Main news for 4 February 2023

Today we read a passage in which Jesus speaks to the disciples about what is coming, about what awaits them and their descendants. This speech of Jesus is the longest one in Mark. Let us listen to it more attentively: what prompted the conversation? what can be said about the disciples' attitude toward Jerusalem and its temple?

Jesus' own words can be divided into three parts: about the destruction of Jerusalem, about His return and the end of this world, and two parables. The intersection of these themes can seem unexpected, but prophecy is not a chronological account of the future. It is, rather, various images of it, so that in the destruction of Jerusalem one can also see the end of this world.

It is interesting to trace whether the disciples' initial curiosity receives an answer. It appears that a direct answer sounds only at the very end of the chapter: in the parable of the fig tree He speaks about signs. But about the exact time it is said that it is hidden from everyone except the Father. And if He himself is what matters to us, then we must keep watch, like the doorkeeper in the second parable. This final summons will help us hear all the other words of Jesus as well, which seem to stand apart from the disciples' question: He is addressing each of us personally.

If Jesus does not answer the disciples' question before verse 28, then what is He speaking about in verses 5-27? What stands out is how often Jesus addresses them directly. Jesus is concerned not so much with the future itself as with people, His disciples, in that future. Jesus makes them understand that what they need most in this life is God and His guidance, something that is especially visible "against the background" of the end.

When reading this chapter, a natural feeling often arises: although one would very much not want to take part in the events described, there is one thing to be glad about. If all this does happen, then (vv. 19-20 and vv. 24-27) Jesus will return and save His chosen ones. He is God and Savior.

When Jesus speaks about the imminent destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and about the end of time, He undoubtedly has in mind not a distant future but a near and even immediate one: the Temple was destroyed by the Romans after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots in A.D. 70, only a few decades after the conversation reported by the evangelist.

Jesus mentions "pains" (the corresponding Greek word literally means "birth pangs" or the pain experienced in childbirth), pointing to famine, epidemics, natural disasters, and wars as their source and root (such is the meaning of the corresponding Greek word, which literally means "beginning," "cause," "source"). The "pains" mentioned by the Savior are clearly connected with the birth of something new: in this case the Kingdom, which, as He repeatedly said, must sprout in the world like a seed thrown into the ground.

By "pains" here He clearly means what in Jewish tradition is usually called "messianic woes": persecutions and cataclysms that fall upon the people of God just before the coming of the Messiah, marking the imminent arrival of the messianic age and the establishment of the messianic Kingdom. As one can see, Jesus is speaking precisely of these woes: to famine, epidemics, earthquakes, and wars there are added here persecutions of His disciples. All that is listed takes place against the background of the appearance of many false messiahs, who spring up like mushrooms after rain, leading after themselves the gullible, whom they then abandon to their fate.

There really were many such false messiahs in those days. All of them called for uprising and war, and all such uprisings ended in punitive expeditions; moreover, the leaders often managed to slip away, while punishment fell on the heads of those who did not want to flee or did not have time to do so. Thus it turns out that history, according to the Savior's words, ends with the end of the Second Temple, built by the repatriates who had once returned to Judea from Babylon. Everything further is no longer the former history proceeding on its usual course, but something new, taking place according to different, new laws.

Today's reading is remarkable for the transition reflected in it from history to the end of time. It begins with Jesus' prophecy about the Temple, which, according to His words, awaits complete destruction (vv. 1-23). This prophecy was fulfilled in A.D. 70, when, after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots in Judea, Jerusalem was taken by the Romans by storm after a long siege, and the city, together with the Temple, was destroyed to its foundations. Only the foundation of the Temple remained, whose western retaining wall is known today as the Wailing Wall. These events were preceded by a powerful rise of the messianic movement. Shortly before the uprising began, claimants to messiahship appeared regularly in Judea, and some of them managed to organize local rebellions that were harshly suppressed by the Romans; it is evidently about such claimants that Jesus warns His disciples (vv. 5-6). The atmosphere of the era was restless and fevered. Rumors spread about an approaching war, which the Zealots said would be the final, messianic war, and every military action, even a minor one, gathered rumors around it, sometimes the most unbelievable, further intensifying this atmosphere of universal, excited expectation of the end (vv. 7-8). Jesus' warning about coming persecutions was not in vain either (vv. 9-13): persecutions of Christians really began even before the uprising of A.D. 70; and Paul's preaching had already sounded throughout the Roman Empire before the fall of Jerusalem (v. 10). When the uprising began and failed, and Jerusalem came under threat of a severe and lengthy siege, Christians, remembering the Savior's warning (vv. 14-23), left the city (the Pharisees did the same). Josephus Flavius, one of the witnesses and participants in these events, writes in detail in his book "The Jewish War" about what happened in the besieged city, about the general hatred, intolerance, and violence that reigned there.

And so, after the prophecy about events that were to happen very soon after His death and Resurrection, the Savior turns to the account of the end of time and His second coming (vv. 24-37). It would seem that these events should have followed at once, or almost at once, one after another. However, Jesus Himself says plainly that the time of His return is known only to the Father. In that case the question arises: what connection is there between the events of A.D. 70 in Jerusalem and the second coming of Christ? For believing Jews the Second Temple, built by the repatriates who returned from Babylon in the sixth century B.C., was the messianic Temple. The Messiah-Christ was to preach there, and the end of this Temple was also to become the end of earthly history and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom. And Jesus, as we can see, confirms this idea that earthly history will be completed with the defeat of the Temple, adding that it will end while the contemporaries of His earthly life are still alive (v. 30; "this generation" means "this generation"). But between the completion of earthly history and the final triumph of the Kingdom, as we can see, some time must pass, known only to the Father. And we are left to wait and keep watch (vv. 33-37): to wait for the Savior's return in the fullness of the Kingdom and to keep watch so that His return does not catch us unprepared.