Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga; November 17, 2019; Year C, Proper 28

Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6); 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

Jesus’ words in Luke’s gospel are apocalyptic.  They seem to envision some kind of end-times.  Now, there are some folks who would take this reading from Scripture – and others like it – and read into it much that is not there: predictions about the end of the world on a certain day, or a literal description of what that end looks like.  These people are wrong.  Here, and elsewhere in Scripture, apocalyptic images are not meant to be read literally but to turn up the volume, provide a sense of urgency, to our prayerful consideration of what it means to live lives of faith here and now. 

Still, in the creed we say that we believe that one day Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”  In fact, today we actually hear two portions of Scripture that seem to point to the reality of that end of days, though the pictures we get of what that will look like are very different.  In addition to Jesus’ words in Luke, the prophet Isaiah also uses images to depict an end-times vision: God will “create new heavens and a new earth;” God’s people will rejoice always and “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, [and] the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”  Isaiah’s vision of peace, serenity, and joy, on God’s “holy mountain” is pretty different from Jesus’ prediction of earthquakes, famines and plagues in Luke’s gospel

Given those two options, we would probably all choose the Isaiah version of the end of the world.  But both are valid visions in their own way.  And, while both Jesus’ words and the prophecy we get from Isaiah might be considered to be perspectives of the end of the world, I think we’re better off seeing them as visions of the end of the world as we know it.  Or, better yet, the end of the world as they knew it. 

Isaiah and Jesus are each speaking to specific groups of people, at specific points in time.  Isaiah’s words are directed towards the Israelites two and a half thousand years ago, returning from life in exile to a seemingly-ruined Jerusalem.  But into that catastrophe, Isaiah speaks the promise of an end to the world as they know it – a world defined by ruin, oppression and sorrow.  Jesus’ words five hundred years later are directed to his disciples, who have just commented on the beauty and grandeur of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem.  That opulence, that beauty, that ease with which you practice your religion, Jesus tells them, isn’t permanent.  In fact, the temple will be destroyed; your way of seeing and perceiving God in the world will be completely changed; and you will be persecuted for your beliefs.  The world – as you know it – will end. 

But why bother telling them this, really?  Why bother tantalizing or terrorizing folks with visions of the end of all that we know? 

By now, many of you know that I’m a fan of country music and I’m going to turn to that wealth of wisdom of country lyrics once again.  In Tim McGraw’s “Live like you were dying,” the lyrics tell the story of a man who, on discovering his time in this world is limited, starts doing things he’s never done before.  He rides 2.7 seconds on a bull named “Fu Man Chu.”  He goes sky diving.  He gives forgiveness he’d been denying.  And he hopes that others get the chance to “live like [they] were dying,” too.

Because knowing that the world, your world, is about to end profoundly effects how you live in the time you have left.  But for Isaiah and Jesus, it’s not about bull-riding and sky-diving.  Isaiah wants the Israelites to live sure in the knowledge of the coming joy in God’s “new heavens and new earth,” even in the midst of the loss surrounding them.  Jesus wants his disciples to endure in faith through the coming trials and take any “opportunity to testify” to the hope they have in his name. 

The point of the apocalyptic is not to worry about the end of the world, but to consider prayerfully and faithfully how we are called to live fully in this world in the time we have been given. 

That’s what the writer to the Thessalonians is concerned with, too.  Perhaps some of the folks in Thessalonica have misunderstood the promise of the second coming of Christ.  These folks figure, if the end of the world is upon us, we can stop working.  We’ll just be “idle,” live off our Christian brothers and sisters who have a little extra, and hang out until the end of the world comes.  But the writer of this letter is convinced that’s a bad idea.  Waiting for the Lord, living like the end is upon us, is not an idle activity.  Waiting for the Lord involves perseverance, “endurance” as Jesus called it.  It involves hard work, in every sense, “toil and labor,” and never being “weary in doing what is right.”  

And that’s as true for us Christians living today as it was for the earliest Christians.  Because, the truth is, the end of the world as we know it has, in fact, already come.  We are living in this in-between time, this precious moment between Christ’s incarnation in the world and his second coming.  The end of the world as we know it came with Christ’s death and resurrection and the new heavens and new earth promised by Isaiah have been in the works ever since.  You and I are living in that brand new world, that transforming and transformative world.  And that kind of transformation, that kind of divinely-powered change involves some real upheaval.  In spite of the deeply troubling realities in the world around us, in spite of the deeply troubling realities in our own lives, we are, most assuredly, inhabitants of the new Jerusalem.  And the “endurance” to which Jesus urges us is to persevere in hope, in the faith that God’s new creation is in the process of being established.  By the power of the Spirit, we are participating in God’s great work of making present the kingdom of God in the realities of our lives and our world. 

Yes, the end of the world is upon us, not tomorrow, not the next day, not 100 years from now, but right now and already.  Through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, the end of the world has come and the new heavens and the new earth are being established in the name of God.  So, “make his deeds known to the peoples; tell out his exalted Name.  Praise the Lord, who has done great things; all his works his might proclaim… Lift your voice in singing, for with you has come to dwell, in your very midst, the great and Holy One of Israel.”  Amen.