Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
SERMON “Apocalyptic Problems”
Back in more primitive times, as an arbitrary millennia on the Christian calendar came to a close, people imagined a catastrophic ending of the age, the collapse of society, or maybe even the destruction of the earth itself. There was a surge of interest in a biblical apocalypse and the rapture, and more than a little hysteria.
I am not, in fact, speaking about the late Tenth Century, “one thousand-zero-zero-zero, party over oops out of time,” when they were partying like it’s “999.”
I am speaking about the turn of the last century, when the “Left Behind” series of Christian apocalyptic novels were bestsellers, when movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” contemplated a planet-killing asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and of course, the Y2K bug was going to crash all of our computer systems, from banking to air traffic control.
It didn’t happen. Well, mostly. Air traffic control has been problematic since Reagan broke the union in 1981, and banking could come to a catastrophic end on “Q-Day,” which has nothing to do with the whackos of Q-Anon and everything to do with the fact that Quantum computing will render the encryption used by our financial system obsolete in an instant.
Y2K was a secular disaster cult, not religious. The silliness in 2012 around the Mayan Long Count Calendar was not Christian. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists maintains a Doomsday Clock, currently set at about a minute and a half from catastrophe, and they are exactly what the name suggests, Atomic Scientists. Astronomers tell us the Earth will eventually become uninhabitable as the sun continues through its life cycle.
Still, Christianity has a particular reputation, one that is well deserved, for focusing on disastrous endings and after. Now, no one has actually been raptured, at least no one I know personally, but I can suggest a good candidate if you are looking for the anti-Christ.
We really don’t know where Jesus stood on the end times. Everything we know about him was passed down as oral tradition for at least a full generation before it was written down. And what was written down contains two very distinct and seemingly incompatible ideas.
The first of these, of the “Left Behind” variety, suggests that the world is corrupt, and only an act of God can set it right. This sort of thinking is primarily found in three apocalyptic texts: the last half of the Book of Daniel, the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel According to Mark, and the Revelation to John of Patmos, the source of today’s reading. In fact, “apocalypse” is simply the ancient Greek word for revelation, though it has come to mean the content of that singular text.
Each of these texts leans into a “Day of the Lord” scenario, a cataclysmic, violent even, re-creation of a good world. And while Jesus obviously did not know Mark or Revelation, he knew the Book of Daniel well, and re-purposed some of its language and imagery.
The problem with the “Day of the Lord” approach is that it leaves us with a God who intended or allows a broken Creation, right up there with the God who put the original sin boobytrap in the Garden of Eden. That, or it means God is not fully in control of Creation, which makes God not God according to all of our traditional understandings of that word.
Just as many Christians have leaned into judgment rather than grace and mercy when it comes to personal salvation, many Christians have leaned into this view of the world, corrupt and irreparable.
It is hard to throw away Daniel, to surgically remove a portion of Mark, but I am not the first to problematize the entire Revelation of John. Some Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther, believed it had no place in the Christian canon.
Equally present in the teachings of Jesus as remembered in the gospels is the idea that the realm of God, let’s call it the “kin-dom of God,” was already here, either in-breaking at that moment or already co-existent with the unjust and sin-filled world in which Jesus and his disciples lived. And there seems to be way more of that kin-dom thinking in the gospels than there is of the violent re-ordering.
You may remember some of the imagery Jesus uses, the kin-dom like a treasure in a field or a mustard seed that grows. Just as important, he acts like the kin-dom is real, healing people, forgiving sins, calling for reform. In this, he is just like most of the other Jewish prophets, who were focused on their own “here and now.” Micah does not tell us to wait for God to fix the world. Micah tells us to fix the world. This is the concept re-emphasized by Enlightenment Judaism, Tikkun Olam, the “repairing of the world,” a phrase from the Tanakh’s Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who tells the people they will be “repairers of the breach.”
Ultimately, if we are to take our faith seriously as a way to live in the world, we’re going to have to make a decision. If you choose rapture and “Day of the Lord,” you expect corruption and original sin, expect and maybe even desire collapse and destruction as a way to accelerate the good new creation.
These are the kind of Christians who pushed for the U.S. embassy to move the Jerusalem, who support the Palestinian genocide, and who pray that the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be destroyed and a Third Temple will be built on the Mount, an ironic and deeply antisemitic Zionism that believes Jews must convert to Christianity to be saved. Rapture Christians are focused on individual salvation, keep track of conversions, and while they may act compassionately, their actions are bandaids on a world they view as broken.
If we choose the teachings that suggest the kin-dom of God is real right now, that everything we need for justice, kindness, and humility is already here, the result of a force of creativity and love we call God, then we recognize and celebrate what is good in creation, even in death, which makes space for the creativity of natural selection, for diversity, even if it can provoke our existential angst. An earthquake becomes just an earthquake, not an act of a punishing god, but simply part of a constantly evolving and renewing tectonic system.
And believing that there is a deep current of creativity and compassion already running through the world, we seek to tap into it, to conform ourselves and the way we engage creation to that current, seek to align our lives to the righteousness the prophets described. And while the bad-god Christians seek to manipulate a manipulative god for personal favor, we seek to see and preserve the holiness that is already here.
No, that isn’t always easy. I do live in the same reality as you. I watch the same news. I study the same history. Though, we all know people who do not live in this same reality.
These giant primate brains of our come up with some awful stuff sometimes, and we are biologically programmed to prioritize fear, fight, and flight, so we have to work hard at seeing the holy, naming the holy, and doing what is holy. We have to sing the holy and paint the holy and talk about the holy in teams, just as the holy and nature intended, for we are at our best when we are together. When we use the neologism kin-dom, we are not just declaring that we have no kings, but also emphasizing that our faith is covenant-based, is relational.
Who is on your team? Your team of imagination and hope and sometimes “oh, hell no” determination? Hopefully, for the folks who live locally, members of your team are in this room. And if you don’t have a team where you are, how can we help you find one?
Because, you know, if we are right, and we are meant to be co-creators in the thriving of this world, and I believe we are meant to be co-creators in the thriving of this world, then it takes a team.
And if it turns out we are wrong, and humankind is doomed for an asteroid-smashing zombie-world apocalypse… well, if we’ve learned nothing else from “The Walking Dead,” and “The Last of Us,” and “28 Days,” soon to have a third film, we have most certainly learned that even in the age of the anti-Christ, especially in the age of the anti-Christ, it takes a team.
May you choose the kin-dom of God, choose to believe in a good God, then seek the goodness of creation, buried like a treasure chest in a field… but most surely there. Amen.