When working on a computer and intensely engaged in a particular task, it can be a dangerous thing, to have too many windows open in a web browser. In one window, Facebook is open. In another, it’s your work email. In yet another, it’s a news media source. And no matter how hard we try to home our vision in on the project at hand, we are vulnerable to distractions. It can be difficult to know where our eyes should focus.
A new Facebook notification pops up. You suddenly notice that instead of 59 unread emails, you now have 60. A news source pings the latest update on the escalating migrant crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus. So much time is wasted on these other distracting windows while the current task remains unfinished and rather static.
There are variety of distracting images, like multiple windows on a computer screen, as Jesus describes an apocalyptic vision to his disciples. It’s difficult to know where our eyes should focus. Sitting across from the Jerusalem temple, Jesus has just offered an eerie prediction of the temple’s fate. His disciples now want some specific answers and a timetable for this prophecy of destruction. If Jesus is going to open this can of worms, can’t he at least give them more information?
But Jesus, in typical fashion, does not answer the disciples’ question, or at least not directly. And this question has continued to fascinate generations of people ever since Jesus uttered this “little apocalypse” in Mark’s Gospel. When will the world end? What signs will tell us that it’s all about to be over and Jesus is coming again?
Haven’t you asked this question? Did you ever eye a spooky horizon before a big thunderstorm as a kid, wondering if it was the end of the world? Did you ever think you were living through the end times, either during a war, major crisis, natural disaster, or pandemic?
So, why doesn’t Jesus answer his disciples’ reasonable question? Or could it be that Jesus doesn’t answer the question because there is no adequate answer. Knowing the answer, he seems to suggest, is not the point at all.
In one window of the future that Jesus describes, we see images of false prophets, roaming the globe, claiming to be the Messiah. In another window, we see news reports of brutal wars and looming reports of future crises threatening down the road. In yet another window, reports tell of an earthquake. And if we were to read on in Mark’s Gospel, an open window on the browser shows Jesus’s disciples being handed over to authorities and mistreated. In other open tabs, there is fighting between siblings and terrifying meteorological events.
To all this, Jesus offers a peculiar response: “Do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” It’s as if Jesus calmly places his hand on the computer mousepad and begins to close the windows in the browser. One by one they disappear. Jesus is not being insensitive or mean. He simply knows that all these distractions in the other windows, as real as they may be, detract from where our eyes should really be focused.
Maybe the open windows in our own mental and spiritual browsers are not of natural disasters or world wars. Maybe they are at times. But often they are just the seemingly small but insidious diversions of daily life. They are the culture wars in which we get embroiled. They are the petty conflicts within the Church, the quests to prove that our faction is right and the other is wrong. They are the distractions of deferred maintenance within the parish, which loom larger than calls to ministry. They are our human projects, our grand endeavors that convince us that God’s mission can only be accomplished by us, without acknowledging that, just like the temple, all our human projects will one day fall, too.
If we journey deeper within ourselves, we notice the ways in which sin and evil become distractions for us. Browser windows pop open, tempting us from the good. New tabs showcase our fears and anxieties that derail our focus in so many ways. And especially when we are oriented towards the good, the evil one himself knows that opening up one more accusing thought within our mind is exactly the way to divert us from the call of holiness. For when we are getting close to our holiest work, we are most vulnerable to the Accuser himself.
But as Jesus sits on the Mount of Olives, where he will pray alone before his death, he begins to close all the windows he has opened on the screen. Jesus is no fool. He is teaching his disciples. He is not denying the reality of what these open browser tabs portray. There would be wars. There would be conflict, natural disasters, and destruction. There are today, right now, escalating crises all over the globe and valid concerns about the state of our environment, not to mention our daily distractions of sin and self-doubt.
Jesus doesn’t close these windows in order to deny their existence. He closes them because he longs to focus our eyes on something that he considers to be vastly more important. It is something that will speak to every other open browser tab that vies for our attention and focus. Jesus leaves one window open, and it shows no dramatic scene or spectacle. It consists of a simple yet challenging command: go and proclaim the good news to all nations.
This is it. This, Jesus commands, is where our eyes should focus. This is where our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength should lie. Our sole objective as we seek to follow him is to proclaim the gospel to all nations. Anytime we undertake any project, any task, any endeavor, the question must be, “will it proclaim the gospel?” Anytime we direct our attention to a natural disaster, global crisis, or salient need among humankind, we must always ask ourselves how we will proclaim the gospel in the midst of these demands on our attention. What we say and do might challenge the status quo or it might simply affirm something already happening, but whatever the case, we have to stand for the gospel and not simply against something.
On the Mount of Olives, not long before his death, Jesus is fully aware that the going is about to get tough for his disciples. As he approaches his passion and death, his closest followers will begin to distance themselves from him because they are distracted by too many things. They have asked for clarity about so much—about Jesus’s teaching and preaching—and now, they want clarity on when the glorious consummation of all things will occur. But his disciples are looking at all the wrong windows. They are distracted by the signs when their eyes should be focused on the gospel that Jesus has shown them in his life.
We must ask ourselves, too, why so many distractions take our eyes off the good news of Christ. Is the gospel too subtle and nuanced, or does it speak too quietly for a noisy world? Are we overwhelmed by the gargantuan charge to proclaim this good news near and far? Are our silly divisions, gossipy Church talk, and institutional preoccupations simply far more compelling than the good news, which demands so much of us?
And this brings us back to the disciples’ initial question to Jesus and to the question we may very well be harboring ourselves. When will all these things be accomplished? If we can only prepare ourselves for the end and have some sense of clarity and finality, we will be ready to undertake our role in proclaiming the gospel.
But Christ’s gospel does not assert its power through triumphalism or eradication of everything that stands in its way. It does not claim its authority by force or brute strength. It, in fact, cannot be known as the gospel unless it is announced from within the situations of injustice, horror, and destruction that it denounces. That is how the gospel finds its meaning. The birth pangs of the new creation that God has established in Christ are always just beginning. We are always surrounded by death and from out of this death, new life is born.
Jesus closes, one by one, the open browser windows on our spiritual radar screen, because he knows that every disaster, breaking news event, and anxiety that demands our attention has the potential to steer our eyes away from the good news. But if we keep our eyes focused on Jesus’ gospel of peace and righteousness, everything else will fall into place, and Christ’s gospel will have something to say to every looming distraction open on the screen of our lives.
So, beware of the false prophets. Beware of the many distractions that the evil one will lob into your path to pull you from the good news. And know that, in an unsettled world of constant change and instability, Christ’s command rings loud and clear: keep your eyes focused on the gospel.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 14, 2021