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The Sandman is a comic turned television series that follows the anthropomorphized concept Dream and occasionally his other siblings known as the Endless.
One issue/episode follows Dream with his older sister Death in the distant past. Death in this series isn’t portrayed as a monster or something terrifying. Instead, she is quite pastoral and seems to love all the people she takes beyond the veil, even if they are not always so courteous to her.
Death worries that Dream doesn’t quite have the same connection with people. He mostly sees them in the Dreaming, his realm, not “on their own terms” as Death puts it. She takes him to a pub in England in 1389. While they are there, a man named Hob speaks about he’s never going to die. Death decides to grant his wish so that Dream can learn from Hob’s experience over the years. When Dream tells Hob that he, in fact, will never die, they agree to meet back in the same pub 100 years later.
This cycle continues every 100 years until modern day. The place changes over the years. Sometimes the area around prospers while other times it falls into ruin. Hob too has centuries of fortune along with a century of struggle. The pub has other occupants, some great like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Marlow.
In all these times, there are other conversations these occupants have. The first time Dream enters, there are conversations about frustrating taxes, how the old days were better, and how the world is coming to an end.
When Dream and Hob meet for the final time in the story in modern day the conversations around them are about frustrating taxes, how the old days were better, and how the world is coming to an end.
The world ending is what we hear about in the Gospel today. We hear of the what will lead up to it with wars and famines. Yet the end will still be to come.
As Jesus finishes this conversation at the end of the 13th chapter of Mark, beyond where our reading stops this morning, Jesus warns us to be watchful, for we do not know when the end will come.
Which is really the point. The end of days pops up a great deal in Scripture. It is mentioned from the Book of the Prophet Daniel all the way to the end of the New Testament. Just like in the conversations around Dream and Hob, we continue to talk about the end. But we don’t know when it will come.
We are not called to worry or fret about it though. We are called, as Hebrews reminds us, to encourage one another and to “provoke one another to love and good deeds”.
We are called to have hope because Jesus has opened the way, as Hebrews again reminds us. Jesus has made it so we don’t have to worry. No matter what happens, we have been washed in the “blood of Jesus”, giving us the “confidence to enter the sanctuary” of our Lord. We have no fear because Jesus has us taken care of. Jesus has got us covered.
Even when it seems like there is no hope around us, God has a way of bringing in new life. We see this with Hannah this morning who, after years of being barren, gives birth to Samuel. As we saw this summer, Samuel will grow to be a great prophet and the anointer of kings. Hannah’s song mirrors that which we will later hear from Mary, particularly as we move ever closer into the Advent season.
Sighs of frustration and portents of doom have been screamed as long as humans have been around. That is nothing new. It will continue until the end does finally come.
Yet we can go through whatever times face us, good or ill, with hope. Our hope is only possible thanks to the love and Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.