Luke 21:25-36
Advent 1 / Year C
How would you like to do what Jan Richardson did for
two straight weeks? When she was in
seminary she was part of a group of twenty students and professors who began
each day with Morning Prayer and then, sitting in a circle, took turns reading
aloud and straight through the entire Book of Revelation. Slowly, over time and after repeated
readings, what began to emerge from the experience for Richardson was a sense
of the book’s astounding beauty and power amidst its images of devastation.
It is curious how we always begin the new year in the
Church calendar by going to the end.
Today, like all first Sundays in Advent, we encounter apocalyptic
visions about the end times… a time called “the day of the Lord” by many of the
Old Testament prophets. The bible is so
clear about the beginning… the place where you and I might start the Church
year. We can all quote from Genesis 1:1…
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And we can all recite John 1:1… “In the
beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Even while the bible seems to say a great
deal about the end, the imagery and language it uses is not nearly as easy to
understand as what it says about the beginning.
Apocalyptic writings play on our fears of the future and fuel our sense
of anxiety and dread. So why start the
new year here?
Richardson suggests most people take one of two
approaches to the bible’s apocalyptic literature. Either we maintain an embarrassed silence
about it or we approach it as if was a codebook for the end of the world. When we approach it as a codebook we are
tempted to dissect all of the images in order to decipher a solitary
meaning. Emerging from her experience
over those two weeks, Richardson suggests a different way to read apocalyptic
writings… a way she calls ‘devotionally.’
This approach, she writes, “beckons us to sit with the sacred
strangeness of the text until the connections begin to surface, until – its
visions of destruction and desire, loss and redemption, ending and beginning –
we see those rhythms in our own lives, in the ordinary apocalypses of our daily
living.”
Do you ever think of your own life as being a series
of ordinary apocalypses? Probably not,
especially if you think of ‘apocalypse’ the way most people today do: a kind of
massive, large-scale catastrophe. But
that is not how the biblical writers used the word. ‘Apocalypse’ is a Greek word meaning “to
uncover,” “to reveal,” or “to make known.”
More often than not, apocalyptic writings emerge in times already
ominous and threatening, not to predict calamity, but to assure the readers of
God’s care and keep in the midst of conflict.
The apocalyptic images of the bible, when taken as a whole, paint a
picture of hope. They reveal or uncover
the potential and promise of new life on the other side of struggle, loss, and death.
When Luke writes his gospel, the Christian community
is reeling both from religious persecution and the devastating effects of the
Roman army’s destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
So Luke remembers Jesus’ words stating these things will take place. What is most powerful in our Lord’s
apocalyptic revealing is not the omen-laced imagery or dire signs, but the
instruction about what to do when it all unfolds. You might expect Jesus to say when the fur
begins to fly, duck and take cover. This
would be prudent. This would make
sense. But this is not what Jesus
says. Instead he tells his followers to
stand up and raise their heads because their redemption is drawing near. It is a powerful call to have courage rooted
in the hope no matter what happens God will prevail.
Why do we begin the new year by focusing on the
end? Well, it is kind of like one of
those movies where the opening scene is actually the end of the story and then
the rest of movie shows you how the drama gets to that point. What God has uncovered to us is the end of
the story. We know how history will end…
with Jesus redeeming all of creation.
But before then, we have to attend to the ordinary apocalypses of daily
living… those personal and collective moments when we need to remember the
message of hope ringing throughout the bible.
I was privileged in seminary to be mentored by the
Rev. Ed Campbell. In 1996, medical tests
disclosed he had a substantial tumor in his left lung and a cancer that had
moved to other parts of his body. In
telling the congregation about his condition, Ed said, “I have no idea what
this means for me in the future, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to
figure it out.”
Over the next six months Ed shared his journey not
only with the congregation, but also with the whole community through a series
of weekly articles he wrote for the local newspaper. It was a remarkable six months that
transformed many, many lives. In the last
column Ed wrote before he died, he described a time he was feeling weak and
down in the dumps, but his wife pestered him to get into the car without revealing
where they were going. The trip led to an
ice cream cone and watching a fantastic sunset.
Here is Ed’s reflection on such
an ordinary moment, which he initially resisted:
The message I’m looking forward to
every day of my life, from this moment on, is that there is joy everywhere, if
you just look for it. Or, to say it
another way, God is always around. He is
always in the business of redeeming – that is, of turning what looks like a
crummy deal into a real possibility.
Jesus might have said to his followers “a real crummy
deal is coming your way, but when it does, take heart, stand up, raise your
head, because a new possibility is on the horizon.” By faith we know this to be true about the
end of all time. By experience, we also
know it to be true of the ordinary apocalypses of our life. There will always be a crummy deal coming your
way. Not a one should come as a
surprise. But what we need to know, what
we need to expect, and what we can surely count on. is God will work out
something wonderful through it, if we are open to God’s presence.
This is the message we begin the new year with. There will be some tough times in the days
ahead, but God is going to turn each one into real possibilities.
