The End Of The Age

November 18, 2007     Proper 28 C

Isaiah 65:17-25             Psalm 98

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13         St. Luke 21:5-19

Devastation. Ruin. Emptiness. Is this the fate of the earth? Was Bertrand Russell right when he prophesied that our origin, growth, and maturation would come to nothing? An honest philosophy, he claimed, could not reasonably deny that "no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. All the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system." The great temple of human achievement would inevitably be reduced to debris in universal ruin.

Russell was a prophet without a savior, an apocalyptic mind that could not imagine a second coming. The prophets centuries earlier, foresaw the same doom, the global blastfurnace where all pride and evil are reduced to rubble, where cancerous growth is uprooted and burned away. But the prophets saw hope; they believed the God who promised a new sun of justice with its healing rays.

As we lurched toward the year 2000, an opera of prophets took the big stage. Apocalyptic literature boomed, even if the earth didn't. Movies, self-help books, bogus practitioners of religio-craft, best sellers, and talk shows buzzed with anticipation. But it wasn't to be anything new.

Jesus himself, in Luke's Gospel, saw terrible times ahead, a day coming when not one stone of our human temple will rest on another. He warned of the signs. There will be wars and insurrections. Nations will fight to the death against nations. Tribes, peoples, and clans will clash. The earth will protest with mighty quakes, the biosystem will spawn plague and famine. The sky will blossom with omens. Finally, there will be rejection and even persecution for those who believe in Christ.

The crowd looks upon the beauty of theTemple; Jesus sees it will be a pile of rubble. The crowd sees wars, earthquakes, famines, etc. as terrifying; Jesus sees them as the beginning of the end. Jesus sees the end of time not as the end of life, but as the time when we will secure our lives. In every case, Jesus sees the immediate happenings in the context of God's eternal plan?a vision which calls us to hope and courage.

Yet Christ, seeming to anticipate our wonder, offered this advice: "Do not be perturbed. . . . These things are bound to happen." Bound to happen. Life is bound to be this way. He is not speaking about the end of all times, but the condition of every time. The disciples are concerned with the age of the end. When will this be? Jesus is concerned with the end of the age. What will this be?

I believe there is at least one interpretation of apocalyptic literature (one far more solid than the endless announcements of the end of the world, based on occult reading of scripture) that takes such passages as revelations not so much of what is to come, but of what is now the case.

Each day is the last. Each time is the end time. Each human being faces the end of the world in the span of a life, whether it reaches eight minutes or eighty years. The world, its opportunities and losses, passes away for us each night. Every sunset announces a closing of a day that will never come again. Each human death, as Russell pondered, is the curtain on an unrepeatable drama, which, without God, amounts to a tragedy. Every generation, in some way, is the last, the termination. And each generation, like each death and every day, witnesses the signs of the end times.

Everything that Christ predicted has taken place and is taking place and will continue to take place. We need not wait until the millennium or turn to Nostradamus to unlock the mystery. Life itself is the mystery, this great groaning of creation that finds its meaning in hope alone.

Russell knew this. And since he had no hope, he saw all of human history, when all is said and done, as a cruel joke.

The apostles become fearful at the saying of Jesus in the first verses from the Gospel. The "temple" so well adorned and sturdy, is going to be thrown down. This is so unimaginable in the minds of his hearers that they ask for the "when" and some evidence that this could happen.

If they were fearful at his first words about the destruction of the Temple, imagine how they felt after hearing about wars, earthquakes and other signs from the sky.

Jesus' words get even more personal. They, the apostles, are going to be handed over, betrayed, and persecuted. Because of the name of Jesus, they will experience personal imprisonment and they will have to testify to their relationship with, and belief in, their relationship with the person and mission of Jesus.

So more than the earth is quaking while Jesus lays it all out and on them. Some will die, but all will be hated. Jesus ends this invitational discourse by saying that they will be saved by their persevering. I wonder if these words unquaked his listeners?

Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King and that Gospel will be for us a picture of regal perseverance. In today's Gospel, Jesus is speaking as much about his future as that of the early church. The Roman dominating powers will tumble the Temple that will quake the nation of Israel.

The Temple is the timeless and permanent outwardness of God's presence. Jesus is predicting his collapse before the same power as well as his being handed over by friends. Those who take up his name will take up his message and they will be met with similar resistance and rejection.

These readings from this week and next provide us with a summary of our walking through this "liturgical year" that ends with next week's celebration. What have we learned, not merely factually, but what of the person of Jesus have we taken in that would be available to us in our following him all the way even to our deaths.

We will have accompanied him and his followers from birth to death. We will have heard his call and his expectations. In a sense, Jesus answers the predictable question of all students, "What's going to be on the final exam?"

Rather than calculating the time, cataloguing signs, chasing after those who claim, "I am he," or tracking world events, Jesus prepares his disciples for the sometimes arduous task of bearing witness to him and his way of life. Fidelity to him will cause persecutions, family division, and legal actions against believers.

This is the lot of the disciple in any age, both in the present and in the end times. But it is the call that Jesus sets before us. Jesus calls us to follow him not just in the nick of time to escape the final judgment. Jesus calls us to follow him because in so doing we leave death behind and enter into life.

Think of it, even if we face death, we shall live. This was a radical concept for many of Jesus' listeners in the first century AD. The whole notion of life after death, at least a life that was in some way conscious, was novel. Many believed that we lived after death in the memory of our descendants. Jesus is talking about another kind of life.

The end of the age is coming, and with it will come the end of the way things are now done and understood. One of those things that will come to an end is the idea of death. Death will be no more. Death will be remembered as something of the former life. Life will be granted that cannot be taken away from you, even if they take away your life.

Sounds confusing? It is, and the answer to it does not come from human understanding. That is why Jesus warns his followers not to try to come up with an explanation or defense of this present life. The life to come is linked with this life but distinct from this life. It comes at the end of the age, which for Jesus is a state of being and belief and not a position on the calendar.