Daniel 12:1-3
“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”
Mark 13:1-8
As [Jesus] came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
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What’s the worst that could happen?
It’s the question that you ask with a nervous laugh before you strap yourself into the roller coaster with your nephew. It’s the question you ask as you send off your résumé to your dream job. It’s the question you ask when you decide to try drive your little hatchback up a very snowy hill instead of taking a flatter route.
What’s the worst that could happen?
In the movies, it seems like it is always the reckless, tough, arrogant-but-loyal friend of the main character who asks this question. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asks with a glint in her eye, as she jumps off of that impossibly tall building. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asks as he jumps into the fray to wrestle an impossible number of foes, or a bunch of dinosaurs. “What’s the worst that could happen?” they murmur as they push the mysterious button that might either save the world or blow it up.
What’s the worst that could happen?
It’s a privileged question, when you think about it. We really only ask it when we feel pretty certain that the worst thing won’t actually happen. This question only gets written into movie scenes where you already know that the good guys are going to win. It’s a question that you can only ask when there is still space for humor; when you can afford to be a bit cavalier; when there is some distance between your current reality and your worst fear.
You don’t ask “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” when the “worst thing” is your reality. You don’t ask the question when the cancer diagnosis might be real. You don’t ask it when wildfires are destroying your neighborhood and your house and the very air you breathe. You don’t ask it when a gunman opens fire on a synagogue or a yoga studio.
In those moments, the question is not, “What is the worst thing that could happen?” The question is, “What now?”
For Daniel, he and his people are in exile, threatened at each turn by the reign of evil kings and by the tumultuous rise and fall of kingdoms around them; a world in which God’s people are either in danger of being oppressed into oblivion or crushed outright by the violence of the kingdoms warring around them. There is no future. The worst has happened. What now?
For Jesus, he is just days from his own painful and unjust suffering and death, and his disciples’ lives are already being threatened, and the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans is inevitable, and God’s people are going to repeat all over again the fear and occupation and despair of the Babylonian exile of their history. The empire is going to kill God-in-the-flesh and take down God’s people. The worst has happened. What now?
For Mark, recording these words of Jesus at a few years’ distance, he is living out the reality that Jesus foretold. He is living during the destruction of Jerusalem. He and all the faithful are living under threat and persecution. They have a front-row seat to the warring of nations and empires. Jesus promised that his life, death, and resurrection would be good news for the world. Except that everything around them is so very, very bad. The worst has happened. What now?
For some of us, we live at this threshold, staring down the worst thing which has become a real thing. A deep grief realized. The paralyzing power of anxiety. The painful eroding of a relationship beyond the point of no return. Loss, so much great loss, of dignity or of means. A pile-up of bad things on top of worse things on top of terrible things, just too much. Too, too much. The worst has happened. Is happening. What now?
For Daniel and for Mark and for Jesus and for us, these “what now” moments, when the worst thing is our present reality, are moments of apocalypse, grand or small. Meaning that they are moments of uncovering, moments of revelation, moments of reckoning.
The story of God, from the very beginning, is a story of order being birthed from chaos and light being called out from dark; freedom being led forth from slavery; the promised land waiting on the far side of the wilderness; forgiveness spring forth from deserts of unfaithfulness; healing and wholeness being drawn out of weakness; life itself rising up out of death.
And so in all moments of apocalypse and destruction, we cling to a God who has proved, time and time again, that on the far side of this world’s impossibility stands God’s infinite possibility.
This is why the working vocabulary of our Christian faith includes words like hope and resurrection and new creation and restoration and the kingdom of God and the reign of Christ. Because our story of faith has always been a story of God, working beyond whatever the final boundary, to establish and reestablish goodness and to vanquish evil.
But don’t be mistaken. Hope and resurrection are not the same as happy endings. And faith in Christ is not insurance against bad things happening in our lives. We sometimes think of faith as something that will “make everything okay” or we believe that “everything happens for a reason” or that God works out everything for good, or that somehow, for those who believe, pain isn’t really pain or fear isn’t really fear or death isn’t really death.
The power of hope and resurrection and the reign of Christ comes precisely because pain is real and fear is real and death is real and sometimes, there is no way to “make everything okay” because things are really really not okay. And God is still bigger.
The apocalyptic promise of God’s goodness defeating all evil is a not a cheapening of suffering or even a feel-good redemption of it. For Daniel and for Mark and for Jesus, they were not trying to feel better about their struggles or sugar-coat the devastation of their present reality. Apocalypse takes seriously the wars and the rumors of wars and the toppling of kingdoms and the crumbling of buildings and the quaking of the earth. And then trusts that, on the far side, God will still reign and goodness will still vanquish evil. And that that, on the far side of despair, there is hope. And that that, on the far side of death, there is resurrection.
The promise of God - the meaning of both apocalypse and resurrection - is that after all has been destroyed, after the worst has happened, when there is no good left to brighten the sky, no more breath to animate life, nothing left but rubble and ashes, the defeated and broken body of our hopes, our dreams, our faith in God or in one another: at this point, beyond all hope, good can still win. Life can still rise from the ashes. Water can spring forth from the desert.
The poet Rumi writes:
There is a necessary dying,
and then Jesus is breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground. Be crumbled,
so wildflowers will come up
where you are.
When you have been ground down, and when the earth has crumbled; when the buildings have been pulled down, stone by stone, when the rocks and the foundations have slipped away into the depths of the sea; when everything has been broken, and I mean really broken, and you can no longer look for hope in the midst of the brokenness but instead cling to a more desperate hope that there might be good despite it all: this, my friends, is the moment where Jesus breathes a first breath all over again in the lonely dark of the tomb. This is where wild crocuses begin to sprout in the desert. This is where flowers are born, where wildflowers come up.
There is a necessary dying.
But then,
rising.
There is a necessary despair.
But then,
hope.
There is a necessary darkness.
But then,
after the worst thing,
after the smoke clears,
after the rubble settles,
after you open your eyes again,
there,
beyond it all,
will be light.