Do Not Be Alarmed

Methodist Central Hall in Toll Cross, Edinburgh Scotland has some interesting architectural features. But one in particular captured my attention as I sat in the congregation during my time at Edinburgh University. In the woodwork that surrounded the magnificent organ pipes there was carved an angel. Or an angel head to be clear. A medieval cherub, or chubby baby angel head hovering there over the center of the chancel. Behind the baby angel head were two trumpets, the long straight announcing the arrival of the king or the beginning of the end of the age kind of trumpets. But as I looked at them from my vantage in the pews, it looked like these were the old style hearing aids that we see depicted in movies set a couple of centuries ago. As I pondered this, I thought it was profound and perhaps even theologically significant that the central image in that sanctuary was an angel with a hearing impairment.

I grew familiar with the Central Hall angel over my time in Scotland. I even named him. I called him Herbie. Herbie the Hard of Hearing Angel. That’s probably not an appropriate way to name him these days, but it stuck with me. And with the congregation there at the time. When I finished my time there and was heading back to the US, a group from Methodist Central Hall took a photograph of the artwork and had it framed and named, and Herbie the Hearing-Impaired Angel hung in various offices where I served for the next many years.

What seemed significant to me about Herbie is that he really wanted to hear. Maybe it was because he was ensconced in the woodwork around the organ pipes that impacted his hearing. Or it may have been the sheer strain of listening so intently for all the hears he had been there that made him turn in those latter days to hearing trumpets. He really wants to hear. I’m not sure that we do. And I’m pretty sure that the disciples didn’t want to hear especially when Jesus wanted to tell them the truth.

It is hard to say what the bit about the stones was pointing to, to be honest. Unless it was something about where do you put your trust? What is the foundation upon which you stand? Is it buildings and structures, patterns and habits? Or is it something else. Something a little less tangible, something a little less valuable as the world measures value. Or maybe it was simply a prediction, a prophecy about the end of the temple. Whatever it was, Mark doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, he leaves the disciples gaping in confusion and whisks the inner circle off to a meeting on the Mount of Olives.

The agenda of the private meeting centered on what to listen to and what not to listen to. But the disciples seem to get the whole thing turned around. Or at least they didn’t want to hear what Jesus needed to tell them. Jesus took those volatile sibling groups into this meeting and told them, again, what they had already rejected more than once. And no doubt they had learned from those previous lack of listening sessions and were more polite this time, at least Mark doesn’t record any interruptions. They sat there and nodded appropriately and added their share of “hmm” and “err” and “oh mys” to the conversation. But did they really want to hear? Based one what has happened before and what will happen later it seems obvious that the answer is no. Jesus’s words were full of struggle, full of pain, full of sacrifice. Are these the kind of words anyone really wants to hear? Only a fool would rejoice at the prospect of pain. So no, they didn’t want to hear. The world doesn’t want to hear. We don’t want to hear anyone, not even Jesus, tell us that there is a hard road ahead.

But is that really the message? From this text, from this gospel? Is this the message that we, with Herbie, have been straining to hear week after week, year after year as we come to take our increasingly scattered seats in our sanctuaries? Well, yes, it is, at first. Unless we face the tragedy of brokenness, the pain of sin; unless we understand the struggle of living a Christ-like life; unless we know really know what sacrifice and suffering is about, then we aren’t really listening.

But then who can blame any of us, any of them from turning a deaf ear to this message? If the message is about suffering, who in their right mind would want to hear? The problem has been in understanding that this part of the text is description. It is tell us what is happening and will continue to happen as long as we attempt to walk with Christ in a world that denies him – and some of those deniers claim to speak of him and for him. We’ve heard the description, and some have been good about proclaiming the description. But some have been less good on the rest of the message. The invitation and the promise.

First there is a call to sort through what we hear. Do not be alarmed, says Jesus. Don’t let the news of the day get you off track. Don’t let the difficulties throw you off and cause you to surrender to the ways of the world. A pastor in an evangelical church preached a sermon on the beatitudes from the sermon on the mount. Afterwards there was much pushback from the congregation. Some thought it was leftist propaganda. Another simply said, that might have been fine in Jesus’s day, but it just doesn’t work today. Don’t be alarmed by what you hear. Don’t be led astray. Don’t be inclined to give up on the faith just to get by in a difficult world.

Secondly, there is a call to hope. Not an empty hope that is really a naïve optimism that just wants to wait until things get better. Instead, we are called to hold a profound hope, what some call a feral hope. A hope that will not be tamed, that is wild and unpredictable. A hope that tells us the pangs we suffer now are birth pangs and something significant is about the rise up in us and around us. That’s the final word in our text for this week. (Go ahead and read the rest of the chapter and see that this is a fine place to end our reading!)

And then we listen. We strain to hear that hope rising. We look for signs of God’s work among us and beyond us. We engage, we go to meet the risen Christ already at work in difficult places with difficult people. We listen, even when our hearing begins to fade from the strain. And we’ll ask an angel for the loan of a trumpet.