Shaking the Heavens and the Earth

Right at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus apocalyptically announced the coming reign of God. The coming of God into the world is a mix of good news and bad news, of grace and judgment, of fear and hopefulness. God is at work beyond human activity and imagining. The future is not in our hands, but rather in God’s hands. If we’ve been led to believe that church is where we come for a boost to be on our best behavior, or that church is a place where we hear appeals to our “better angels,” then Jesus’s talk of the dismantling, rebuilding work of God may come as a jolt.