“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place…”
It’s more than a little bit unsettling when 2000 year-old texts read like last week’s headlines. As I was preparing this sermon, I felt like I should probably be looking over my shoulder the whole time, just in case there were an angel swinging his sickle over the earth and throwing the harvest into the great wine press of the wrath of God. Youch.
Today’s lessons all come from a genre of Biblical literature that we call apocalyptic—which literally means revealing—as in a revealing of the consequences of human behavior. Apocalyptic literature should always give us pause consider our own choices and the many ways we contribute to the violence and destructiveness of our time. This is the truth of our human condition. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
In liturgical time, today’s challenging readings come to us just two days after we celebrate the sovereignty of our Lord in the Feast of Christ the King, and less than a week before Advent, the annual awaiting of the vulnerable coming of Christ. It’s that awkward in-between time when the way we thought things were supposed to be—God’s anointed comfortably reigning upon his throne—gives way to the radical uncertainty of a poor and pregnant woman seated on a donkey. The “already” of God’s kingdom has become the “not yet.”
Which is the hard truth promised by our tradition. Until time is fulfilled and Christ comes in glory, in whatever beautiful form that may take, the “already” is always tempered by the “not yet,” and vice versa. We’ve all seen a glimpse of the kingdom, or we would not be here. But lovely though the new heaven and earth may be, our beatific vision must be tempered by the knowledge that not everyone currently has access to the blessings God intends for all. And by the same token, every grief we experience now is accompanied by the promise that Christ himself will—in the fullness of time—wipe away the tears.
That bifocal lens—already and not yet, present joy amidst present sorrow—is also the one we must wear when we read the scriptures like the ones we hear today. The Temple whose destruction Jesus predicted was a sign of beauty, holiness, and the assurance of God’s presence with the Jewish people. And at the very same time it was a conscripted tribute to Herod’s despotic reign. So Jesus’ prophetic teaching was not about God calling down hellfire on the Temple so much as it was being honest about the corruption of human institutions and leaders.
As we must be honest as well. Goodness knows there is more than enough apocalyptic news afoot in our own time. And so we read text of our times, so to speak, with bifocal lenses as well. Yes, there are wars and insurrections—literally—and no, do not be terrified. Because we ha
ve seen the “already” of God’s judgment, and it looks like this: Jesus, beloved of God and crucified by a corrupt regime, saying “father forgive them.” Forgiveness. That is the ultimate revelation of God’s judgment, already made.
And the “not yet” of God’s judgment? In a way, that’s on us. In this in-between time, we have to choose what lens we will wear when we hear of wars and destruction, in life as in holy scripture. And what lens we will wear when we look at God, for that matter. Are the signs of out own times
evidence of a punitive God who is poised to destroy, or an invitation for each of us to enter more deeply into the vulnerability of the one who came to us as a child? Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar NT Wright puts our choice in these terms—
“My proposal is not that we understand what the word “god” means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross—and that we somehow allow our meaning for the word “god” to be re-centered around that point.”
