Burning Down the House

This is the last Sunday in the lectionary cycle for the Gospel of Mark, and I wouldn’t say that it’s a happy ending. Mark is, as we have said often this year, a terse, action-packed telling of the ministry of Jesus Christ, apparently intended for an audience under persecution who needed the basics and assurance that their faith in Christ was well founded. So perhaps it is fitting that we close this cycle with a portion of the “little apocalypse,” or Jesus’ predictions about the end of the age. Again, it’s not pretty. But then, humans seem to be in a perpetual cycle of end-times and self-destruction. So the first reading today is a parallel passage from Daniel that also predicts the hardships that must be endured by the faithful. Maybe someday we’ll figure out that God’s way of generous community might be a better option.