Apocalypse Now Proper 28C

 

Apocalypse Now

Go back for a moment to September 11, 2001. Where were you when you heard that two passenger jets had crashed into the World Trade Towers? What was your immediate feeling? What feelings did you have as the day wore on as we all waited for some sort of “All Clear” signal? Where were you and what did it feel like when you heard that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated? Or, if you are old enough to remember, the attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Any one of these events, and all three together, cannot match the feelings of those who first heard Luke’s version of Jesus discussing the destruction of not just The Temple, but all of Jerusalem as the Roman Empire squashed an attempted insurrection to drive them out of Israel. [Luke 21: 5-36] For Caesar, it was like a gnat attempting to bring down Tyrannosaurus Rex! It was no contest. And destroying The Temple and all of Jerusalem was in effect to drive a stake through the very heart of the People Israel. In good times and bad times, in times of Exile, and in diaspora, The Temple has stood as a reminder of better days ahead when, as Isaiah’s soaring poetry makes the case that they would return, and once again the appointed offerings would be made in a new Temple to the God of the Exodus. [Isaiah 65:17-25] Its absence is heart breaking. 

By the time Luke reports Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse, there was no longer a city or a Temple. It all lay in ashes. The people spread out into centuries of diaspora. The “new heavens and a new earth” that had been a promise such that “the former bad times shall not be remembered.or come to mind,” did not, and has not happened. From the perspective of the infant Church, the promise of God’s reign, God’s kingdom, still had not and has not materialized. Unlike our Jewish sisters and brothers who still hold on to a time when the Temple shall be restored, all memory of The Temple has long been replaced in the Church by Constantine’s establishment of Christendom – a distinctively un-holy Holy Roman Empire – and a Church that for the most part has not been anything like the “kingdom of God” that was central to the Good News Jesus preached, taught, and lived every day of his earthly existence. The heart of his apocalyptic discourse as his disciples look admiringly at the grandeur of the of the Temple, is that “Yes” one day the Son of Man will return, and the glory of the Lord restored. A promise of “Yes – but not yet!” Meanwhile, says Jesus, we are to endure: “By your endurance you will gain your souls." 

We learn from the letters to the church in Thessaloniki that things for the young church were going badly before the insurrection and destruction of The Temple. The church, as a vanguard movement that might be characterized as Making Israel Great Again, had already turned against one another, some refusing to adhere to the core principle to “love one another as I, Jesus, have loved you.” [2 Thessalonians 3:6-13] The Greek suggests that these people were not idle or lazy, but rather were “insubordinate,” or “irresponsible,” shirking their duties to Tot make sure that everyone has enough to eat - a core value in the Bible all the way back to the days of manna in the wilderness: where everyone got enough, no one could take too much, and if you hoard it, it rots. Perhaps these insubordinates took Jesus’s apocalyptic words literally, believing that if he were to return soon, why should we work hard to meet the needs of others? 

There’s a problem when we read “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” We hear echoes of talk about welfare mothers cheating the system, using Food Stamps and SNAP benefits to illegally obtain drugs and alcohol, but that is not what is going on. As Luke describes in the opening chapters of Acts, the early church was a mutual aid society: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” Those not participating in this mutual aid society, it is suggested, ought not to benefit from it. Note: This addresses a church problem only. This is not talking about people in the general public. Note as well, when the church operated as a mutual aid society, the church grew by leaps and bounds! Their faithfulness endured through persecutions and the brutality of the Empire. 

Indeed, in good times and in bad, there have always been those in the church who have endured and who faithfully fulfill the vision as declared some five centuries before the time of Christ. A vision declared in Isaiah 12:2-6:

Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.

For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, and he will be my Savior.

Therefore, you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.

And on that day, you shall say, give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;

Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember

that his Name is exalted.

Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things,

and this is known in all the world.

Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, *

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

We can endure for the great one is in the midst of us. We gather each Sunday to remind ourselves, that it is Christ who was raised from the dead who is present in our Eucharist. There is no need to wait for him to appear – it is his Spirit that sustains us through whatever wilderness, hard times, and times of darkness and destruction surround us. Christ, the Morning Star that knows no setting is here, day and night, whose laser-like light directs us to live life as those Christians of old did: a mutual aid society, in which we all work together to be sure that everyone has enough, and no one has too much. We must remember that we are those people who pool our resources to meet the needs of one another, and as Jesus tells us, all others, even the strangers, foreigners and resident aliens who flee lands of terror, warfare, and famine. 

Immediately following Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse, the Temple authorities and collaborators with the Roman occupation enlist Judas in their attempt to remove Jesus once and for all from meddling in their monopoly of the resources meant for the whole community. They forgot that the “great one in the midst of us is the Holy One of Israel!” They forget that it is God who shall save us and not we ourselves. And therein, lies the mischievousness that has plagued Christendom since Constantine changed the church from a mutual aid society into a mechanism of the Empire. Thus, the importance that we remain a prophetic voice, a community who remembers the vision of a just society articulated in our sacred scriptures, despite whatever destruction seems to surround us on all sides. Our endurance will save our souls! Christ is with us to remind us that all that we do and all that we say is meant demonstrate our love one another, and for all others, as he loves us.