Our Scripture readings today match the mood
of much of the country: apocalyptic! While
the election results are not exactly the end of the world, they do mark the end
of an era. We’ve never seen a
nationalist populism of this kind dominate a once mainstream political party
and achieve electoral college success. This election season was marked by an unprecedented
level of vulgarity, vitriol, deceit and pure hatred. There is nearly universal uncertainty about
the future and more than a little fear.
Apocalyptic reflects this moment, not simply
because of its association with convulsive transitions, but also because of the
worldview with which it is associated.
At the heart of the apocalyptic imagination is a perception of reality
marked by a series of binary oppositions:
a cosmic dualism between heaven and earth, a temporal dualism between
this age and the age to come, which will begin with the destruction of this
age, and a social dualism between good people and evil people.[i] Apocalyptic is about polarization and its
tension, a tension that can be overcome only by the utter annihilation of one
of the poles: heaven will displace earth
when this evil age and its people are destroyed.
This is clearly expressed in the text from
the prophet Malachi this morning:
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant
and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says
the Lord of hosts . . .[ii]
Please note that this kind of thinking is not
limited to images of that mean “Old Testament” god. We find it also in the New Testament’s second
letter to the Thessalonians:
For it is indeed just of
God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the
afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not
know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.[iii]
The apocalyptic imagination is one thread
within the biblical traditions, but it is not the only or ultimate
perspective. Jesus offers a very
different take on apocalyptic. While it is true that Jesus takes over the
language of apocalyptic, he turns it to a very different purpose, subverting
its meaning from within. “Apocalyptic”
literally means “revelation” or “unveiling.”
In his teaching and practice, Jesus collapses the polarities of the
apocalyptic imagination to reveal what is really going on.
This is most evident in Jesus’ practice of
inclusive table fellowship, his healing of outcasts, and his parabolic
reversals of insiders and outsiders. The
polarity between good and evil people is undone by the forgiving love of a God
who makes the rain to fall on the righteous and on the unrighteous. There is judgment and condemnation of evil,
but in the service of a larger wholeness.
Similarly, the polarity between heaven and
earth is undone by the prayer that God’s will be done on earth as in
heaven. Heaven and earth are correlated
dimensions of reality, overlapping if you will.
The kingdom of heaven is “at hand,” it is within and among you. It is not the destruction of earth and flight
to heaven for which we hope, but rather a new heaven and earth emerging from
the transfiguration of present reality.
Finally, the polarity between the present age
and the age to come is elided by a sense of continuity between past, present, and
future held in an eternal now. The
emphasis is less on a rupture between the present age and the age to come, than
it is on the age to come invading the present age, so to speak, and subverting
it from within: like leaven in the dough.
Justice rises to fill the whole, but only after it does can we eat the
bread of reconciliation. There is no
reconciliation without justice. There is
no cheap grace in Jesus’ teaching or practice – it comes at the cost of any
claim to privilege or self-sufficiency -
but that grace is available here and now as well as then and there.[iv]
So when Jesus speaks of wars and uprisings
and natural disasters, he is not evoking a cataclysmic end time, but rather the
difficult reality of history and its very gradual, sometimes barely
perceptible, leavening by God’s gracious work in and through us. He is clear that the “end” will not follow
immediately. In fact, he warns us against
those who claim the end is near. He goes
on to note that nation will be raised upon nation and kingdom upon kingdom (not
nation against nation): that is to say,
nations will rise and fall, but that isn’t the end of the world.[v] Empires, political parties, leaders come and
go – don’t freak out about it. Don’t be
fascinated by those who manipulate the fear and uncertainty inherent in such
moments of upheaval.
Notice something else that is unusual about
Jesus’ evocation of apocalyptic imagery:
the violence, which is real, is purely a human phenomenon. It has nothing to do with divine vengeance. Jesus assumes – even warns – his disciples
that, rather than being triumphant beneficiaries of such violence, they will be
its victims. They will arrest you and
persecute you. You will be imprisoned
and brought before kings and governors because of your loyalty to the way of
Jesus. You will be hated, betrayed by
members of your own family.
It is here that the apocalyptic imagination
is turned on its head. Jesus adopts the
perspective of victims, from the underside of history. What is unveiled or revealed is the innocence
of history’s victims and the mendacity of our violent culture constructed of
mutually exclusive binary opposites. God
is not the source of this violence, but rather the gracious energy of love that
witnesses for justice no matter what the cost, for the sake of a reconciliation
that lies ahead of us. The arc of the
universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
When Jesus counsels us to love our enemies
and to pray for them, he also instructs us to find creative, nonviolent ways to
shift the balance of power in society in ways that protect the vulnerable.[vi] Jesus is not naïve. He knows there are enemies of the
Gospel. He knows history is a long
slog. But he also reveals a resource
against the violent rulers of this and every age: the power of God that flows through those
willing to receive it and bear witness to it.
This election is not the end of the world. It is one more moment in the long evolution of
human consciousness into the fullness of Christ consciousness. In becoming human in Christ Jesus, God
revealed the true meaning of history: the unfathomable love of God for all that
She has created and redeemed. Nothing
can ultimately stand against the power of this love. In bearing witness to this truth, Jesus
outlines three imperatives for living in history.[vii]
“Watch, that you may not be lead
astray.” This is the contemplative
imperative: cultivate the capacity to
pay attention. Listen to the still small
voice within. Listen to the wisdom of
the body and of the earth. Embrace the
discerning wisdom that comes from the practice of listening, allowing us to
touch into the reality of God’s presence so as to shape our perception of
reality. Silent prayer is the taproot of
wisdom to read the signs of the times. Plenty
of fools throughout history have claimed “I am he, only I can save you.” Don’t believe it for a minute.
“Put it into your hearts not to prepare a
defense ahead of time.” This is the
trust imperative. We will be called before the court of history to defend its
victims. Our first responsibility is to
protect the vulnerable. This inevitably gets
us into trouble with those in power who exploit the vulnerable. The question is not if we will need to
testify, but how we will do it. Jesus
says, “Don’t worry about it.” Don’t
prepare ahead of time, anxious about getting it right. It isn’t about being persuasive, or
manipulating others, or even “winning” in the conventional sense. It is about solidarity and truth-telling.
Finally, “In your patience, possess your
souls.” This is a more accurate rendering
of the somewhat misleading translation, “By your endurance you will gain your
souls.”[viii]
It isn’t a quid pro quo: if you endure,
you will be saved. It is an instruction
about how to conduct ourselves as witnesses for God in history: with dignity, not frenzy; guarding your
soul’s integrity, not selling it to the highest bidder. It can be tempting, in the real struggle for
justice in history, to sell our soul to the devil, to become the evil we
resist. Don’t lose your soul, not even
to gain the world. The world already
belongs to God. You don’t need to mirror
evil. This is the integrity imperative.
Pay attention. Trust God.
Guard your soul.
In the days ahead, we must resist the cynical
manipulation of the masses by the demagogue de jour. That much is obvious. We must also resist the temptation to retreat
to tend our little garden, refusing the risks of engagement with public
life. We will be called to bear witness,
says Jesus. If not now, then when?
There is also another temptation we must
resist – the call to a premature “unity” that seeks a rush to reconciliation
without justice in the name of a sincere, but misguided idea of love of our
enemies. Writing in Germany in the early
1940’s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leader of the Confessing Church who cooperated with
the German resistance to the Nazi regime, describes such misguided love in this
way:
“It rests on evaluating human beings
according to their dormant values – the health, reasonableness, and goodness deep beneath the
surface . . . With forced tolerance, evil is reinterpreted as good, meanness is
overlooked, and the reprehensible is excused.
For various reasons one shies away from a clear No, and finally agrees
to everything. One loves a self-made
picture of human beings that has little similarity to reality, and one ends up
despising the real human being whom God has loved and whose being God has taken
on.”[ix]
We are entering into a dark period of our
history. The shadow side of the American
psyche is in the ascendant, unleashing the racism and misogyny, the fear of the
other, that always has been a part of our national life. Those who have long been its victims are not
surprised by the outcome of this election. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could paint
a rosier picture, but only an honest appraisal of the situation can offer us a
way forward. Pay attention. Trust God.
Guard your soul. Let our “No” be
loud and clear. Anything less betrays
contempt for the very people and earth that we claim to love in the name of
Jesus.
Our victory comes from God, and the Spirit is
the source of the wisdom and power we need to respond to the vicissitudes of
history. We must follow Jesus in the
subversion of the apocalyptic imagination.
This is our opportunity to testify.
[i] James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (New
York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), p. 124.
[ii] Malachi 4:1.
[iii] II Thessalonians 1:6-7.
[iv] Alison, p. 125-130.
[v] Mark Davis, “How Not to Prepare for
Catastrophe” at http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-not-to-prepare-for-catastrophe.html.
[vi] Luke 6:27-36.
[vii] Luke 21: 7-19.
[viii] Davis, op cit.
[ix] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2005), p. 87.
