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Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will never pass away.
Salvador Dali, the great surrealist artist of the last century,
created probably the most iconic painting of the resurrection.
It is called the cruxificion of St. John of the Cross.
Let me point out a few things.
First, it has unbloodied body of Christ,
which for a Spanish artist would have been very unusual.
The position of Jesus on the cross is like
he is holding the whole universe in his arms
as he gathers the universe which is below.
Below there are lots of soft colors.
The sky is blue, but has hues of green and brown.
And the water is calm.
There is a fishing boat, which is empty, calmly at the shore
with the fishermen disembarking.
There is this strange sort of feeling when you look at this art.
The boat is consoling when you look at the calmness of the water
and then haunting when you see this image of the crucified Christ.
It is a deliberate play between haunting and consoling.
The reason why I show you this is that
I think of this image when I read apocalyptic literature
that we hear in today’s readings.
Our first reading is from Daniel and
it is written in apocalyptic language.
Also today we are hearing from the end of Mark’s Gospel
which is also apocalyptic language.
None of us read the apocalyptic style language today.
It is not a genre we use anymore.
But it has this sense of erriness at the same time.
It has a sense of consolation.
It is meant to both console and desolate us.
And the language is meant to disturb our thinking.
Most of this was written in the times of persecution.
When Mark wrote his gospel, Jesus had died.
They were being persecuted as early Christians.
When the book of Daniel was written, they were in exile.
They were being persecuted as Jews.
And it is the same language used to try and rise up;
that in despite of the darkness in our lives,
God will always be there ministering to us
that even though the sky will fall,
the moon will not have much light.
You are still my words and he says
my words will not pass away.
That God and Christ are love which is eternal.
That is the consolation and is what we are meant to be left with,
this consoling message is that “I have got this,
I have got the whole world in my hands.
You do not need to worry even in the midst of suffering and pain.”
It is a good reminder.
We will be hearing this until we get to the end of our liturgical year;
next week is the end of the liturgical year.
That is why we are reading this apocalypse language;
we are meant to receive this reminder
before we head into the advent season,
which is the beginning of a new liturgical year.
We are reminded of how transient life is, how fragile it is.
And at the same time when we get sick
and we get wounded or we get very ill,
it is then we become very clear how transient life is.
If you have ever been very sick or had a loved one very sick,
suddenly everything becomes clear that all things fall away,
except what is most important.
Now, look, sickness and death are not the only things
that could bring this to us, right?
Sometimes, some incident happens and it wakes us out of it.
I had one of those happen this week.
My niece in in Utah was driving along I- 80
and one of those trucks carrying cars,
dropped one of the cars and it rolled into her
and took her off the freeway.
She spun out of control and flipped over in the car.
Fortunately she was wearing her seatbelt and
her dog was in one of those bulletproof containers for dogs.
Both her and the dog walked out with no injuries.
When you look at the car,
you would think it is not possible for anyone to live.
But she gets away with just a couple bruises from her seatbelt.
Just a sharp reminder of how transient life is,
one minute you are driving along,
next minute, boom, the car flies off the road
and you are taken out and your life could be gone.
Never take life for granted.
And we do.
What today’s reading is trying to do is to wake us up.
It says, ‘Listen, look, stop, take it. Pay attention.”
Jesus is saying, “Wake up, wake up. I am always here.
But pay attention to me.
Pay attention now. I am here.
Do not wait till the end times. I am here now.”
So what are we called to do in this time?
The only way I know how to do this,
and I know I sound like a broken record,
is we have to pause and pray.
We have to take the time to stand back
and look at the instance of our life
and see how fragile life is and how precious it is;
to be grateful for what we have.
Even if our health is slowly declining in old age,
we still say “Thank you Lord for the gift of life.
Thank you Lord for the gift of friends and love in my life.
Thank you Lord for the gift of faith
that I can see you in my every day.”
Let us wake up, let us take note.
God has got us all in his world, in his hands,
but let us pay attention and be grateful
to God for all that he has given us.
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will never pass away.
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