken out her wallet to give the women money. Soon she had opened her bags and given away her clothes. When the other players saw this they came out and did the same.

The last story Coach VanDerveer mentioned was a time she was giving a campus tour to a player at the beginning of the term driving around the beautiful oval. The coach asked her, “What are you looking forward to?” She expected the player to talk about her dorm or the wonderful training facilities. Instead this young woman said, “I’m looking forward to making the world a better place.” VanDerveer said that she was so surprised she nearly crashed into a palm tree. I could not help but think that none of these memories were about what happened on the court. She has the ability to see signs of hope and awe in ordinary situations.

3. Jesus final advice is to see past suffering and seek what might be the birth pangs of new life. One of my favorite pieces of art is called “The Dinner Party.” It was created by Judy Chicago in the 1970’s and is at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The artist felt deeply concerned about all the great historical and mythological women who had been ignored or forgotten. She put individual table settings for thirty-nine notable women (with 999 others mentioned). For me it is a kind of image of the apocalypse – when God’s love will be fully revealed and the dignity of every person will be evident to all.

In this spirit she wrote “Merger Poem.” For me it is about the Realm of God.

“And then all that has divided us will merge / And then compassion will be wedded to power / And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind / And then both men and women will be gentle / And then both women and men will be strong / And then no person will be subject to another’s will / And then all will be rich and free and varied

And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many / And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance / And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old / And then all will nourish the young / And then all will cherish life’s creatures / And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth / And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.”⁸

In the face of hopelessness what do we do? Today on ingathering Sunday we receive everyone’s pledge to support this great Cathedral. We will not be led astray. Even in the face of hopelessness we continue to see a way of reconciliation has been opened that leads beyond all violence. We experience ourselves as music moved to music, drawn by the inexhaustible goodness of God to the source of all beauty. We are awake to signs of hope and transcendence in ordinary experiences as we discover the birth pangs of new life in God.

¹ Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (NY: Random House, 2021) 101.

² One source says that Josephus hid there with forty others who planned to commit mass suicide by drawing lots as to who would be killed first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

³ “[The Romans] ran everyone through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood.”

⁴ “Flavius Josephus” in The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm See the “Jerusalem” article in The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. Josephus, The War of the Jews, Book VI, Ch. 8.5 The Roman historian Tacitus believed that 600,000 Jews were killed.

⁵ David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 2003), 2.

⁶ Ibid., 195.

⁷ Commonwealth Club World Affairs Distinguished Citizens Award Annual Gala, 14 November 2024.

⁸ Judy Chicago, “Merger Poem.” https://www.spiritoflifecommunity.org/liturgy/pastors-letter/356-meditation-259-merger-poem-by-judy-chicago-1-22-2021