Thought for the Day - The Beginning and the End

The Course of Empire: Destruction, Thomas Cole, 1836

A Thought for the Day given at a lunchtime service of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 29th April 2025 based on the text of Mark 13.5-13

Our gospel reading today forms the start of what some call the “Little Apocalypse”. As well as recording the longest speech by Jesus in the whole of Mark’s gospel, it’s a passage that may reveal something about the people who first heard the text, whose writer the church remembers today.

While sitting on the Mount of Olives, looking back across the valley towards Jerusalem, shortly before the start of the sequence of events that would lead to his death on the cross, Jesus describes to his disciples the beginning of the end. Drawing on vivid images of collective and individual suffering inflicted by war, famine and natural disasters.

There are many around the world who are in the midst of such trouble and sorrows right now. Experiencing - physically, mentally or spiritually what seems like the beginning of the end. 

The only time I have encountered anything remotely close to the scenes of panic and chaos that Jesus describes was while on my way to work on July 7th 2005. An announcement was made ordering us off a Piccadilly Line train at Kings Cross. I didn’t realise then that 450m further down the track many people had just been killed and severely injured as a result of a terrorist bomb attack on the train in front. My recollection of that moment is that time became elastic – it seemed to stretch. One minute everything happening in slow motion, the next, events unfolding at a rate of knots – like a rubber band snapping back to shape. My first thought was that all the smoke and dust that had streaked some people’s faces, was coming from a fire in the station - recalling the fire there in the late eighties - the worst in the history of the underground.  

 

Others must have thought the same - and in order to fight this potential fire, bottles of water were being rolled down the middle of the escalator from the shops above. I can still picture these bottles - vividly - bouncing towards me and ricocheting off the “stand on the right” signs, as if in slow motion, as we tried to walk up the static escalator two abreast as fast as we could.  

 

By the time I got outside, hundreds of people had gathered outside the station, standing around bewildered - unsure what had happened. It was like a scene from a disaster movie. As I surveyed the crowd, time seemed to slow once again and at that moment - somehow my eyes met with those of a colleague from work - one face among hundreds. We managed to push our way towards each other. And we slowly came to learn about the tragedy, as we overheard news reports and conversations as we made our way to the office on foot.

 

My recollection of the events on that day twenty years ago – the perception of time as ‘elastic’ – of the weaving together of the memory of previous disasters - real and imagined – is not an uncommon response for those processing the experience of a traumatic event.

 

And we can find traces of this in the text Mark’s “Apocalypse”, which many believe dates from a time when Christians were being persecuted in Rome - perhaps even written with them in mind.

 

The way Mark tells the story of Jesus in this, probably the earliest of the four gospel accounts, could have been influenced by a desire to offer hope to this faithful community - to whom we owe so much, for keeping the flame of our faith alive. 

 

Following in the ancient tradition of apocalyptic writing, the passage elasticates time – giving descriptions of persecution and suffering that may well have been already happening at the time Mark was writing – linking these to predictions of events yet to come, before the timeline snaps back to the present. The text draws heavily on what would have been well known descriptions of events that will herald the end of the world, from Old Testament prophecies in Isaiah and the Book of Daniel. But whereas these envisage hope in the form of a dramatic “top down” rescue of God’s chosen people, the great “Messianic Secret” – that lies at the heart of the structure of Mark’s gospel - is that this hope arrives not through a display of power but one of apparent powerlessness. Our salvation comes not as a divine take-over of tyrannical earthly rulers but a taking-into a renewed relationship between God and all people, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Those who hear Jesus’s words as recorded by Mark then and now are encouraged to persevere - to endure the suffering and pain they experience both individually or collectively. 

 

To make sense of this trauma, not by becoming paralysed by anxiety and fear - caught up in dramatic fantasies fuelled by previous events real and imagined; but by finding meaning in our relationship with Jesus in the present.

 

Whenever we feel we are facing the beginning of the end - however this may manifest in our lives - may we find strength in the one who is the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

 

Image : The Course of Empire: Destruction, Thomas Cole, 1836


Prayers

From our Gospel reading: “and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them.And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations”.

Almighty God, Lord of Lords, King of Kings,
We give thanks for the revealed truth of your gospel.
We pray for all those who witness to it especially those called to testify in the face of adversity and under threat of persecution.  
We ask for your blessing on the good estate of the church worldwide that it may be guided always by your Spirit; remembering especially those with responsibility for selecting new leaders of the church militant here on earth.
Grant each of us the courage to share the Good News of your risen Son with those we meet. To stand up for truth and justice. To acknowledge you as our Lord and Saviour.

Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer

“Do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.”

Almighty God, who spake the world into being and by whose Word it was saved;
may our tongues be guided by your Holy Spirit this day;
that we might respond with thy words of love wherever we find hatred;
declare peace wherever we encounter discord. 
May your eternal Word be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
In the name of thy Living Word, Jesus Christ,

Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer

“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.”

Loving God, we pray for the relief of all those affected by famine, natural disaster and violence between nations;
For the people suffering today in the Holy Land, in Ukraine, in Myanmar, Sudan and Yemen.
For all who feel at the beginning of the end.
For those who are known to us sick in mind, body and spirit.
For those mourning the loss of loved ones.
For all who have asked for our prayers and for those whose names are unspoken but written on our hearts.
May the healing presence of your risen Son be revealed to them all.

Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer