The portion of Saint Mark’s Gospel which you have heard today is from about halfway through Chapter 13, and it doesn’t make much sense unless you read Chapter 13 from the beginning.  So that is what I’ll do.  Except, rather than read  to you, I will describe to you how Chapter 13 starts and how Jesus comes to say the things he does.

    Last Sunday we heard Jesus teaching in the Temple.  But now, today, as Chapter 13 of Saint Mark’s Gospel begins, . . . we have gone with Jesus to sit on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple.  . . . As we came out of the Temple, one of our number said, “Look, Teacher, . . . look what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”  But Jesus said, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.”  . . . And now, we are sitting on the Mount of Olives with Jesus, gazing at the exterior beauty of the Temple shining whitely across the Kidron Valley from us.  . . . Meanwhile, the Brothers are conferring together in a little group apart (by “the Brothers” I mean Peter and James and John and Andrew).  . . . And after awhile these Brothers all come to Jesus and ask Him a question.  They ask, “Tell us, when will it be that one stone will not be left upon another, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?”

    Peter and James and John and Andrew all continue to harbor the popular hope that Jesus, Who is God’s Messiah, will summon Heaven’s holy angels to fight for vanquished Israel.  They hope that Jesus will call forth the Archangel Michael, champion of the Jewish people; . . . they hope for the day when the Archangel Michael shall arise to overthrow the status quo of a collaborative religious leadership; . . . they hope for the day when God’s Messiah will summon Heaven’s holy angels to utterly cleanse, with divine fire, the entire earth of the villainous and wicked heathen who inhabit it; . . . especially to cleanse the earth of the brutal Empire that holds Jerusalem in its merciless talons.  . . . Jesus looks thoughtfully at the Brothers, . . . and all of us, . . . and then He says, “Take heed that no one leads you astray.  If you think things are terrible now, these are only the birth pangs of the Reign of God that shall be.  So take heed to yourselves so that no one deceives you,” Jesus says, “for you will suffer right along with everyone else, and you shall not escape.  . . . Because the Kingdom of God isn’t a program of social justice . . . neither does it involve political reform.  The Kingdom of God is the consequence of what each one of you . . . and all of you together; . . . the Kingdom of God is the consequence of what you shall reveal to all nations with your words and with your lives.  . . . The Kingdom of God is the consequence of the witness you shall give with your durable and enduring faith in the face of social and cultural contempt for the gospel you live and teach, . . . the gospel of the Father’s ineffable purity and unconditional love and mercy; . . . the gospel of the Son’s redemptive death so that all of humanity might participate in the divine life breathed upon them by the Holy Spirit.  . . . But even in the face of contempt, . . . you, the Church, must endure in living God’s purity, love, and mercy (Jesus says); . . . you must endure in living God’s purity, love, and mercy . . . and in telling it . . . or you shall not participate in it.”

    And then Jesus says what the Deacon has read to you this morning:  “So when you see the desolating sacrilege,” Jesus says; “when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be; . . . in other words, whenever you encounter in your heart (where it ought not to be) something contrary to God’s purity; . . . whenever you encounter in your heart (where it ought not to be) something contrary to the Father’s love; . . . whenever you encounter in your heart (where it ought not to be) something contrary to the mercy of the Almighty, . . . then take heed to yourselves,” Jesus says, . . . “take heed to yourselves and run to God.  Run to God without any resources.  Be prepared and willing to abandon home and prayerbook and bible and your comfortable life.  ‘Put not your trust in rulers nor in any child of earth;’ cherish nothing but God alone, lest you be devoured by your passions and consumed with revenge.  . . . There is no Christ to liberate the land,” Jesus says; . . . “there is no Christ to make you a mighty people.  So, take heed to yourselves,” Jesus says, “I have told you all things beforehand.”

    That is the substance of how Chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel begins, and how it culminates in the saying of Jesus you have heard today.  But the text is not only difficult to understand unless you read Chapter 13 from its beginning; . . . it is also difficult to understand because the words of Jesus sound so mysterious and spooky -- that we must flee the “desolating sacrilege (let the reader understand)” and that “if the Lord had not shortened the days, no human being would be saved.”  The words of Jesus sound so spooky and mysterious because Saint Mark seems to have taken liberties with Christ’s sayings and fitted them with an apocalyptic vocabulary borrowed from the visions of the prophet Daniel.  . . . Mark puts apocalyptic words into the mouth of Jesus because we have arrived at the moment in his Gospel which Mark believes to be the moment the prophet Daniel had foreseen; . . . we have arrived at the moment in Mark’s Gospel just before Jesus shall give Himself to us and for us at the Last Supper; . . . we have arrived at the moment in Mark’s Gospel just before Jesus is arrested; just before He suffers terrible abuse . . . and is crucified for our redemption.  . . . The Brothers -- Peter and James and John and Andrew; . . . the Brothers ask when the Last Things will happen before the Reign of God is to be established to overthrow all wickedness, . . . and Mark reports that Jesus says that “you are the Reign of God!” . . . and it is now!  Wickedness shall be overthrown by the sacred living and praying and faithful explaining that is done by you.  Christ is died as the expiation for all sin;  Christ is risen as a sign that death is overcome.  By your baptism into His death and by your rebirth into the divine life of His Holy Spirit, the glorious and risen and eternal Lord of Life abides and manifests Himself in each and all of you(!), His Church.  . . . Christ will, indeed, come again finally and decisively; . . . Christ will, indeed, come again “to save those who are eagerly waiting for him,” as the Apostle writing to the Hebrews told us last Sunday.  . . . Christ will come again, but the Reign of God is now, . . . and you are its heralds and ministers.  . . . And in the meanwhile, whenever that Last Day shall be; . . . whenever the Last Things are to occur; . . . whenever the End of Time is to come is no concern of ours, Jesus says.

    The Last Day shall come.  It will be both terrible and glorious, and Jesus shall be there to gather us to Himself.  But the counsel of Christ about such things is the same as that of the angel to Daniel:

go your way till the end; and you shall rest, and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days

But in the meanwhile, look to yourselves(!), Jesus says; . . . look to yourselves and take comfort in and have awe for your heavenly Father alone:  the Lord God; . . . the Almighty.  . . . Take heed for yourselves and permit your heart to embrace nothing that will desecrate it; . . . permit your heart to love nothing less than God.  . . . Take heed; Jesus has told you the truth so that you won’t be surprised or deceived, . . . because only “those who have faith [shall] keep their souls” and live.