Are You Ready?

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, March 21, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Mark 13:1-37.

            We’ve talked before about how we see a lot of things going on right now that we don’t think are the way they should be.  Seeing all this stuff has caused some people to wonder:  are we living in the end times?

            Well, I don’t know.  I’m not saying that to evade the question, nor am I asking it to imply an answer.  I simply do not know.  Jesus said, “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  But I will tell you this:  if we are in the end times, we’re just in the beginning of them.  Because Jesus says things are going to be a whole lot worse than what we’ve experienced so far.

            Jesus is describing what’s going to happen to his disciples.  He does not paint a pretty picture.  Listen again to some of what he says.  “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.”  “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child.  Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.”  And Jesus says, this is just the beginning.  It’s going to get even worse after that.  “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.  The stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

            And Jesus’ followers are not going to be exempt from all this.  In fact, the way it sounds, Jesus’ followers are going to get the worst of it.  Jesus says, “You must be on your guard.  You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues.”  He says they will be arrested and brought to trial.  And then Jesus says, “Everyone will hate you because of me.”

            I wonder what the disciples thought, when they heard Jesus say all this.  We’re they scared?  Were they anxious?  Did they wonder if they could really withstand all this?  Or were they confident, believing that they could and would stand up for Jesus?  Were they ready to be beaten and even die on behalf of Jesus if that was what God required of them?

            And how do we feel, hearing all this?  Because if the end times are beginning, then it seems likely that, at some point, what Jesus said about his followers will apply to us, too.  There are places in the world where Christians are jailed, or even killed, because of their faith.  We like to think that could never happen here, and to be honest I cannot envision it happening here.  But, when the end times do come, whenever that is, even Christians in small towns in South Dakota are not going to be exempt from the consequences of it.  

            What would we do, in that situation?  Would we be able to stand up for Jesus?  Would you or I be ready to be beaten, or even die, on behalf of Jesus?

            I don’t know whether we can really answer that question unless we’ve been in that situation.  After all, it’s easy to say we would, when we don’t really expect to be put to the test.  It’s only when we are put to the test that we can know for sure.

But that does not mean we should just drop the subject and move on.  In fact, we should do just the opposite.  Because, after telling the disciples that only God the Father knows when the end times will come, Jesus said this:  “Be on guard!  Be alert!”  In fact, Jesus says, it’s precisely because we don’t know when the end times will come that we need to be ready all the time.  If we knew, maybe we could afford to wait until just before it happened to get ourselves ready.  But we don’t.  So we need to be ready now.  Because we don’t have any guarantee that the end times will not come now.

            How do we do that?  I think the way we do it is to get and stay as close to God as we can.  I think the way we do it is to take our faith very seriously.

            Now, in saying that, I’m not saying that you don’t take your faith seriously.  I’m sure many of us do.  It’s not for me to judge how seriously you take your faith.  But I think a lot of us, definitely including me, could take our faith more seriously than we do.

            I think it starts with prayer.  Now, I don’t doubt that most people here, maybe everyone here, prays.  And that’s good.  But I suspect some of us could go deeper in our prayer life than we should.  

            How often are we truly honest with God?  How often do we tell God everything about what we’re going through?  How often do we tell God our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our worries, our concerns?  How often do we thank God for all God’s blessings, share with God our joys, tell God all the things that are on our minds and in our hearts?

            And then, after we’ve said that, how often do we open our minds and hearts so we can hear God’s response?  After we’ve prayed, do we really turn the things we prayed about over to God?

            Maybe you do.  Again, I’m not judging you.  That’s not my point.  But for those of who don’t, or who maybe sometimes do and sometimes don’t, it’s something we need to work on.  Really praying deep, honest prayers is one of the best ways we can really start to feel close to God and feel God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts and in our minds.  It’s one of the best ways we can get ourselves ready, as Jesus told us to.

            Another way to get ready and take our faith seriously is to read the Bible.  Now, I’m not suggesting you have to read the whole Bible cover to cover.  I mean, if you want to, that’s fine.  My guess is that some of you probably have.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with doing it.  But I don’t know that it’s the best way to get started if we really want to take our faith seriously.

I think the best way to start would be to read the words of Jesus.  The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, give us the words of Jesus Christ.  They tell us how Jesus wants us to live.  They tell us what our attitude should be toward God.  They tell us what our attitude should be toward others.  

Again, I know many of you do read the Bible regularly.  But I cannot think of a better way to get closer to God than to read the words of Jesus and take them seriously.  I cannot think of a better way for us to get ourselves ready for whatever may come than to live our lives the way Jesus told us to live them.  Loving God.  Loving our neighbors.  Treating others as we’d like them to treat us.  Sharing the gospel.  Going and making disciples.  If we do those things, we will find ourselves closer to God than we’ve ever been.

            Another way to get ready and to take our faith seriously is to spend time with other people of faith.  Our faith will not grow in a vacuum.  We need other people to support us.  And we need to support them.  We all need the encouragement of others, and others need our encouragement.  After all, even Jesus did not try to live his life alone.  Neither did the disciples.  They had each other, and they needed each other.  We all need each other.  

            One of the ways to do that, of course, is to be here in church.  But there are other ways.  You can be in a Bible study.  You can be in a small group.  You can even do this online.  But somehow, in some way, we need to others to support us in our faith.  That support is needed to keep our faith strong, and it’s only by keeping our faith strong that we’ll be ready the way Jesus told us to be.

            Now, if we’re serious about this, it’s going to take a commitment.  And one of the ways we make that commitment is with time.  It’s not like we can do this stuff once, for a few minutes, and there we have it.  It takes time.  I’m not suggesting that you spend every waking moment doing these things.  That’s not practical.  But they do take time.  And if you’re like me, you’re not going to just magically have the time.  You’re going to have to find the time.  My suggestion is that you put it into your daily schedule somehow.  But if that does not work for you, then I encourage you to find a way that does work.  Because it does take a time commitment to do all these things.

            It may seem like it’s not easy.  But there are benefits.  For one thing, we’ll have God’s Holy Spirit with us.  Jesus told the disciples, and he tells us, that if we stay close to God, then when our faith gets us into trouble, we don’t need worry about how to handle it.  He says, “Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.”

            And the other benefit is that we will be among the saved.  Jesus says that, when he comes in his glory, the angels will gather his people “from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”  No matter what may happen, through our faith in Jesus, we will be okay.  We will be among God’s people, gathered for the Lord.

            Again, I have no idea whether we’re in the beginning of the end times.  But it’s precisely because we don’t know that we need to be ready.  If we are, if we stay close to God and keep our faith strong, we have nothing to worry about.  We can withstand whatever may happen.  God’s Holy Spirit will be with us.  And we will be saved.