Apocalypse. It’s a word that many of us have a sudden reaction to. Different images or phrases surface in our minds. “End of days,” “revelation,” “destruction,” “zombies,” or how about “rapture,” or “a thief in the night”? The apocalypse, commonly thought of as the “end of the world,” is a topic of much interest in our society. You might even say we’re obsessed with it. Countless movies have been made about it, and books have been written–of varying quality I might add.
Easily the most popular, but arguably on the lower-quality end of the spectrum, is the “Left Behind” series, where our favorite teen star, Kirk Cameron, leads the battle against the antichrist. The title, “Left Behind” refers to the tragedy of being left to suffer during the war and tribulation after the rapture, that is, when all the believing, born-again Christians are taken up to heaven, where they will experience peace and bliss while the non-believers left behind suffer. There’s a famous scene in the classic 1970’s apocalypse movie, “A Thief in the Night,” when someone awakens in their home to find many of their relatives gone, raptured…electric shaver left running in the bathroom, oven on and coffee brewing…all very dramatic. The aim of these books and movies is to scare readers and viewers into converting to a particular form of Christianity, and, of course, to entertain and make money. More recently, shows like “The Walking Dead,” and “Station 11,” put a more secular spin on the apocalypse, but the gist is the same. They all make an attempt to imagine a world without order, prompting us to wonder whether we’d be the ones “left behind,” or how we’d fare in a battle against zombies.
As an interesting side note, you’re looking for more precise information about the rapture, you’ll have to go online. If you Google “rapture” one of the things you’ll find is the “rapture index.” Apparently it keeps track of the events in the world that might point to the “end of days” and applies a statistical formula to these events which spits out a number telling us the probability of how close we are to that fateful day. As of yesterday (are you ready for this?) we were at 187, which, apparently means that all the signs are pointing to the rapture being just around the corner. The all time high is 189.
I mention this understanding of “apocalypse” and “rapture,” because today’s gospel passage from Luke is considered to be an apocalyptic text. If you read it through the lens the “Left Behind” series or zombie shows like “The Walking Dead,” before you know it you’ll be asking questions just like the disciples are asking Jesus: “Tell us,” they say, “WHEN will this be, and WHAT will be the sign that this is about to take place?” But, despite our instinctual need to worry and plan for the worst, these are simply the wrong questions. Apocalypse, recalling the Greek origins of the word, means “a revelation,” or “an unveiling,” and that is what Jesus gives us in this passage. Rather than simply prophesying destruction, he reveals a bit more about what it means to follow him–what it means to be a Christian. Forget about the when and where of the future, stop imagining the worst case scenario, and take a look at how you live today.
Scholars believe the Gospel of Luke to have been written around the year 80. This is right about the same time as one of the most devastating tragedies in Jewish history, the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. When the Romans wiped it out they destroyed not only a building, but a way of life. To the Jews of the first century, the temple was the most holy place on earth. It was the place where God resided. Pilgrimages to the temple to pray and worship were of the very fabric of life for these people, and when it was destroyed they had nowhere to go to be with God. It was as if their entire world had collapsed in upon them. Without the temple they were completely lost.
Knowing that the actual temple had most-likely collapsed by the time Luke’s gospel was written offers some insight into how we might hear today’s passage. “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.’” He then warns of false messiahs who say, “The time is near!” and of wars and insurrections. It does sound like the scary “end of days” kind of talk we’re familiar with–what we hear in the books and the movies–and yet, to Luke, the author of this gospel, and to those who heard it proclaimed at the end of the first century, all of these things had already happened.
The temple had been, in fact, destroyed very recently, there were false messiahs shouting to persuade the vulnerable, lost Jews to follow them, there was a vast war and insurrection. To Luke this is not a mere prophesy of things yet to come, this is reality. And yet Jesus says, “do not be terrified…not a hair of your head will perish.” This response to such a tragedy probably sounded preposterous to those who had lost so much when the temple was destroyed. And, frankly, it may sound preposterous to some of us today. This, though, is the true apocalyptic nature of this passage. Jesus unveils something at the core of the Christian message: hope. And not just hope for something that seems possible, like we might hope for good weather or that there still some ice cream left in the freezer, but a preposterous hope; hope when it seems almost irresponsible to hope. Luke had this hope. He knew that greater than temples, and more powerful than wars and earthquakes, even more powerful than death itself, is the life Christ offers us today.
Two-thousand years later there is still death and destruction in this world, and nations are rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms–even nations rising against themselves. No matter how hard we might try to tune it out, news of conflict is ever present–on the TV, in the newspapers, on the radio. We live in a world where we will encounter pain and hardship. We can’t avoid it. And despite the clamoring of a particular form of religious culture, rapture is not the remedy. There’s no pie in the sky for us to lust after. Escaping the challenge of living is not what Christianity is about.
Apocalyptic texts like the one we heard today shouldn’t be read as encouragement for us to wait for God to do something in the future. God is doing something now. Having hope is not about waiting for a chance to escape this world, leaving the trouble behind. Having hope is our willingness to enter ever more deeply into the life we are given, believing that even in the most painful of situations God is present, continually about the work of transformation, seeking the lost and lifting up the lowly. Jesus showed us how precious this life is by taking part in it himself. In this apocalyptic text the true messiah reveals to us not panic but calm, not anxiety but peace, not fear but hope, a hope that in the midst of this broken, troubled world, there is a transformative love that is available to us now.
Proper 28, Year C