Not the End

Scripture: The Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 33), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let’s talk Apocalypse.

As most folks know, apocalypse means “revelation,” and apocalyptic literature is a method of storytelling that reveals our fears, reveals what’s really going on in the world. Whenever times get tough, people write apocalypses. We see this all throughout the Bible, and we still see it in popular culture today, from Gilgamesh to the Hunger Games.

The most famous apocalypse of the Old Testament is the book of the prophet Daniel. Daniel lived in an age when empire after empire kept rolling over God’s people Israel. The Israelites were always under somebody’s thumb, always being beaten up and abused by world powers that periodically attempted to exterminate them. So Daniel wrote prophesies that compared these conquering empires to great monsters and ravenous beasts. He compared them to gigantic statues, false idols with feet of clay. And he did so both to reveal to God’s people what they were really up against, but also to give them comfort. The beasts would be defeated. The statues would crumble. And God’s people would prevail, for God was with them still.

The book of Daniel wasn’t about the end of the world. It was a promise that what was happening to God’s people at the time wasn’t the end. It might seem like they were losing everything, like they were on the brink of extinction, but in reality God had great plans for Israel, and greater promises than ever to give to them: promises of a New Covenant, of a coming Messiah, of the conversion of the nations to true faith—even of a resurrection of the dead. To those hearing or reading Daniel’s prophecy, the present was a bloody mess, but the future was full of promise and hope and vindication. The Christ was coming. And Israel would be there to see Him.

The most famous apocalypse of the New Testament, meanwhile, has to be the Revelation of St. John. John’s Revelation was written hundreds of years after the book of Daniel, but it shares many of the same images, warnings, and promises. Centuries after Daniel, a new empire has come along to persecute the New Israel, which is the Church of Christ. Once again, times are hard and the people are frightened. John reveals what’s really at stake.

Utilizing symbols taken from various prophets of the Old Testament, Revelation portrays a vision of terrible trials and sufferings, of armies coming to destroy Jerusalem and make war on God’s people. But all along, John promises that the faithful will endure, that God’s mercy will win out in the end. Times are tough, John acknowledges, and they’re going to get tougher. But God’s people will survive, for Jesus Christ is with us, and He has conquered death and hell.

Revelation isn’t a map to the distant future. It doesn’t predict the Holocaust or the Cold War or anything like that. Revelation is about the great war waged between Rome and Jerusalem less than 40 years after Jesus’ Crucifixion—the very war that Jesus Himself predicts in this morning’s Gospel reading—and it’s about how no matter how bad things seemed at the time, the love of God would endure and prevail. That’s what apocalyptic literature really is at heart: it is a word of comfort, a promise of assurance, given unto suffering people by the God who has suffered on the Cross.

See, we’re always looking for the end of the world. We witness this in the Left Behind fad of the previous decade, and in the zombie apocalypse craze of today. It’s like we’re all frightened of this great coming cataclysm, yet at the same time part of us wants it to happen. The only thing scarier than the end of the world might be a world that never ends but just keeps stumbling on aimlessly forever.

We know that won’t happen. Eventually the earth, the sun, the universe, everything ends. But the end of the world never appears as we expect. When the great Flood came in the time of Noah, it seemed that the whole world would end. But it didn’t. Instead, evil was washed away and life was given a second chance, a new birth. When fire and brimstone consumed the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the survivors thought that they were the last people on the planet, that the whole world had died. But it hadn’t. Only the wickedness of those violent cities was burned away, much to the relief of all their neighbors.

When the Temple of God was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the family of Abraham scattered to the four corners of the earth, the Israelites thought that such was the end, the loss of everything. Yet even in the midst of their Exile, God appeared to His people, speaking astonishing new promises through new prophets like Daniel.

And when Rome rolled in centuries later, flattening Jerusalem, insuring that not one stone would be left upon another—when Jew and Gentile alike seemed to turn against the fledgling Christian community so that all would surely be lost—people thought that this was the end of the world. But it wasn’t. It was only the beginning. Amazing new things were coming, new peoples, new empires, brought to faith in Christ Jesus. Impossible hopes came true.

Every time that we thought the world was ending, we were wrong. Dead wrong. Every time that all seemed lost, every time that lies claimed triumph and truth despaired, God brought about a new and brighter birth, for His chosen people and for all the nations of the world. It never looked the way that we’d expected; the promises were never fulfilled in quite the way that we’d assumed; but every time it seemed as though God would disappoint us, He revealed His faithfulness and mercy in heretofore undreamt of glories. We never lost the world. We gained whole new ones.

It is said that Dionysius the Areopagite was in Egypt on the day of Jesus’ Crucifixion. And when he witnessed the blotting out of the sun, he cried aloud for all to hear, “Either the God of Nature is suffering, or the world is ending.” We all know he was right about that first part. What if he were right about the second bit as well? Could it be, as many have argued, that the end of the world happened long ago?

Keep in mind that most of the Bible’s prophecies regarding the end times have already occurred. The return from Exile, the coming of the Messiah, the conquest of sin and death and hell—that’s all come true. The old world, the old order, ended at the Cross, perished on that tree. And the new world, the Kingdom of God, has been growing up to fruition ever since. Someday all will be fulfilled. Someday Christ will come again and the dead will rise from their graves and every injustice will be set right, every tear wiped away, every wound healed. Someday the Light will dispel all shadow and the insatiable mystery of existence shall be made clear in totality. Then shall God be all in all.

So when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places. There will be famines. Do not be afraid. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. Even now, God is at work resurrecting and healing and forgiving this world. Even now, new life is being born.

Here is the world. Wonderful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.