O goody – it's the end of the world texts this
week! You know you’re going to get an REM link at some point…
Each fall, as if to match the gathering gloom of shortening days, our lectionary begins to drag the scary stories out of our ancestral closet. (There is a history here – once upon a time, Advent was much more focused on prophetic doom and gloom than it is now, and it started earlier…)
This conversation starts casually, as some of Jesus’ followers are admiring the temple and its adornments. Jesus is blunt: "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." Now, we the readers know that in 70 CE the Romans did in fact destroy the temple. But this would have been a shocking pronouncement to Jesus’ companions. And like most of us, when we hear that something horrible is likely to happen, we want to know when will it be, and how will we know it is here.
Jesus’ answer is cryptic: "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, `I am he!' and, `The time is near!' Do not go after them.” He suggests that some will try to gain a following by issuing dire predictions about the end of the world – guess we’ve seen that in the past few years… Remember when the world was going to end on May 21 a few years ago?
Why do people fall for this? Maybe because it is fairly natural to fear what we cannot control, and it’s hard to get bigger in the “you cannot control this” department than the end of the world as we know it. The end of THE world becomes a stand-in for our anxiety about the end of our worlds – which actually comes with some frequency, with wars and famines and pandemics; with infidelities and job losses; with diagnoses and mega-storms and losses of all sorts. War veterans, whom we celebrate today, know better than most about the end of the world. And for the most part, we survive.
What are you most afraid of losing today? Can you name that fear, and sit with it, inviting Jesus to join you in your imagination. What might he do with it? How might you invite his perfect love to transform that fear into something you can use?
There is some truth to the notion that our worlds are always ending. But that’s not the whole story - new life is always being born as well, sometimes in the ashes of the old world. God is in the business of making all things new – can’t help himself. Our job is to be open to new life wherever we find it.
(I’m going to wait on REM, but here’s a link to a fun song by a new duo I’m enchanted with, Goodnight Moonshine. The song is “End of the World Blues,” and you can find it about 15.55 minutes into this concert on YouTube. And listen to the rest. They’re playing in Ridgefield this coming Sunday at 4… I'm going.)
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