Things end

This is my homily for today, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.

The word “gospel” means “good news”.  But Jesus talks about things today which may not make us feel good: they may leave us anxious and frightened.  But there is good news in today’s Gospel as well.  Let’s see if we can find it together.

Jesus waxes apocalyptic today to point out something that most of us would rather not think about: things end.  “All good things come to an end”, says the proverb.  It’s a proverb tinged with sadness: when things are good, we don’t wish them to end.  Yet, end they do.  The optimist might feel compelled to add, “… ah, but all bad things come to an end, too.”  And that also is true.  The things of this world, whether good or bad, don’t last.

Things end.  Even lives end.  Earlier this week, I attended the funeral of one of my dad’s cousins.  Her name was Betty.  Her life on earth ended the previous week.  She was older than my dad, who is 85, so she must have been in her late 80s.  At her funeral, I spoke with her children, who are about my age: our families were close when we were kids.  As you might expect, her kids and grandkids were grieving at Betty’s passing.  How terrible it is to lose parents: all that accumulated wisdom, and all that unconditional love, seemingly gone.  Without a parent to advise us and love us, we have to make our way through our own lives without their wisdom and guidance.  It can feel as though the North Star has fallen from the sky, and we have to navigate in the dark.  

Things end.  For thousands of years, sailors really have navigated by the stars.  And yet, in our Gospel today, Jesus tells us of a time to come when even the stars will fall from the sky.  Astrophysicists agree with the son of God: even the stars don’t last forever.  The astronomer Carl Sagan used to point out that our bodies are molded from the clay of the earth, and the earth in turn is made from the materials that originated in stars which already have lived and died.  Sagan said, We’re made of star-stuff.  Like the stars themselves, our bodies don’t last forever: they die.

Let’s stay with this celestial theme for a moment.  Listening to today's Gospel passage, we may be disconcerted when Jesus foretells that even the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give light.  While we may not think about it very often in our busy lives, there is a deep and essential relationship between ourselves and those two orbs of light.  

Is anything more primal to human experience than the sun and the moon?  The anthropologist Joseph Campbell, in one of his books, compiles a list of the things which are universal to human being: experiences and knowledge which are shared by all cultures everywhere.  Near the top of his list is the moon: he calls it a “silver dish of wonder”.  Ancient cultures have worshiped the moon as a god.  The moon’s gravity alternately pulls and relinquishes its hold on our seas here on earth, creating the tides.

As for the sun, it is even more critical to our existence.  The sun’s energy, filtered through our atmosphere, provides just the right amount of warmth to sustain life on our planet.  And the sun provides the raw material for photosynthesis, which is essential to the interwoven tapestry of plant and animal life here on earth.  We can’t live without the sun.

Consider, too, how we mark our time in this life.  Our days are alternating patterns of light and darkness, day and night, as the sun is revealed and then obscured by our planet’s rotation.  Our months are derived from the cycles of the moon as it waxes and wanes.  And our years are measured by our planet’s orbit around the sun.  Our grasp of time itself is rooted in sun and moon.  Yet Jesus foretells that they will go dark.  Today, Jesus is talking, literally, about the end of time.

Things don’t last – they end.  Betty’s children had her in their lives, until her life ended.  Even the sun, a few billion years from now, will swell to such a large size, as a red giant, that it will devour Mercury and Venus, and render the earth uninhabitable.  

Yes, it seems all things end.  We may be left wondering, “Is there nothing permanent in our lives and circumstances?  Is everything fleeting?  Does everything end?”  

And our answer, rooted in faith and hope, is: There are persons who are truly permanent. The person of God the Father, who created the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth, and also created us, is permanent.  He doesn’t end.  The person of his son Jesus is permanent.  Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that his words will outlast everyone and everything: they will not pass away.  The person of the Holy Spirit is as permanent as Father and Son.

Even we are permanent.  It is true that we’ll die, and even the world we live in will die, but even then, our souls will not be destroyed.  And what’s more: somehow, in some way, our bodies will be reconstituted in the future, at the resurrection of the dead.  Even death, which feels so much like the ultimate end, is not the end for us.

Jesus promises us today that no matter what cataclysms may befall us, he will not forget us.  He promises that he will come in the clouds, as a deity, in great power and glory, and will gather us together.  Jesus will rescue us.  He will save us.  He is our savior.  

When our parents had us baptized, or when we chose as adults to be baptized, we were given a gift beyond price, because that sacrament marked us spiritually as followers of Jesus.   When Jesus sends his angels to the four winds to gather us in, they will find us by that mark.   We’ve been indelibly stamped as being among those whom Jesus will never forget, no matter what disasters befall us.  

Our lives won’t always be easy and comfortable for us.  On the contrary, Jesus’s words today about tribulation help us to understand that very bad things can happen to us, on a vast scale or in a small and individual way.  Even if the world doesn’t end during our lifetimes, the things that keep us happy and contented don’t last.  Our health and well-being don’t last, our material prosperity doesn’t follow us beyond death, and the people whom we love, like our parents, may not live as long as we do.  What Jesus promises today is that, when things end, he will never forget us.  His love for us lasts, beyond these tribulations.  

Jesus is the anchor in life’s storm.  Jesus is the morning star which doesn’t darken.  Jesus is the North Star which never falls from the sky.  Jesus is our rock.  If we wish to cling to something or someone who doesn’t end, let us cling to Jesus.

Jesus loved us to the very end of his own life on earth.  And he tells us today that he will continue to love us to the very end of our own lives, and the very end of everything around us.  *Almost* all good things come to an end: Jesus’s love for us never ends.