The predictions Jesus makes today are what we know as “apocalyptic.” Apocalyptic predictions are pretty popular these days. I can think of two movies out now – “2012” and “The Road” that seem to predict a violent and horrible end to civilization as we know it. And it seems that apocalyptic predictions cycle through every few years. I can’t remember exactly what was happening back in 1988 to make people think the world was about to end, but there’s a cartoon from that time. In the cartoon, a bookstore owner is taking one sign out of a shop window and replacing it with another. The sign he is taking away says “The Book that Proves the World Will End in September 1988!” And the sign he is replacing it with says, “The Book That Proves the World Will End Retroactive to September 1988!”
So apocalyptic predictions are still pretty popular – if you think “apocalypse” means “the end of the world.” However, in its original sense, that’s not really what apocalypse means. In the original Greek, apocalypse is a word that simply means “revelation” – something has been hidden and the veil is being lifted, God’s action is being revealed so that we gain a new understanding of what is happening to us and what it all means.
Apocalyptic writing happens in the Bible when people who feel powerless are confronted with huge and frightening changes. As Jesus is making these predictions today, he knows that he will die in a matter of days, and he knows that for the disciples his death will be a cataclysm. And, another cataclysmic time comes when Luke, our gospel writer, sits down to record what Jesus said in 33 AD. Luke writes in about the year 80, and what is fresh in his mind is the disaster that happened in Jerusalem in 70 AD, when the Romans invaded to put down a rebellion, destroyed the temple, and scattered the Jews and Christians (who still considered themselves Jews) all over kingdom come. It was a devastating end to everything these people knew about their faith and their future as God’s people.
So, Luke is writing in an apocalyptic time – a time when a powerless people are confronted with frightening changes. Instead of succumbing to simple fear, apocalyptic prophets begin working to discern God’s hand in the frightening events of the day. Apocalyptic language describes not only the end of the world as we know it, it also gives a hope-filled promise of new beginnings to come – a revelation that God is busy in this in-between time, working not only to bring something to an end that we have grown accustomed to, but also at the same time bringing something new to birth.
We are possibly living in apocalyptic times today. At least, these are times when we are afraid that the Christian faith is shrinking or changing along with society, so fast that we’re not sure it will be able to reach new generations. In a time of fear like this, Jesus calls us to look around us for signs of what God might be doing. So what is it that is ending in our world, and what is it that God could be beginning?
Author Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence, says that every 500 years, the church puts on a gigantic rummage sale. She says that “about every 500 years the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity become an intolerable carapace that must be shattered in order that renewal and new growth may occur.” So, if we look back in history, we see that 500 years ago, we had the Great Reformation that split Western Christianity into Roman Catholic and Protestant. About 500 years before that, the Great Schism split East from West. About 500 years before that, the Roman Empire fell, and Pope Gregory the Great established the form of monastic Christianity that became the vehicle for evangelizing most of Western Europe, and incidentally preserved civilization through the Dark Ages. And of course, about 500 years before that, a prophet named Jesus walked the earth and started a religious revolution that would change the way we measure time itself.
Every time the church holds a rummage sale, says Tickle, a new, more vital form of Christianity emerges, and the expression of Christianity which had been dominant up to then is reconstituted into a purer expression of its former self. The church ends up with two more vital, stronger expressions. And the faith is broken open and spreads dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, “thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity’s reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.”
So here we are, right on schedule for a new “rummage sale.” And as Jesus would say, we have only to look around us at the signs of the times to understand that huge changes are taking place. The form of Christianity that many of us grew up with is under attack. Scientific discoveries on one hand, and historical criticism of the Bible on the other, have called into question many biblical truths once taken for granted. Freudian psychology has elevated the “self” as the location of truth rather than external sources of authority, so that it seems perfectly coherent to talk about multiple sources of truth – “my” truth, “your” truth – and assume they are all valid. Communications technology and unprecedented global mobility have ensured that countries which were once solidly mono-cultural are now multicultural, meaning that many religions vie for attention and none can maintain dominance in any area. And anxiety prevails about whether Christianity can survive all these attacks.
In anxious times like these, times of unprecedented change in our faith, Phyllis Tickle asks us to look at what is happening around us as God’s work being revealed – apocalypse. She calls the time we are living through “The Great Emergence.” And she believes that times of great change in the church like this are times when Christianity can take on new life for a changed world.
We are now in the in-between time, she says, the time in between one dominant expression of Christianity and another – a time when society is taking us away from the old forms of faith uncomfortably fast – but a time when it is not yet clear where we are going. In a sense, it is a time of apocalypse.
In times of apocalypse, God is working in special ways, and God wants to lift the veil so we can see what he is doing. In a changing world, we are called to look around us for signs of God’s presence, revelations of how God is working out God’s hope for us in this world.
I see God working in new ways all over. In a time of anxiety over the fact that Christianity is no longer overwhelmingly powerful and dominant, I believe that Christianity can gain new respect precisely because it is not the dominant social expectation. People will practice Christianity not as social expectation, but as a countercultural discipline – a place where Christian faith has always thrived.
In a time of unparalleled polarization between liberals and conservatives, I see Christians taking on new roles. Instead of concentrating on all the areas in which we disagree, I see Christians working together in the areas we all can agree on (for instance, yesterday’s New York Times had a great article about young evangelicals working to help resettle refugees).
In a time when people seem to believe that many paradoxical truths can be equally valid, I see people adopting Christian faith and practice as integral truths that permeate their whole lives, through spiritual disciplines of prayer and worship, sacrifice and service, so that they no longer live as if Christianity is merely a set of doctrines to be believed – they act as if Christianity is a way of life.
Apocalyptic writings remind us that, no matter how many disasters unfold in the world, God has made Creation for a purpose, and God is working even now to bring that purpose to fulfillment. God has come once before, and God will come again, and in the in-between time, God is still with us, working through us and in us.
So in this Advent season – Christ is here, inviting us into an Advent season. It’s a place of longing, a place of hope, a place of remembering that we are called to be part of a better world, a world even now being revealed by God. Advent is a time when we are called to special disciples of prayer and worship, service and sacrifice, as we look for signs of God’s work all around us. And as we do these things, we can truly pray to God with confidence, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
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