In the Meantime

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:24-37.

I don't know what I did before the Internet Movie Database. Well, actually, I do. I used books, like Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, and my trivia-packed memory to recall all kinds of details about movies, characters, genres, etc. Now I look these things up on IMDB. For instance, reading today's lectionary texts got me wondering just how many Christian apocalypse movies there are out there. And sure enough, somebody on IMDB put together a list of 2 dozen films, made by Christians, dramatizing the end of the world, at least as they see it in Revelation. But somehow it left out what is arguably the first such film: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? Created by schlock filmmaker Ron Ormond and preacher Estus Pirkle, this graphically violent low budget film showed what would happen to Christians when the Communists take over—on horseback! Since then there have been a flood of films that seem to dwell on the scary stuff found mainly in 4 chapters in the middle of the last book of the Bible. And they are considered evangelism tools! I guess the religious people behind these movies chose this because modern people don't seem to fear hell much but in this era of nuclear and biological weapons and natural disasters the end of the world is something we can all imagine.

There are some churches and preachers who are really into this stuff. Part of it is the natural human tendency to be interested in things that can harm you. The more you know, the easier it is to avoid such things and the better prepared you will be should such stuff befall you. But some of it comes from the dark part of humanity that enjoys horror movies and stories about serial killers. Awful things can be very entertaining if they are happening to someone else. For instance, the vast majority of Hollywood movies are not based on the Bible and yet have a good deal of death, violence and unsettling things in them.

So I guess I understand some people's lurid fascination with the relatively few apocalyptic passages in the Bible. And the geek in me understands how people can enjoy the game of trying to reconcile all the various details given in scattered places in scripture, despite it being rather futile given that many of those details are poetic expressions and others are plainly symbolic. But I do not understand the other tendency certain Christians show about eschatology: how anyone can think Jesus actually wants us to calculate the time of his return since he explicitly tells us that no one knows the day or hour—not even himself, at least in his earthly life! And I especially don't understand how supposedly Bible-believing Christians can ignore this. In verse 33 Jesus says “you do not know when the time will come.” Can he be any clearer?

Apparently not. When you put “Christian books on the apocalypse” in the Amazon search you get 775 results. Even if you dismiss the typically oddball stuff that Amazon searches net, like Wuthering Heights (!), and the redundancies, like all 16 volumes in the Left Behind series plus the teen novels and spinoffs, that's still a heckuva lot of books. And mind you, they were written on a subject to which the Bible devotes at most 45 out of its 1189 chapters. Less than 4% of scripture concerns the end times.

So why is this subject even included in scripture? Apocalyptic literature came out of times of persecution and oppression. And the message of all apocalyptic writings can be boiled down to this: hang on during the bad times because God will win in the end. There are additional details, like “things will get worse before they get better” and “expect false messiahs but do not follow them.” But basically apocalyptic material was written to encourage suffering believers to hold onto their faith and their morality.

Judah was always a tiny nation surrounded by empires. And when the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon, and later when the successors of Alexander the Great were trying to wipe out Jewish religion and culture, the temptation was to despair of divine justice and assimilate. Similarly, once the Roman emperor realized the Christians were not just a subset of Jews and therefore a separate and hence illegal religion, he subjected them to periodic persecution and even death. It was tempting to either compromise or abandon faith in Christ. So these prophetic writings explained why things were so bad and assured those who persevered that they would see the triumph of God over evil and the reformation of the world as paradise once more. Whereas we often react to parts of apocalyptic passages with horror, the original readers received them as messages of comfort.

Still God sounds very angry in these passages. Yes, and rightly so. He made the world with enough for everyone: enough food, enough water, enough room. We are only just getting to the point where there may indeed not be enough of these things for the billions of people living on this planet in the near future. But for most of history, including today, when you have a society where some people don't have enough to live on and others have many times more than they need to live, the problem isn't scarcity. And as for some things people lack, like freedom, justice and equality of treatment, that is entirely the result of those in power restricting such things to certain people. Add on top of that the violence we inflict on each other, and especially on children, women, and those who are in the minority, and no wonder Isaiah wants God to tear open the heavens, come down, start kicking butts and taking names. And if he were calling on John Wick or Batman or any of the fictional agents of vengeance whose retributive violence we enjoy in movies and on TV and in video games, we would have no problem. When the hero kicks open the door and starts mowing down bad guys we cheer. But for some reason we balk at allowing God the right to get mad at his own creatures for mistreating each other and then doing something about it. If you don't like the apocalyptic parts of the Bible but do like action movies, violent sports, or news stories of bad guys getting their just desserts, you need to do some self-examination about double standards. God is the only one who can justly judge we humans for what we do to and do not do for each other.

That said, as I pointed out last week, most of the things such passages mention as judgments are often just the consequences of our acting badly towards nature and our fellow man. But the people to whom the Bible was written did not think such things happened without the intentional action of a conscious agent: demons, angels, and since he created everything, ultimately God. Today we remove as much agency as possible from these things. Disasters are the result of undirected natural processes. Illness is not caused by beings invisible to the eye called demons but by beings equally invisible to the naked eye called germs. Heck, there are scientists and thinkers trying to take agency away from people and blame everything we do on our DNA, gut bacteria, and brain structure. And they don't mean those things simply have a part in shaping the choices we have and make; they argue that free will and consciousness themselves are illusions created by the chemical and physical processes that actually make us think, say and do things. Of course, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, they are arguing against the very thing that would make their arguments valid and not just the byproducts of what they are made of.

Whatever the means of our destruction, the fact is that the collective consequences of our selfish, foolhardy and sinful actions will catch up with us one day. So what are we to do in the interim? Jesus tells us to do the work each of us is given and keep awake.

We have talked often of the fact that God gives us all gifts and abilities, which he calls us to put to use in serving him through serving human beings. Last week's gospel gave us many options for service: helping the hungry, the sick, the alien, the prisoner. Wherever we see a lack, there is an opportunity to demonstrate God's love for all. Often it is just a basic act of kindness. Sometimes a complex situation calls for a more creative response. But a good rule of thumb is: when in doubt, do the most loving thing.

As for keeping awake, Jesus is pointing out how often people just don't pay attention to what is right before their eyes. We get lulled into sleepwalking through our lives. We stop noticing everyday phenomena, forgetting what miracles they are. Remember how as a child, you one day really looked at a leaf or your hand, getting lost in its marvelous structure and texture. The whole world was new to you and you drank it in. Until it mostly became background noise in your life. And you learn the habit of not only ignoring most of the things around you but particularly the things that make you uncomfortable. Right now we are receiving news every day about powerful men sexually abusing colleagues and acquaintances with less power. And often these predatory acts have gone on for years. Which means those around these men were either spectacularly unobservant or else passively or actively complicit. The Bible condemns complicity in the suffering of others. In his parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), Jesus tells us that the poor sick man was lying at the rich man's gate. So he would have to pass by or even step over the beggar everyday. It's not his wealth but his indifference to suffering literally at his doorstep that explains why he ends up in hell.

But wait! Isn't Jesus talking about being awake for when he returns? Yes, but notice that the reason is that you don't want to be asleep on the job when he returns. Mark talks about the master putting his slaves in charge of his property, each with his work. Matthew's version expands on this: “Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom the master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom the master finds at work when he comes.” (Matthew 24:45-46) In other words, our work is to supply what other people need: physically and spiritually. As we saw in Matthew 25 last week, that means giving food to those who hunger, water to those who thirst, hospitality to those who come to this country, care to those who are sick and the gift of our presence to those who are locked away. But there are other things folks lack. And in the 1800s and 1900s the primary movers of social reform in this country were Christians. They worked on issues such as “economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools and the danger of war,” according to Wikipedia. It is to this movement, the "social gospel," that we owe ideas like daycare, public education, and the abolition of child labor. These Christians found their mandate in the Lord's Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Another thing Jesus explicitly commanded us to do is to spread the gospel. We are to tell people about him and make disciples. And nowhere does Jesus restrict this requirement to paid, professional clergy. It falls to each of us to know enough about Jesus and his good news to tell others. As says in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect....” We're not supposed to be jerks about it but we are to articulate why we put our trust in and pin our hopes on Christ. All of us. You should know a lot already...if you pay attention in church and read your Bible and put its principles into practice. And your presentation of the gospel doesn't have to be a masterpiece of systematic theology but it should make sense and be true. And it should be sincere, which means it should be the product of personal reflection. Why are you a Christian? What led you to Jesus? Why do you continue to follow him?

Presumably it's in part because Jesus helped you with a problem with yourself, in your life, in your way of looking at the world or at other people. Jesus didn't come to make perfectly good things better. He came to rescue people and a world sliding toward self-destruction. Your personal story may be more or less dire but something in your life needed fixing—you needed to make a change, you needed to be forgiven, you needed peace—and you realized that Jesus is the solution. Just tell that story. When Jesus healed people he often told them to tell others how much the Lord has done for them. That is also evangelism. As Luther said, it is one beggar telling another where to find bread.

The world is not perfect and we can see how the consequences of our selfishness, partisanship, recklessness, shortsightedness, and self-destructive behavior are coming home to roost. It's like a worldwide disaster in slow motion. And that reminds me of what another member of the clergy once said. Mr. Rogers was in fact a Presbyterian minister and he said that, as a child, he got scared watching newsreels of disasters. His mother told him, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.”

We are helpers, sent by Christ, to bring the world what it lacks: physical and spiritual health and wholeness. We are called to be healers. We are called to be peacemakers. We are called to the ministry of reconciliation. We are called to love our neighbors and even our enemies as Jesus loves us. We are called to use the gifts the Spirit has given each of us to help in whatever area we are equipped to work. Jesus is coming, we know not when, and he wants to see us laying the foundations of his kingdom, the kingdom of God. Getting there will be painful but we have his word that if we hang on to the end, “he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.