Apocalypse: The Journey to Hope!

Luke 21:25-36

A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

      Today, we light the first candle of the Advent wreath.  It is the candle of hope.  What more appropriate candle could there be for those of us living in the early twenty-first century?  We live during a tumultuous era when the earth seems to be perpetually rocked by both human catastrophes and natural disasters.  Hardly a day goes by we when do not hear about an act of terror, a devastating earthquake, a pandemic disease, a brutal war, a killer storm, an act of genocide, or a deadly famine.  Our world needs hope.  We need a reason to step back from the gloom that threatens to overwhelm us.  We need to know that there is more to life than the fear that gnaws at our guts when we ponder the uncertainties of our future.  We need to believe that the arc of the universe really does bend toward compassion and justice and that our efforts to help it along are worthwhile.  Without hope, we all too easily fall either into the inactivity of despair or the mindlessness of rage.  What other options present themselves when the future appears to be far bleaker than the present? Hope – however minimal – is the one essential quality that enables us to see possibilities for life even in the midst of tragedy.

      The state of hopelessness in which much of humanity lives is nothing new.  Throughout history, people have always had to confront circumstances and events that threatened their existence and well-being.  It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the world described by Jesus in his sermon of Luke 21 resonates with our experience of life in the twenty-first century:

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. (v. 10)

Each generation has to confront its own tragedies and travesties.  The particulars change, but the human experience of violence and vulnerability does not.  The terror inspired by war, famine, epidemic disease, natural disaster, and death transcends the times and seasons of human history.

      What do we do then with the efforts by some to interpret Jesus’ words as being “incontrovertibly” aimed at our precise moment in time?  What do we do with the glut of television shows, movies, web-sites, study guides, sermons, and novels claiming to demonstrate that this current generation will be the last – that we will be the ones to see the return of Christ and witness the horror of God’s judgment on a sinful world?  I believe that we should begin by recognizing that the Left Behind novels are only the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon that has troubled the Christian community since its beginnings.  From the time of the apostle Paul onward, there has been an endless stream of groups and individuals who believed and taught that their era uniquely fulfilled the biblical preconditions for the end of time.  As should be abundantly clear, they have all been wrong; and the current batch of doom-sayers may well prove to be wrong too. 

       But then, these frightening passages in the gospels and elsewhere were never intended to provide a blueprint for the end of the age.  Interpreters from the apostle Paul to Martin Luther, from St. Augustine to Tim LaHaye have misunderstood what these passages actually are.  They are not futuristic literature about a moment in history when angelic armies under the leadership of God’s messiah mass an all-out assault against the satanic forces of evil that control this world.   These passages belong to a literature of resistance composed for the purpose of bringing hope to people trapped in seemingly hopeless circumstances.  They are stories written for the poor – speeches delivered to the oppressed – images created for the persecuted so that they will not lose heart or succumb to fear but live their lives in faithfulness to God. 

      The technical word we use to describe this literature is ‘apocalypse.’  It is a word that evokes feelings of mystery and dread.  We associate it with images of surreal landscapes, mythical beasts, angelic armies, cosmic catastrophes, and devastating violence.  But, the Greek word ‘α̉ποκάλυψις’ from which the English word ‘apocalypse’ is derived, simply means revelation.  Something previously hidden from sight is now being brought to light.  What that something is is the question that must be answered – at least by those of us for whom the biblical testimony holds significance and value.  Are we really being given a coded message about the horrifying events that signal the world’s end?  Or, are we being given information about the present that can help us better understand the world in which we already live?  While I suspect that no answer we give will satisfy everyone, I believe there may be value in stepping back from the futuristic interpretations of apocalyptic passages that dominate our time in order to explore what these passages might be saying about the life we live in the day-to-day world of ordinary experience. 

      The story is told of a teacher who worked in a hospital helping sick children keep up with their studies.  One day, the teacher walked into the room of a little boy he had been assigned to help.  Since he had not asked anything about the boy’s condition, the teacher was not prepared for what he saw when he entered the room.  The child had survived a horrible fire that burned nearly eighty percent of his body.  He was wrapped from head to toe in gauze, IV tubes ran every which way, machines maintained perpetual vigilance over his vital signs, and he was clearly in a great deal of pain.  Startled and not knowing what to do, the teacher quickly introduced himself, told the boy that he had been assigned to help him with spelling and fractions, placed a pile of homework on the bedside table, and left.  The next day, when he returned to the boy’s room, the teacher was stopped by a couple of nurses.  “What did you do?” they asked.  “I didn’t do anything,” he stammered.  “I just brought him his homework.”  “Whatever you did,” came the reply, “it’s made all the difference in the world.  Yesterday, he’d given up.  Today, he’s decided to fight for his life.”  Several weeks later, the boy himself explained: “I didn’t think they’d give me homework if I was dying.  So I figured I had to be getting better.”  What made all the difference for the little boy was hope.  Once he believed that he had real chance for surviving, he found the inner strength he needed to participate in his own healing. 

      The homework in this story functioned for the little boy in much the same way that apocalyptic literature functioned for the people to whom Jesus preached.  It pulled him out of his despair and gave him a reason to do what needed to be done if he was going to survive.  The people of ancient Judea, living under the brutality of Roman imperial violence, needed to understand that something greater than Rome controlled their destiny.  They needed to believe that faithfulness to God was worthwhile, even while Roman troops were garrisoned in their villages, while Roman tax-collectors made it impossible for them to support their families, and while Roman arrogance flaunted their most deeply held customs and beliefs.  In short, they needed reassurance that God – not Caesar – really was in control of their destinies.  They needed hope to live faithfully in a world filled with the uncertainties of violence and poverty.

      Our circumstances as twenty-first century American Christians are somewhat different.  In spite of the fact that the war in Iraq has just surpassed World War II in length, war is not a part of everyday life for most American citizens.  Few of us are poor in any real sense of the term.  We have not undergone torture.  We have not suffered the indignity of unannounced security searches.  Our loved ones do not mysteriously disappear in the night. Armed soldiers do not patrol our streets.  Our social structure is not collapsing under the pressure of epidemic disease or famine. And, the crosses that adorn our church buildings are not tools for the public humiliation and execution of dissidents.  War, plague, famine, and persecution are not part of the everyday experience of most North American Christians.  Granted, a case can be made that those of us living in Southern California have some experience with earthquakes.  Yet, not even the Northridge Quake of 1994 caused as much death, damage and disruption as it certainly would have in other times and places with fewer resources and less technological sophistication. 

      My point is this: The perspective we bring to the reading of apocalyptic passages is very different from that of the people who first encountered them.  When they heard Jesus predict that the end of time would be marked by wars, earthquakes, famines, plagues, and portents in the heavens, they did not have to wonder about when these things were going to happen; they were already happening.  These horrifying occurrences were already part of their everyday lives.  If they were signs of the end, then the end was already in process, the Human One was already breaking into their reality, the kin-dom of God was already at hand.  This was anything but a fearful message for those living on the underside of history.  Jesus was bringing them words of hope rather than fear.  The terror was not beginning; it was coming to an end.  The evil system under which they and their ancestors had been suffering for centuries was not as permanent as it appeared.  It was crumbling in front of their very eyes.  Its armies could not save it.  Its wealth could not thwart its inevitable demise.  Its grandeur was already fading.  And, its emperor was already toppling from his throne.  That was the real meaning of the terrors afflicting their world.  The wars, famines, plagues, and portents were not signs of imperial power; they were evidence that the empire was in its death throes.  Their challenge was to maintain hope in the midst of uncertain times when the world seemed to be collapsing around them.

      The challenge for those who seek to follow God in our day is to maintain hope in the midst of our relative comfort and ease.  This cannot be hope in the passive sense of waiting for someone else to do something, but hope in the active sense of making preparations for an anticipated future.  Jesus calls us to hope in the same way that a child hopes when she sets out cookies and milk for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  Such hope gives birth to expectation, and expectation inspires preparation.  In the end, Santa Claus gets his snack because hope facilitates action.  With this kind of hope there is no time to waste time – no time for dissipation and drunkenness – no time for surrendering to the pre-Christmas “Days of Craze”– no time for wrestling with shoppers over the last X-Box in the store – no time for distracting ourselves with the mindlessness that too often passes for entertainment – no time for ignoring inconvenient truths about the impact of our lifestyles on the environment – no time for pretending that our own comfort and well-being is enough – no time for giving in to a status quo that is fractured by injustice and violence.   God is breaking into the world right now.  The kin-dom of God is at hand in this very moment.  And, we must decide whether we will open our eyes to see it – whether we will give ourselves to it, or whether we will remain blinded by the false truths and lies of an imperial system that is collapsing under its own weight. 

      In some ways, it is harder for us who live in twenty-first century America.  Unlike the world’s poor for whom the collapse of empire is cause for great rejoicing, we have too much invested not to be fearful.  The potential demise of social, economic and political systems that bring us prosperity, permit us to live in relative comfort, put food on our tables, educate us, and distract us with toys and entertainment fills us with dread because we cannot imagine what life will be like when they are gone.  It would be far easier and safer to postpone the inauguration of God’s kin-dom to a distant future.  But, the kin-dom comes when the kin-dom comes.  It is not a matter of our convenience or comfort.  The wars, plagues, famines, earthquakes, and heavenly portents may not be happening in the streets of our neighborhoods and cities, but they are happening.  We hear about them all the time.  The fig tree is sprouting its leaves.  Summer is here.  The Human One is at hand. 

      Friends, let us not look fearfully for Jesus to return at some future time with angelic armies.  Let us not wait for some apocalyptic moment when the powers of evil will be decisively overcome and God’s kin-dom established once and for all. Instead, let us look hopefully and work expectantly for the signs that Jesus is breaking into our world here and now.  Let us recognize that Jesus is already here – that the kin-dom of God is already becoming real in communities that are engaged in the imaginative work of justice and peace.  Jesus is here when the poor are fed, the homeless are housed, the outcasts are embraced, the aliens are welcomed, the sick are healed, the prisoners are released, and those trapped by demonic powers are set free.  Jesus is here when we tear down the walls of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and all the other “-isms” that have controlled our lives under empire.  Jesus is here when we say no to the gods of war and refuse to sanction any form of violence.  Jesus is here when the meal is prepared, the table is set, the doors are thrown wide, and all God’s children are invited in.  Jesus is here when we choose to be neighbors rather than consumers, humans rather than pawns, and children of God rather than citizens of a collapsing world order. 

      We have sung the lyrics, “Jesus is coming, oh yes we know!”  But, in a far more real sense, Jesus is already here.  Can we see it?  Will we see it?  Will it make a difference in the way we celebrate Advent and Christmas?  Will it bring us hope?  Will we let it change our lives?  Amen.

The Rev. Frank D. Wulf

United University Church

Los Angeles, California

© United University Church, 2006