AND THEN
David Orendorff · Mark 13:24-27 · November 19, 2006
Some of you will remember how in the oaters of the old west there would be a terrible crisis, a falsely accused settler's family, a widow whose son was in trouble, an evil man destroying the town and the people, AND THEN help came from an unexpected source, a stranger who risked all and inspired the downcast, the broken, the oppressed, to victory? Some of you will remember the Lone Ranger, Hop-a-long Cassidy, and the Cisco Kid. And Bill Hoppe would remind me that each of them had a sidekick, they were not alone.
I remember when I was a child that I believed in miraculous rescues. I believed my mother and my father could save me from the sidewalk scrapes, the bullies at school, from the angry teacher, from all the evils that plagued my young life. I even dressed up with my Roy Roger’s six shooters, or with a towel as a cape and pretended I was one. I believed that things could be bad, very bad, AND THEN help came.
This is the belief that Mark's gospel wants us to hang onto for the coming days when Jesus will be betrayed, arrested, ridiculed, tortured and killed. What Mark and the early church firmly believed that no matter how terrible things are there is always an “AND THEN” when help comes. Jesus says to his followers:
But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. AND THEN they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. AND THEN he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.1Mark 13:24-27
Then I grew up. I found out that the movie heroes were just actors and that my parents couldn’t always help. I discovered that I couldn't always help others and the guns and cape didn’t help. I grew up in an age when likely heroes like John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. Friends died in a war I didn’t believe in. I found myself on the wrong side of my nation. Kind and gentle people were ridiculed, tormented, persecuted and killed because they didn't have the right politics, they weren't the right color or didn't fall in love the way others did.
By the time I was in college I was a sceptic. I mocked any faith that included AND THEN as naive and foolish. For in those days the heroes were all dead and the innocent were dying, and there was no God stopping it. I called those who believed in AND THEN fools and cowards. To trust life to AND THEN (wherever it might come from) was to be historically and intellectually dishonest. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew that AND THEN only happened sometimes and couldn’t be counted on. Sometimes life just killed you and that was that.
I turned to myself as my own hero and savior. I became selfish in the truest sense of the word since I was all about protecting me without trusting there was any help.
I got older still. Now some young whipper snappers might even call me old. My selfishness didn’t protect me but instead made me a miserable cynic and somewhat paranoid. Things happened to me that were beyond my control; things that could destroy my marriage, my children, my career, myself. I had failures that were mine and some that were not mine. I was accused of things I didn't do and some I did. The sun was dark, the moon didn’t shine, and the stars fell from the sky. I came to know that I was not the center of the universe and that my own small abilities cursed with my own weaknesses were no match for the sadness, disaster and evil the world could give. I even discovered I couldn’t always help myself.
Now that I am older, the faith of my childhood comes to me with the knowledge of my age and there is born in me a new faith. This new faith takes the evils of life quite seriously because they do kill. They kill strangers who hunger and thirst daily for bread and drink. They kill children with parents who neglect and abuse, with war and poverty. They kill body and worse, they kill soul.
And I take the power I have been given to solve problems and give aid quite seriously. I can’t do everything but I can do something.
But in my advanced age, I have also again come, like a child, to believe in AND THEN. I believe this not because I can prove it or because I can call it up at my will. I believe in AND THEN because whenever I have fallen to my knees in utter desperation and surrender before God AND THEN has come. Most often it was not the AND THEN I wanted or expected but came as stranger, surprise and wonder, but it was the AND THEN of my salvation never-the-less. As I look back over my life I see it filled with AND THENs of grace. I can tell stories of where AND THEN has saved my carrier, my parenting, many a relationship and my health. But I want to share you my love life, which is the most important part of my life, and how AND THEN saved me.
I dated Karen most of High School and we talked of getting married sometime during college. But then toward the end of our senior year in High School she dumped me. I fell apart and had a tough time finishing school. I had lost interest in any future.
As a sophomore in college, I was in love with Sandy. We were to be married that summer. I took the lessons to the Mormon Church because Sandy was Mormon and I loved her. Then the Mormon missionaries rejected me, saying I was a black sheep, telling Sandy that our marriage would be no good for her or for me. And Sandy listened and one month before our wedding she dumped me. I was devastated. I thought seriously of suicide. I wanted to be dead because being dead was better than living dead. I swore off love forever.
AND THEN in my senior year of college came Vickie and for 36 years it has been Vickie. She loved me in spite of my past failures. She loves me in spite of my present failures. She loves me. Now I am certain that when death comes and Vickie and I are parted, there will be yet another AND THEN in which love reigns for us.
Every time I thought the world had ended, the world went on AND THEN love came again, the sun would be brilliant, the moon glow to make shadows and the stars returned to their proper places.
My return to trusting AND THEN will never be as easy as it was when Roy Rogers and Dale Evans rode the range in Clarabelle. The easy belief of a child in the years of growing up has been confronted with the tragedy of being an adult. If I am to have faith, absolute faith in AND THEN, then it has to be shaped out of a growing experience of evil and an ultimate need for help.
Paul, in one of my favorite passages, describes an aware trust in God’s AND THEN this way:
For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.2Romans 8:38
At my present age my faith is a blend of knowledge of the world’s real evil and a confidence that every world ending is met with a divine AND THEN. Teachers can be the AND THEN for their children. Those who work for peace and justice for the least of God's children and the full health of God' world, whether it be where and how they work, or where and how they volunteer, are the AND THEN for many. And when our AND THENs are not enough, when the evil is beyond our meager efforts, then there is a divine AND THEN, a surprise ending, a serendipitous moment, a miracle, that raises the dead and feeds the hungry, a miracle that returns us to love even when we die.
I have come to count upon the AND THEN for my family, for the church, and for the world. God is with us as Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. What I believe now, what I know now, is that God cares and to every evil God reacts, making good even from this, making hope where only fools would hope, bringing to all creation, even death, the next AND THEN.
In two weeks we begin Advent, the season in which we prepare for the great AND THEN. For to a world in which darkness reigned was born a baby. This baby did not look anything like the AND THEN for which the people prayed. But it was the baby that would bring healing, hope, faith and love, the AND THEN that would never end.
Believe then, with me, that when the sun is dark in our life and world, it is time for God's great AND THEN to come. In the night, when the moon has gone and it is darkest and coldest, we watch for the great AND THEN. God does not fail us.
Shalom and Amen.