November 17, 2024; Mark 13, 24-32; 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
The beginning of today’s gospel is—horrifying. The sun and the moon go dark. Stars begin to fall from the heavens. All creation is in upheaval. But the meaning of today’s gospel is positive. This is because the purpose of the gospel is not to give us a literal description of the end of time but to use vivid images to remind us of God’s ultimate power. God rules the universe. Only God can shake the heavens. Therefore, the purpose of the gospel is not to frighten us, but to assure us, to assert that God is in control.
This belief does not simply apply to the end of time, but also to our world today. It is a truth that we can easily forget. We try to live our lives making the right decisions: who we should marry, what school our children should attend, how should we study for final exams, how can we face the next challenge at work. Because we are responsible people, our actions and our decisions tend to take center stage, and God’s power tends to recede into the background. It may even come to the point where we begin to think that our actions are the only force that directs and guides our lives. Then, when we find that we are not in control, when we cannot locate any good decisions to make, when our abilities fall short of the challenges we face, it is easy to lose hope. We lose hope, because we forget who holds the ultimate power in our lives and in our world.
If there is one thing, that our faith insists on, it is the conviction that God’s power is active and real. That is something we need to remember when poor decisions or hardened opinions cause divisions in our family that seem unsolvable, when we realize that our health is failing and are not sure how to cope, when we look at the economic injustice and the violent aggression of our world and are tempted to think that nothing can change it.
God can change it. And God has promised to do so—not in some magical way like waking up some morning to discover that all the evil of the world has evaporated. God will change it in God’s way and in God’s time, working in our hearts and in the hearts of others, influencing the levers of power in our economic and political systems and moving them closer to justice and peace.
This is what you and I as Christians are challenged to believe. This is what today’s gospel assures us is true. Only God can shake the powers of heaven—and God has promised to shake them for us.