“Advent of Hope”

First Sunday of Advent

Sunday, December 2, 2007

It’s the end of the world as we know it,

And I feel fine.

Any of you who are familiar with the rock band REM will know that these are the words to the chorus of one of REM’s most famous songs.  It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

The song taps into an ancient human tendency to speculate about the end of time. From the dawn of recorded history, there is evidence that humans have been fascinated by the question of what will happen at the end of the world.

From ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting the judgement of the souls of the dead, to Mayan  and Aztec ruins which offer evidence that those ancient civilizations speculated about how the will end, to tapestries and sculptures in medieval cathedrals which present artistic depictions of heaven and hell, and of the rewards and punishments that will be meted out to the righteous and the damned at the end of time, so many archaeological and anthropological explorations have found evidence, from every culture and time period, that the question of the end of the world has been a preoccupation of humanity for as long as we have been around. 

Scholars refer to the study of the end of the world as ‘eschatology’.  Eschatology is the study of the ‘last things’ – of the end of history, of judgement and salvation, and about the events that will lead to ‘the end of the world as we know it.’  

Jesus, himself, seems to have talked about the end of the world quite often.  In addition to his teachings about God and about love, a significant amount of Jesus’ teachings were decidedly eschatological in nature – so much so, that many biblical scholars suggest that Jesus may have understood himself, at some level, to have been an eschatological prophet who had come to announce that, with the coming of the kingdom of God, the end of history had arrived. 

One of the most common titles that Jesus used to refer to himself – as the Son of Man – was not a reference to his human nature, but rather was an image drawn from visions in the Book of Daniel which spoke of the coming of a ‘Son of Man’ whose arrival would signal the coming of the judgment of God at the end of the world.

Today’s Gospel reading is drawn from what is often referred to as the ‘eschatological discourse’ in the Gospel of Matthew.  Jesus was nearing the end of his life; he had come to Jerusalem, amidst both public acclaim and religious controversy.  And, in that context, the Gospel writer presents Jesus’ words about the end of the world.

Scholars remind us that this passage – and most of the Gospel of Matthew – was compiled into the form that we have it somewhere around the year 70, when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.  At the time, many seemed to have perceived the destruction of the Temple as a sign that the end was drawing near. 

But in spite of that catastrophic event, the words in today’s passage reminded Jesus’ followers that it was useless to speculate on when the end would come.  In verse 36, we read that Jesus said, “but about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

That lack of knowledge was not meant, however, to lead his followers into a state of indifference or apathy.  To the contrary, the fact that they did not know when the end of the world would come was intended to spur them to watchfulness, to spiritual wakefulness, and to expectation.  As today’s reading states, “keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”  The point is clear – like the homeowner in today’s story whose house was going to be broken into by a thief in the middle of the night, if any of us knew the day and hour when the world would end, we would only wake up and start to pay attention to how we should be living immediately before the event is to occur.

To illustrate the need for constant preparedness, the text offers a number of different images.  First, the text compares the coming of the Son of Man to the days just before Noah’s flood, when people were going about their daily activities, with no awareness of what was about to happen.

The text then presents the strange image of certain people being mysteriously whisked out of the world before the end of time.  “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” 

This idea, as we all know, has led to fantastic fearmongering about what is often called the ‘rapture’, in which some believe that God will suddenly make the ‘truly’ faithful disappear before God’s ultimate judgment on the world is unleashed. 

Not only have these speculations about the rapture inspired a host of theologically horrid books and movies about what will happen to those who get ‘left behind’ if such a rapture occurs, but they have actually led to significant controversies in parts of the Church. These controversies are based on interpretations of sections of the Bible, which have led some to speculate that this mysterious rapture will take place in advance of a thousand year period of anarchy which will, in turn, precede the end of time.  Those who believe that the ‘rapture’ will occur before that thousand year period often refer to themselves as premillenialists.  Those who believe, instead, that the faithful will have to endure that period of testing and struggle at the end of time refer to themselves as postmillennialists.  Before we dismiss these debates as merely speculative in nature, it should be noted, with sadness, that, in the southern United States, entire denominations have divided themselves from each other on the basis of whether they consider themselves to be premillenialist or postmillennialist.

Many of us have a very real, and understandable hesitation about speaking about the second coming and the end of the world.  Predictions about the end of the world and the second coming have been so badly abused by cults and fanatics that many of us avoid the subject altogether.  We might state, in the Apostles’ Creed, that we believe that ‘he will come to judge the living and the dead’, but it does not have a great deal of influence on the ways that we practice of faith.  I asked Karen, the other night, if she ever thought about the end of the world, or about the rapture.  When she said that she did not, I said that I hoped that she would miss me.  She said, in that case, that she is suddenly looking forward to it…

As much as we might shake our heads at these seemingly strange eschatological speculations, it is important to realize that predictions about the end of the world are, by no means, limited to the religious sphere of life.  To the contrary, eschatological scenarios are presented to us, on an almost daily basis, from almost every sphere of human life. 

Consider the following.  Less than a generation ago, we were frequently warned that the world, as we know it, was about to end in a fiery conflagration of nuclear bombs raining down upon us because of a clash between the so-called superpowers.  Shortly after tensions began to ease with the Soviet Union, we were told that our fears should be shifted to rogue states and unstable regimes in the former Soviet Union, some of which may have had access to unaccounted-for nuclear arms. 

As the 1990s came to an end, and no such threats materialized, numerous doomsday scenarios began to be ‘rolled out’ in relation to the ways that the internal clocks on our computers – and on the computer systems that controlled weapons systems, nuclear power plants, airplanes, water treatment facilities and other public institutions – were not going to be able to adjust to the change to the year 2000.  If you remember, the so-called Y2K problem led to many different predictions about how those computer glitches were going to cause widespread mayhem, anarchy and destruction. 

Well, we made it through the year 2000.  Since then, however, a number of new situations have presented themselves as contenders for the most likely reason for the end of the world.  The events of September 11, 2001 were named as a precursor to doomsday.  We were warned to fear that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were going to be unleashed on the world, and that we should prepare ourselves for an unending series of terrorist attacks.  We were told that a flu pandemic spread by chickens might devastate humanity.  When those anticipated annihilations did not materialize, we began paying a greater degree of attention to the environmental consequences of our actions.  Now, on an almost daily basis, we are offered predictions about the ways that the human race is going to meet its end because of global warming.  And, just as global warming is being accepted as a threat of eschatological proportions, there are others who are starting to suggest that global cooling is what we should be concerned about.

My comments are not intended to undermine the importance of engagement with these various issues.  The demonic proliferation of  nuclear and other military weapons offers a terrible threat to our common humanity; widespread diseases and pandemics have happened, and likely will happen again; terrorists will likely strike again; and the environmental crisis is real. 

But, at some point, it is wise for us to step back and ponder what such a constant barrage of doomsday scenarios does to us, and to our spirits.  And it is wise for us, as people of faith, to consider how we should best respond to those predictions about the end of the world.

What should concern us the most, as people of faith, is that many of these end-of-the-world scenarios and doomsday speculations invite us to embrace a spirituality filled with fear, anxiety, suspicion, paranoia and despair.  We are encouraged to fear our enemies; we have been told to live in anxiety about what communists, or terrorists, or Muslims, or the militarily powerful, or disenfranchised poor people, or disaffected youth might do to us.  We begin to view ‘others’ not as strangers to be welcomed and befriended, but as individuals whose actions we view with suspicion.  We are told that there is nothing that really can be done about the environment, and that we might as well give up, in despair, since the damage is already too great to overcome. 

Every day, it seems, we are told that we are approaching the end of the world as we know it; and we don’t feel fine – we feel afraid, anxious, suspicious, paranoid and in despair.

But are any of these responses rooted in the Gospel?

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Advent.  As much as we might focus, during the coming weeks, on the celebration of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, the actual intention of Advent is not to remind us to prepare for Christmas, but rather to remind us to prepare for Christ’s return.  It is a season to examine our lives, and to ask ourselves whether we are living in such a way that we would be ready to welcome Christ were he to come into our lives and into our world, at some unexpected moment -- even today.

To put it another way, the season of Advent is about preparing ourselves for ‘the end of the world as we know it’.

And it is remarkable that, on this first Sunday in the season of Advent, when our readings invite us to ponder the end of history, that we are invited to focus ourselves on the theme of hope.

The reason why this is so remarkable is because hope is a fairly rare commodity when the end of the world is usually discussed.  Most human speculations about the end of history present pictures of devastation, destruction, conflict and chaos; and encourage us to live in fear, in anxiety and in despair.

But this is not the way that we, as Christians, are called to view the end of time.  Rather, all of the biblical passages which point us towards the end of time invite us to live in hope. From the prophecies of Isaiah, to the words of Daniel, to the sayings of Jesus, to the visions of Revelation, all of these passages encourage us to live, not in fear and anxiety, but rather in hope.

And what reason is offered to inspire us to live in hope? 

We live in hope because, whatever else happens, our faith is placed in a loving God whose sovereign power rules over all things – past, present and future. And when this world does come to an end, as it will, when time itself is ended, it is that same loving God who will be sovereign. 

Throughout the season of Advent, and throughout our lives, we are invited to live with hope, not because we are anxious that we will be left behind; nor because we live with fear of the wrath of God; but rather because we want to be ready to welcome the kingdom of God’s love to this world.  Hope inspires us to believe that the best may be yet to come. 

Which should remind us that this Advent invitation to hope-filled expectation does not simply relate to the end of the world, but to each one of our individual lives.  Since none of us know when our lives will come to an end, we are invited to live every moment of our lives in such a way that we are always ready to enter into God’s presence with joy and with confidence.  There is an old saying that we should live every moment of our lives as if it is our last, because eventually we’ll be right.  The inevitability of death is not a reason for dread, or fear, or despair.  We live, after all, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.

In a few moments, we are going to share together in the Sacrament of Communion.  In the simple elements of bread and wine, we are invited to remember that, even when all seems hopeless, in this world, God is still in control. Even when the death and despair of the cross seemed triumphant, the God of life and of love was still at work.

And it is our faith in that God which transforms our fears and anxieties about life, and about the world, into the substance of our hope. 

Because even when that day comes that it will be the end of the world as we know it, we shall not only feel fine.

We shall live in hope.