So, when I was little, I learned something amazing. My great-grandfather, Orem, was a wizard. He could do the most incredible magic out of thin air.
Well, actually, he wasn't a wizard. He really wasn't even a stage magician. And truth be known, he could only do one card trick. But in my mind, he was magical.
Here's the trick. Take a deck of cards and count out 21 cards, discarding the rest. Then he would turn the cards over, one at a time, into three stacks, asking me to pick a card, but don't tell him which one. Just tell him which stack the card is in. He would gather up the stacks and do it again, again asking me to pick the same card. Again he'd gather up the stacks and do it a third time. After that he could count out 10 cards then turn the 11th card over. It was my card! Every single time.
Magic, y'all.
I'd try the same thing, but it never worked. I didn't have the gift, you see.
In reality, though, I was just distracted.
I wonder at times if my experience as a kid doesn’t begin to get at why we struggle with the sorts of ‘end-time’ readings we have this week. They are pretty dire, right? The temple being brought down. Wars and rumors of wars. Famines. Earthquakes. Daniel gets into the act with anquish and the dead rising up. And even Paul, usually so focused on his present, ponders a time when God's enemies will “be made a footstool for his feet.” Lots of tough times ahead for Jesus' hearers. In fact it's so dire that these descriptions are known as the “Little Apocalypse.”
And I can just imagine those disciples, when Jesus drops all this on them. I can just imagine their imaginations running away with them. Apocalypse, indeed. The end of the world as they know it.
But it happens to us, too.
Do you remember in the last quarter of the last century, the book by Hal Lindsey called, The Late Great Planet Earth? It was all about apocalyptic literature in the Bible and predicted the rise of the Antichrist in the 1970's and the Rapture, the taking up into heaven of good, Christian folk, occuring in the 1980's. Russia and China and Nato were going to go to war in Israel, and life, essentially, would be pretty dang awful for those of us left behind. Except 40 years on, it doesn't appear to have happened.
And then of course, there was the Left Behind series of fictional books. Apparently, the antichrist was going to come from Romania, seize world domination using the United Nations to defy American Constitutional norms, and stalwart American left-behinders were going to repent of their way of life and fight the good fight around the world until Jesus returns. So far nobody has risen to defy Constitutional norms...from Romania, at least. And that series of books has sort of faded away, leaving in their wake a movie or two staring Kirk Cameron, a few kids' books, and some Left Behind video games. But, there for a while, everyone was talking about it all.
But, you know, our attention almost can’t help but be drawn to wars and rumors of wars, to earthquakes and famines. Wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines have been headlines on the evening news for as long as I have been paying attention. And yet in and through it all? It seems that Jesus is no closer to returning than he was the first time Hal Lindsey scared me into thinking about it.
So, maybe...just maybe...we are letting ourselves get distracted. Maybe part of the gift that is ours to receive from Jesus' words is the promise and the certainty that even though we don’t fully understand how, in and through the worst that happens in our lives and in the world, God is still active in our lives and in this world. Maybe we are to simply stand still in the certainty that in fact, no matter what, we are called to always keep our focus on Jesus, and not be distracted or misled by others who would claim to be him. Or who claim to be greater than him or who crave worldly power unlike him.
It’s easy to get distracted.
The solution to that card trick of my great-grandfather's was purely mathematics. You see, when you stack the cards back up to be dealt out again? Always make sure the stack with the card goes in the middle. After three times, the card that was picked will mathematically ALWAYS be the eleventh card. Always.
Now when I look back, it seems so simple. But in the moment, I was distracted.
As Paul says, “let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Maybe all the distractions, all the fussing and fighting on every front, all the anxiety. All the Facebook videos and memes and tweets. All those things that loom up and command our attention. None of that makes a dent in a world where we choose to “provoke one another to love and good deeds.”
Maybe, we are called to always keep our hearts and our minds open to what God may be doing. To not be distracted and to remember that there is always something greater than our fears. That whatever the future may hold, God’s love and grace and very presence is more real than any fear and any rumor. I bet that’s what we’re meant to be watching for all along.