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Welcome back to our Bible study on the Gospel of Mark. We're now in the temple where Jesus is teaching. We've seen the conflict growing, and we know where this is going to lead to. And at the end, at the end of chapter 12, we get one little episode. It's one little episode of light in the midst of all the challenges and all the people pursuing Jesus and trying to ensnare and entrap him. And it's a story of a widow who comes and she puts two copper coins in verse 41 and following of Mark 12. And there's other people putting in great sums of money into the treasury. And she comes and puts in two copper coins, which makes a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all those who contributed to the treasury, for they all contributed out of their abundance. But she, out of her poverty, put in everything. She had her whole bias, literally her whole life, which we translate livelihood, because that's kind of the meaning. But I like that idea of. I think there's a. A play on that word that she put in her whole life. Right. She gives everything. Now, of course, the contrast is with those who are giving a lot. And there was. There's something special Mark's doing here that I want to back up and keep to the big picture. And that is we're going to get in chapter 13 what is known as the eschatological discourse, which is a big Greek word, big theological word, eschatological. Right. What does that mean? Eschatology means the end things, the last things. And so it's going to be about the end of the temple. And in a sense, it's going to have a reference to the end of the world. Right. And that gets people interested. All right. Eschatology doesn't sound very exciting. But you say, oh, end of the world. I want to pay attention to that and find out what the signs and clues are for the end. So Jesus is going to talk about the end of the temple and perhaps the end of the world here. But framing that is a story of two women, the widow who gives her last penny in a contribution to God at the temple. Right. Contribution to the temple. Then in chapter 14, at the beginning of chapter 14, three and following, we're in the house of Simon the leper. And as Jesus is there, another woman comes and she's going to make a contribution. But she doesn't make it to the old temple like the widow. She makes it to the New temple. Who is Jesus and what does she do? Well, we're told at the house of Simon, in verse three of chapter 14, a woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment. Now, even the alabaster jar is very expensive and precious, which tells you that the contents are very expensive. Very expensive. A jar of ointment of pure nard, very costly. And she broke the jar and poured it over his head. But there were some there who said to themselves indignantly, why was this ointment thus wasted? For this ointment might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor. And they reproached her. But Jesus said, let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing for me. I love that Greek word kalon, which means. It means beautiful and noble. And that was one of Mother Teresa Calcutta's favorite verses. She would invite people to do something beautiful for the Lord. She wanted to imitate this woman. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial, right? And then it goes on. Truly, I say to you, what? Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her, even in Denver, right? So she's done something beautiful and noble. So what we have is two women, one who gives her last penny, another who gives a very costly. And she breaks open the alabaster jar. In other words, she's not going to hold any back. What a beautiful gift, that kind of giving to Jesus, where you hold nothing back, you risk it all. And that's what this woman does for Jesus. So in a sense, we have a contrast of two women's and two gifts and two temples. On the one hand, we have a widow who's giving her last penny to a temple that's bankrupt and about to be destroyed, as we're going to hear. And on the other hand, we have a woman who gives a very costly ointment, right, of pure nard. She breaks open to anoint Jesus body for burial. But that's not a waste, because Jesus will rise from the dead and her gift to this enduring, lasting Lord, to this enduring, lasting new temple will be preached and proclaimed throughout the world in memory of her for what she did in honor of Jesus. It's a beautiful contrast. And again we see this kind of Markan pattern where he sandwiches in between something. So the discourse against the temple that he's going to give on the Mount of Olives is sandwiched in between the widow and this other woman. Two gifts, two temples. And in between we hear of the end of the temple. So let's look at that briefly in chapter 13. Now this is tempting for me. This is the heart of my dissertation. So I could easily spend a 13 to 12. I could do a 12 part series just on this chapter. But don't worry, I won't. At least I hope I won't. I'll be able to be brief here. But as they came out of the temple, one of the disciples said to him, look, Rabbi, what wonderful stones. What wonderful buildings. Now the temple complex that Herod the Great had built was over a 31 acre campus. It wasn't just one building, it was a series of buildings. It was stunning. Herod had these gorgeous stones in these buildings. And maybe you see some of this when you look at the wailing wall today. And the wailing wall was just the retaining wall for the 31 acre campus. Those beautiful big Huronian stones you see at the bottom, they weren't any of the temple buildings. Those were even nicer stones. What you see on the wailing wall is simply the wall that's the retaining to hold the dirt for the 31 acre campus. Up above where the buildings were that were so beautiful, it was a great wonder, one of the wonders of the world and spectacular. And Jesus disciples are speaking in awe and wonder of these great buildings of the great temple. And Jesus responds, do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here. One stone upon another that will not be thrown down. Now sometimes when people see pictures of the wailing wall, they're like, wait a minute, there's still stones on top of each other. They were buried under the ground. That's the retaining wall. Jesus is talking about the buildings on that campus. All those temple buildings were destroyed and dissembled by the Romans. The Romans were so upset with the Jews and their revolt that Titus orders the Romans to destroy and burn the temple. To destroy it, but they also to dissemble it stone by stone and to throw all the stones off the top. And that's what the Romans do. Jesus words were astonishingly literally fulfilled. And who could have predicted that then in verse three. And then he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite, literally over and against the temple. So on the Mount of Olives you can look down on the Temple Mount. And then Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, tell us, when will this Be. And what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished? I mean, the idea that the temple is going to be destroyed, that's a really, really, really big deal. And so they're like, what's the sign of this happening? And now we get the eschatological discourse. But remember, this is Jesus answer is to the question of when the temple will be destroyed, not the end of the world. Keep that in mind. Now, Jesus is going to say some things that are going to sound like the end of the world. And that's going to cause a great problem for some people. And I'm going to just jump right to those problematic verses or right away. And if you look at verse 24 of chapter 13, but in those days after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the heavens, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with a great power and glory. And then he will send his angels out to gather his elect from the four winds and from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. Wow, that sounds like the end of the world, doesn't it? So this becomes a problem, because what is going to follow from this? Right from the fig tree, verse 28, learn its lesson. As soon as its branches becomes tender and it puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. Now, that sounds like Jesus thought the end of the world was going to happen within his lifetime or shortly thereafter. And this is something that caused great consternation and problems theologically in the 18th and 19th century. And in the 19th century, this became what was known in French as the Biblical question. And a lot of the top Protestant scholars started to lose their faith. Well, Jesus can't really be divine because he thought and predicted that the world was going to end within a generation. And it didn't. We're still here. Which means Jesus was wrong. And if you're wrong, that means you're not divine. So Jesus was a great human teacher and he was a really nice guy, but he wasn't God. That became the dominant movement in Protestantism, which led to the dominant movement in Protestantism called liberal Protestantism, where the liberal Protestant movement in Europe was the idea that Jesus wasn't divine and that the Bible couldn't be Fully inspired and inerrant because it has an heir. Jesus is heir. So the Bible is a nice source and Jesus is a good teacher, but he's not God, which is the exact opposite of Mark's whole thesis, right, Of Mark's whole gospel. So how do we solve this problem? That's a real problem with all these things. If he would have said some of these things, you know, okay, But Jesus says all these things will take place before this generation passes away. And a generation for the Jews is 40 years. Remember, the generation in the wilderness is there for 40 years. Generations, 40 years. So we've got a 40 year span for the end of the world, for the sun to be dark and the stars to be falling out of the skies. So either Jesus was right or he was wrong. He's either divine or a really nice guy, but a wrong guy about the end of the world. Now, after the liberal Protestantism was going this way, it was causing a crisis in Europe of faith. And this was kind of the fruit of the Enlightenment. And the top Catholic theologian and scholar from France at the University of Paris, which is the top university for Catholics, Father Alfred Lauzy, decided, all right, the Protestants have fallen here. And that's what, by the way, led to the fundamentalist movement of going back to the fundamentals of Jesus divinity, the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture and other such things. So that reaction came to the mainstream Protestant scholarly opinion that Jesus wasn't divine. That's what led to the fundamentalist movement in the 19th century, which really took root in the United States, especially amongst American Protestants. So Father Alfred Luzique comes in to save the day. He studies this problem and he can't get over the fact that Jesus said within a generation all this would happen and the sun, the moon and the stars would be darkened and fallen and the Son of Man would come and it would be the final judgment. And he's like, Jesus is wrong. So Father Alpha Lisie starts teaching this to seminarians in Paris. And the Pope gets wind of it. Pope Leo xiii. And the Pope writes an encyclical. You know you're in trouble when you get an encyclical in response. And the encyclical is called Providentismus Deus on the Providence of God. And in that encyclical, the Pope reaffirms that Scripture is inerrant and it's fully inspired and that Jesus would speak and use human metaphors and the Scriptures will use human metaphors, but we have to understand those metaphors and understand it within the Scriptures and understand it within the teaching of the Church Fathers, lest we mistake Jesus and the Scriptures and think that there's errors. And he said that would be wrong. And then the Pope wrote Father Alfred Lozi a personal letter asking him to no longer teach Scripture and to go back to pastoral work for the sake of his salvation. Father Alfred Lozi took the letter from the Holy Father, threw it aside and said no. He continued to teach. He was excommunicated. He left the Church. He died a very lonely, bitter man. It was a very tragic story. What Fr. Alfred Loisey didn't know is how to read the story of Jesus in light of the story of Israel. Because Jesus, when he says in verse 24, in those days the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the heavens, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Jesus is quoting a passage in Isaiah, in Isaiah, chapter 13. And Jesus is not talking about the end of space and time. And I'll show that to you in several ways. But the first way is the first use of that very passage in Isaiah 13. It's an oracle in verse one of Isaiah concerning Babylon, which Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw. And it begins with, raise a signal on a bare hill. Which is the fire being lit on a signal hill means an enemy army is approaching. So it's a warning to Babylon. An army is going to come and crush them. There'll be atonement in verse four, and they're coming from a distant land. In verse five, verse six. Wail, for the day of the Lord is near. And this is a day of judgment for Babylon. Babylon was ruthless in how they treated Israel, and they profaned the temple. You remember how they drank from the vessels of the temple and all that. So God is foretelling the doom upon Babylon for their wickedness. And that that day of the Lord is ultimately the day of God's judgment on Babylon. Therefore all hands will be feeble. Every man's heart will melt. They will be dismayed. Pangs and agony will seize them like a woman in travail and tribulation as she's in labor pains. That'll be an image Jesus uses, by the way, in chapter 13 of Mark. They will look aghast at one another. Their faces will be aflame. Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger to make the earth, or literally should be translated, land, a desolation and to destroy sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light. The sun will be dark at its rising. The moon will not shed its light. I will punish the land for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. And I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant and lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless. And I will make men more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out of its place at the wrath, at the fierce anger, at the day of the Lord. Now, did Isaiah believe that that was going to be the end of space and time? No. What he believed is it would be the end of the kingdom of Babylon. And it was so, the sun, the moon and the stars being darkened. That, my friends, is how ancient people kept time. They didn't have iPhones and iWatches and watches and Rolexes. They kept time by the sun, the moon and the stars, the sun for the hour, the moon for the cycle of the weeks and the month, and the constellations for the seasons. And so the sun, the moon and the stars being darkened was a metaphor saying to Babylon, your time is up, your kingdom is coming to an end. Your time is at hand for judgment. You better repent. That is what that means. It's prophetic metaphors. We use this kind of language to describe major life changing and cultural changing events. If I speak about Black Friday, what am I referring to? What's that? The stock market crash. Right, right. So when the stock market crashed, it was called Black Friday in the papers. Was there an eclipse? If you go back historically and look, was there a solar eclipse and no one could see anything in Manhattan? No, but it was a dark day. Not because of the literal amount of sunlight, but because of the events that transpired that would being ruined to many and chaos for the country with the collapse of the stock market. Go back to the financial meltdown as we talked about it. Right. The Great Recession. And when that was happening, apocalyptic language was used. Right. We called it the financial meltdown. Was there so much heat that coins were melting? No, no. But we use highly charged metaphors to talk about significant life changing events. And so the irony is Father Lauzy and many of those Protestant scholars were taking the Bible in a flat foot, wooden, literalistic manner. And we can't take the Bible literalistically, we have to read it literarily. What does the author intend Jesus intends to allude to? To the story of Babylon being judged? He's saying that there's a judgment coming to this generation, and they better repent and be prepared. That's what he's saying. And that's why when you go to passages, for example, in verse 14, it says, when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Well, if this is the end of space and time, what good does it do to flee to the mountains? Right, of course, this is not the end of space and time. He's saying, flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down. Let him enter a house to take anything away. And he says, hopefully, pray that this doesn't happen during winter. He goes on to say, well, what difference does it make if this is winter or summer, if it's in space and time? Well, in winter, the Jordan river floods and you can't cross over. And what happens is, when this does happen, many, especially the Christians, according to the first church historian Eusebius, will flee and go to Jordan, and they'll flee Jerusalem, and they'll be spared this destruction because they know Jesus prophecy. That's why it's important it doesn't happen in winter. But again, who cares if it's winter, if this is the end of space and time? And that idea of winter, by the way, is in verse 18, pray that it may not happen in winter. So that doesn't make any sense. So Jesus is clearly not saying this is the end of space and time. What he's saying is this is the end of Jerusalem and the regime of Israel and the Temple and. Exactly. And he says this is what happened within a generation and 40 years to the day Jesus is crucified in the year 30 A.D. in 70 A.D. the temple and Jerusalem is destroyed by the Romans, and the Jews revolt from Rome in the year 66 AD and it takes the Romans four years because there's a civil war in Rome that breaks out and causes Rome to be burned down, which is Nero's, you know, which is going to lead to other things. But in the midst of all that tribulation, Jerusalem is burned down and the Temple is utterly destroyed, just as Jesus predicted. And Father Laozi lost faith because he understood the words of Jesus without understanding the context of those words and how that context was referring to other texts in the Scriptures of Israel, like Isaiah 13 and many other passages. But there's a lot more to that. But that was what my dissertation was on. So if you want more, you can go to. I refer you to my Dissertation on Jesus in the Temple in the Gospel of Mark. Now, I want to pick up verse 32 because it sets up a very important part of the Passion narrative. Here in chapter 13, verse 32, Jesus gives a parable of that day or that hour. No one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Now, that'll bother people, right? Jesus doesn't know when that day, when that hour is going to be. He's the Son. Well, keep thinking about that. Let that bother you for a while. Take heed, which literally you get, take heed. In verse nine and other verses, it's repeated blepe. In the Greek, it means to watch, watch out, watch out. And I like it. In the beginning of the two discourses of Jesus, I told you where Mark 4 and Mark 13. In Mark 4, Jesus keeps saying, listen, listen. Here he says, watch, watch. And in between, watch. Heard about people being deaf and blind. So here the summons is to watch, to look for the signs, to read them rightly. So we should watch out for the signs. There's so much to teach on this. I'm going to see if I can. All right. So Jesus goes on and says, watch. Therefore take heed, watch and pray. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and he commands the doorkeeper to be on watch. Watch, therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockroach, or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you, I say to all, Watch, watch. Now, obviously Jesus is thinking, something's at hand soon. Now, what we're told next is, it was now two days before the Passover and the feast of unleavened Bread was at hand, which is the feast of unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes are seeking how to arrest him, which is what he talks about in verse 9 through 13, about being arrested and handed over, tortured and other things. And so what happens next is, I want to drop us from chapter 14 to verse 17 and notice the little marker. Mark is more particular in detail than any other Gospel writers with his details, especially with time frame. And what he says in chapter 14, verse 17, is this. And when it was evening. Now it's the time of the Passover, when it was evening, he came with the 12. And as they were at table eating, Jesus said, truly, I say to you, one of you will hand me over. Betray me, one who is eating with me now. Of course. What time is it? Evening. Now remember, what are the four watches? The four watches that Jesus gives the disciples at the end of chapter 13 is when the Master will come. Be ready. Because it could be at evening or at midnight or at cock crow or at morning. Those are the four watches that compose 12 hours of the night watch. For the Romans, Evening begins at 6pm and goes until 9pm that's the evening watch, those three hours. And then the midnight watch is you're watching for midnight and you're on Guard from 9 until midnight. And then cock crow is from midnight to 3am you're waiting for the cock crow early in the morning. And then from 3am to 6am you're on the watch for the morning. And it ends with 6am when the sun rises, you're on watch for morning, just as you're on watch for midnight from 9 to midnight. Those are the hours. That is going to be the structure Mark gives us for the Passion narrative. So the Passion of Jesus will take place during these watches. So evening is the Last Supper and Jesus will be eating and he will take his. He will take the bread and offer the Passover. Now, that meal has so much theological depth of meaning. I'm not going to cover it in this study because we don't have time. But we have a beautiful study called Presence on the Meaning of the Eucharist in Jesus Meal. And we cover a lot of that beautiful meaning here of the Last Supper at that event. But I want to just follow from the Passion narrative and I want to pick up a couple things here. So Jesus at the Last Supper, he takes the bread, he blesses, he breaks. And he gives the same four verbs we saw before. The importance of the bread for Mark is very important. Now the idea of taking, that's important. And that gets back to the heart of kingship in the Old Testament. And that is the heart of Jesus kingship. Now, the first king made king in Israel is who? Saul. And when Israel comes to the Prophet Samuel in 1st Samuel, chapter 8, and they say to the prophet, make us a king. We want a king. Like all the other nations. Samuel's depressed. He goes and prays about it. And God says, get over it, Samuel. They're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me from being king over them. But God, and this is always a great way of punishing parents will sometimes do this. Sometimes the best punishment is letting them have their own way, right? And God will Let Israel have their own way. That will be his punishment. But he warns Samuel, he says, tell the people this when you have a king. And he gives a speech in chapter eight of first Samuel. That's very important. When you have a king. Here's what he's going to do. He's going to take your sons, he's going to take your daughters, he's going to use them. He's going to take your crops, he's going to take a tithe of your. Of your fruit. He's going to take your sheep and goats. He's going to take, take, take. That's what the kings do. You will end up not with a foreign tyrant, but with your own tyrant from within. That's what the kings will do. They will take, take. And of course, we see this with the kings of Israel. Even David takes another man's wife, Bathsheba, for himself and selfishness. The kings take, which will lead to the civil war that leads to the division of the kingdom, and it will lead to the fall of the kingdom, because the kings end up being greedy. And they take and they take. Jesus doesn't take like those other kings. Jesus does the opposite. What Jesus does is he takes the bread, he blesses it, he breaks it, He. And he gives it to them. And he commands us. And think about this every Mass, every time you gather for Eucharist, Jesus takes the bread and he asks and invites us, take this and eat of it, all of you. That's what he says here in verse 22. And he gave it to them. And he said, take, this is my body. And when Jesus says, this is my body, He's God. When he said, let there be light, there was light. When he says, this is my body, it is his body. It becomes his body and his blood, and he is truly present. But then he asks us to take from him, to eat from him. Jesus is a king who not takes from us. He takes himself and he makes himself a gift to us. That's the kind of kingship he has. His kingship is different from the Lord's, from the Gentiles. He takes himself and everything he has and he gives it to us. That will be at the heart of his passion. But it won't be at the evening watch that the hour strikes. We're still looking for the hour, and we'll follow that through the rest of the Passion narrative in our next episode.