Apocalyptic Boogie

Apocalyptic

“See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble… But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” [Malachi 4:1-2a]

We tend to find the Apocalyptic literature in the Bible to be baffling at best. We overlook its primary purpose: to be a literature urging Perseverance in hard times and sustain Hope for a New Day. But let’s be clear about this from the outset: the kind of “redemption” promised in the Bible’s Apocalyptic literature “is not a private lifeboat to save a few privileged folk while everything else is destroyed. Rather, redemption is equated with the coming [the advent] of God’s reign, which spells transformation, healing and wholeness for all of life.” [Sharon Ringe, Luke, p 253] Apocalyptic makes the promise that the world and creation will be made new!

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down…By your endurance you will gain your souls…Truly I tell you, this generation shall not pass away until all things have taken place.” [Luke 21:5-38]

We tend to shy away from these sorts of Apocalyptic passages in the Bible, viewing them as bizarre, incomprehensible, intended for some other people, some other time, some other place. Or, worse still, by avoiding them and paying as little attention as possible to them, we allow others to turn this genre of faith literature into so much commercialized pablum that distorts it all to advance some elitist agenda or other that says some version of, “Only these sorts of believers will be saved, or “Unless you believe what we are telling you, you will be left behind.” As if God’s redemption is somehow limited to a precious few. As if God does not really love all of creation, including all people. As if in our baptism we have not pledged to seek and serve Christ in ALL persons, loving your neighbor as yourself. As if we have not pledged to STRIVE for Justice and Peace for ALL people, respecting the DIGNITY of EVERY human being.

Furthermore, how near the time is coming is never made exactly clear. “How near the time will be is not exactly clear. The word ‘generation’ can refer to the thirty or so years that one would normally assume for a human life cycle. It can also, however, refer to an entire era marked by a particular quality (‘this age’), which could encompass all of human history. We do not know what Luke meant, or in the similar saying in 9:27. But the essence of the ‘revelation’ has been to put an end to such calculation, emphasizing instead, confidence in God’s faithfulness to God’s promises of salvation (21:33).” [Ibid p 253-254]  We do well to note that the Apocalypse in Luke 21 urges us to Be Alert, Endure, and concludes with what to do in the meantime following the lead of Jesus: spend nights in quiet  prayer and contemplation in a sacred place of one’s choosing, and get up early in the morning to, as the voice from heaven commanded back at the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36), “Listen to him.”

 Such franchises as the Left Behind books and movie only serve to trivialize what is going on here. For the audience Luke addresses has seen the destruction of the Temple, and indeed all of Jerusalem, come true. The Temple is central to Luke’s story of Jesus. Luke begins in the Temple with Zechariah. The infant Jesus is brought to the Temple. His family regularly goes to the Temple. He teaches openly in the Temple. The Temple is not only the center of his story, but it is the very center of the universe for all of Israel. It was the center of the Jewish and early Christian faith, the place where God’s finger touched the Earth and held it still. Now, after Rome destroyed it in the year 70CE, not one stone was on top of another, and the entire city, Jeru-salem, “city of Shalom”, “city of peace”, lay in smouldering ruins. It literally looked like Hell.

Try, for just a moment, to imagine what impact this had on the psyche of both the people of Israel and the early Christians, who we are told in Acts chapter 2, worshipped in the Temple every day. Think of other crises that have resulted in generations of psychic memory: The Crusades, The Trail of Tears, Slavery in the U.S., Pearl Harbor, The Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Carpet Bombing, Agent Orange, Thalidomide, Assassinations (JFK, MLKjr, Bobby, Anwar Sadat), September 11, the Climate Crisis. Imagine the lasting damage of any one of these.

Luke, along with Mark and Matthew, includes this Apocalyptic revelation specifically to quell any time wasted calculating the ‘when,’ and even the ‘what,’ to refocus the people, to refocus us, on the importance of what we should be about here and now in “this generation.” The examples are quite simple: prayer and contemplation, and continue to listen to Jesus and to follow him wherever he goes and whatever he does. That’s it. No disaster stories with some swept up we know not where while others are left in eternal torment. Go back and review the list of the kinds of events that linger in the psyche of a people for generations, for decades, for millennia, and realize all kinds of eternal torment are already forever etched in the DNA and memories of all people everywhere.

We do well to note that in giving the disciples an answer as to when the Day of the Lord will come, Jesus instead urges them to sustain the virtue of Hope that the falseness of this world is ultimately bounded by greater Truth and Light. His vision and his revelation is that God’s redemption, salvation, reign, or whatever else one wants to call it, is about transformation, healing and wholeness for all of life – not for some elite group, not for some private lifeboat for a few privileged people, but for all of life – all people, all creatures, all of creation.

And that life is not primarily about what we believe, but rather about what we do. His call is to follow him, to walk in his way, a way that is self-evident in its care for the “least of these of my sisters and brothers.” Jesus repeatedly urges us to remain confident in God’s promises, to be Alert, to Endure, and to Persevere in following the man from Galilee. And to live a life informed by quiet prayer and listening to him.

All other attempts to sensationalize Apocalyptic thinking is the fantasy of those who find the call to follow Jesus too difficult to imagine and instead are looking for an easy ticket out of here. Boy, will they be surprised! It’s not about best-selling books, disaster movies, and calculating when the Day of the Lord will come upon us. It will more likely come out of our faithfulness to a way of walking in this life than anything we can say or believe. Faith and Love are about doing, not saying a thing. Persevere in doing Faith and Love until the New Day dawns from on high.