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Oh Lord! Uphold me, that I'm a uplift the Amen. Okay, Every fall in the Tuesday , you careerists in this chapel throughout the semester, the people preaching in this pulpit are with almost no

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exceptions, faculty members and every fall, the faculty chooses a theme around which to organize their preaching this fall. The theme is a new heaven and a new earth proclaiming. S scatological and apocalyptic texts.

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The faculty also knows that because I'm always the person who preaches at this particular opening service, the first service of the academic year. I am therefore the first one to swing at whatever the theme is.

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And to be honest with you, sometimes I get a little paranoid, not often, mind you, just every year in this moment, proclaiming, s scatological and apocalyptic texts, I looked all these words

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up. Mhm. One of them has six syllables . I wouldn't blame you if you weren't familiar with them. They are words which many of us associate with street corner preachers, hellfire and brimstone preachers,

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preachers who are accustomed to getting in your face and making you uncomfortable. We once had a legendary theology professor here, back in the 60s and early 70s . He was scary, smart, astonishingly quick witted

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. This was back when at university campuses and in the culture in general, there were lots of jesus people, jesus freaks, we sometimes called them, they would pass out literature at street corners, they

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would try to convert you, things like that. They didn't accept that if you were, say, an orthodox catholic or a mainline protestant, you were probably okay. No, they would press the point

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. If you died tonight, they would say where would you spend eternity, Things like that. One saturday afternoon, this theology professor was walking back to this campus from having been at a Ut football game

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and at a street corner not too far from this chapel, one of these jesus people accosted him. He got in his face and he said, I've got good news, brother jesus loves you. And

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so do I. To which the professor said, well half of that is good news. Okay, this is what we think about when we imagine proclaiming , s scatological and apocalyptic texts narrow minded and unsophisticated

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, they buttonhole people and they get in their faces with kind of a turn or burn end of the world proposition. And because we have these assumptions about this kind of literature, we write it off,

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we leave these themes to those cinderblock churches on the edge of town. But speaking for ourselves, we'd rather not read it, would rather not preach it , we'd rather not think about it. Which is

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a shame because first of all, it's in the bible, which means that we should take it seriously . And secondly, there's actually much to learn about our faith by examining and not ignoring these texts.

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Take our text tonight, from Mark's Gospel, Marcus writing just decades after the crucifixion and resurrection of jesus , and as he writes, Israel is being consumed by a rebellious war with Rome, Every apocalyptic street

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preacher in Jerusalem has a stake in that war. And some of the most effective preachers, essentially, fundamentalist zealots, are preaching the imminent victory of Israel and the humiliation of Rome things on the front have

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been going pretty well for them for a while. And so they're getting a little cocky as they predict the future God is fighting on our side, they're saying, and just as soon as we drive these

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romans out then we can do a little ethnic cleansing , we can draw some new lines, we can reestablish a divided kingdom and reinitiate God's reign, just as God meant it to be. And most importantly

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, we can elevate the jews again and get rid of the gentiles and their influence forever. That's the preaching on the street in March time. But Mark has a stake in this argument too, because the

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church community to whom he's writing is already mixed with jews and gentiles. He's presenting the jesus who has established this church as one who urges them against false prophets, who envision an exclusive faith community and is

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urging them instead toward the preaching of a bigger gospel , a gospel of inclusion, a gospel that in its wide nous makes way not just for jews, but for all sorts of people. So all across

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Chapter 13, which is kind of a mini apocalypse . The chapter that runs up to our text tonight . Mark is certainly thinking of his own context when he writes of Jesus, warning his listeners against misinterpreting

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the inevitable fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Mark 13 is peppered like nowhere else in Mark's Gospel, with Jesus's own apocalyptic preaching, beware that no one leads you astray says Jesus about those

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false prophets, and if anyone says to you at that time, look here is a messiah, or look there he is. Do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs

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and omens to lead astray if possible, the elect , but be alert. I've already told you everything . Beware. Keep alert for you. Do not know when the time will come and what I say

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to you, I say to all keep awake, watch out. Unlike other examples of apocalyptic language, Marks, language is rooted in an expansive word, not an exclusive word, moreover, when Mark's jesus

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encourages his followers to keep awake and watch, he's not just saying, keep an eye on things. He is at the same time encouraging to translate that watchfulness into active behavior. The watchfulness he's talking about

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is not just a matter of sort of taking a picture of something, it's also a matter of actively living toward that something, it's not just talking the talk, it's also walking the walk. And to

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illustrate all of that early in Chapter 14, Mark writes that two days before Passover, Jesus is in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, right on the cusp of his own passion when he has

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his last supper with his disciples and gets betrayed by judas and arrested and interrogated and ultimately crucified right there . In those days when he is being watched like a hawk by his enemies, Jesus not only talks

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to a leper, he goes to dinner at the lepers home. And just there, Mark introduces us to this bold, amazing woman who's apparently not afraid of anything as she breaks every boundary in the world

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to step onto that scene and to demonstrate what it looks like to live toward jesus own expansiveness. Out of nowhere, she crashes that dinner party at which presumably these men are talking about things far more important

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than her, anything she will do, And as she pours the costly perfume on his head, you can practically hear the disciples perk up in the background and say, keep awake, watch out what's going

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on, what's she up to? She is up to something obviously unreasonable, as brian blunt has put it without hesitation, she dumps what is apparently a year's worth of wages, money that could obviously have

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gone into mission onto jesus head. She has wasted a precious resource, But the attentive reader, The one who sees, knows that her unreasonable action fits right here, and this isn't a reasonable text.

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First, the leaders of God's people are trying to kill the emissary God has sent to lead them. Second, the emissary God had sent to lead a holy and pure people is sitting in the impure,

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unholy abode of a man marked by impurity. And third, there is this unnamed, unannounced, unanticipated woman flitting about friends. Keep an eye on this woman, because something s scatological is happening right here

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. A time is slowing down here so that the glimpse of the fullness of time can inform the mayor keeping of time. That's what s scatology really is . And it happens every day if we have the

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eyes to see it. This boundary breaking woman is penetrating this utterly unreasonable world in order to make the most faithful gesture she can make, and by doing that, to show us what it means to give

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ourselves, to give all of ourselves to jesus and his gospel. She's not just watching things, She's got her faithful i on God's victorious future and is at the same time walking toward the reality of God's

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reign in the present, which she has seen in jesus christ. There is nothing more important in our lives than walking that walk than living in the here and now on the strength of God's promised future.

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Our calling is to live like that so that the world can see the difference that such living makes. It is living now as though God's future is already a present reality. Because all evidence to the contrary

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it is this woman is already bearing witness by her extravagance to the lordship of her Lord. In a week he'll be dead on a cross, but in her witness, he is already the risen Lord,

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by none of the standards of this world does this , jesus, eating food prepared by a leper come close to resembling an s scatological messiah. But that doesn't matter to this woman because she sees everything and

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she sees it clearly. How would we be different if we can see that clearly, if we could watch and then move toward the moments like that in our lives? Mhm. It's often the case in

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my morning prayers each morning that I asked God, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this to you, but I'm just gonna put it out there that I asked God to send me some sign of God's presence

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in my life. It's probably not a very faithful thing to do. I mean, Christianity does not necessarily promise us a daily diet of such signs. Besides who's to say that I'm not already surrounded by

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signs all the time that I just don't notice. I mean, I'm the president of one of the finest seminaries in the world. I work with an astonishing faculty and staff. I love knowing and being

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with you students. I live well enough and I'm surrounded by beautiful and loving family. So how fair is it for me to be pestering God on a regular basis to send me a rainbow or a visit

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from my congressman or A donor calling me up to say I've got$15 million dollars burning a hole in my pocket. Can you use it? What I've discovered is that more often than not, God sends

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me more ordinary moments as if to challenge me to have the eyesight to notice them. Some of you saw as I did that recent film, 42 about Jackie Robinson, that amazing athlete, faithful methodist who

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broke the color barrier decades ago in Major League Baseball . On this side of his story, we acknowledge that Jackie Robinson is a spectacular historical figure, but from the point of view of where his story began

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, where this film begins, he was not spectacular at all. Breaking the color barrier was not easy , not in a world of white and colored restrooms , of locker rooms where Robinson himself didn't have a

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locker and was only comfortable showering when the rest of the team had finished showering of hotels when they were traveling. Which would not only not rent a room to Jackie Robinson, but would not rent a room

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to anybody on his team at spring training camp in Sanford florida, the same small town that more recently gave us George Zimmerman, the shooter of Trayvon martin . Jackie Robinson had to stay not with his team

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, but in the private home of generous african americans . And once, at least there his life was threatened. And then there were the games themselves. Good Lord! He was taunted with unspeakable words every

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time he went to bat, during one particularly brutal session of such taunting when Robinson's Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the philadelphia Phillies, he had been up at bad , and the words were horrible when his foul ball

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was caught so easily he ran in rage into the tunnel beneath the stadium. Re just dissolved into tears . The game was still going on, but the team's owner, Branch Rickey, also a devout methodist

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, found him there in that tunnel and stood with him there as he sobbed and witnessed to him, Robinson said, do you know what it's like? No, said Ricky, You do! You're the

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one living the sermon. 40 days in the Wilderness , Not a damn thing I can do about it , Robinson replied. Sure, there is, said Ricky. Get out there and hit branch, Rickey

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was saying to Jackie Robinson, Get out there and do what you do, do it as well as you can, and bear witness to the possibility that it can be done. That was a moment tinged

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with glimpses of what the future will look like when God is finished with it. And this is your moment. You're the ones living the sermon now. So do what you do. Do it as well

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as you can, and don't just watch for signs of God's presence, but also bear witness to the possibility that that presence can be summoned and embodied by someone like you. That's the s scatological message.

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That's what it means to live in s scatological hope , that's what it means to be. And s scatological church in the name of God creator, christ