The End of the World!!!!!!!

For those who did not grow up in the Evangelical Christian subculture, last week's flurry over the prediction that the world would  end on May 21 just seemed like so much craziness.

For those of us who did grow up in that subculture, it was also craziness, but a craziness we recognized. This humorous 6 minute video  describes what it is like to grow up in a religion built more on the fear that God will have to destroy the world in order to "save" it  than on the faith that Christ is at work among us.   I, too, was worried that Jesus would come before I got to get married and have sex (it was always in that order in the old days). On the other hand, when I was facing an exam that I hadn't studied for, having Jesus bring the world to an end didn't seem like such a bad thing.

It's easy to laugh or shake our heads in disgust at those who believe that being a Christian means you get beamed up just when the world needs you the most, rather than, like Jesus, entering into the world's pain to heal it, but I did learn some beliefs and values from growing up with that apocalyptic expectation that have been very useful to me in handling life:

1. I have never bought into the idea that the current arrangement of power is permanent. Wall Street financiers, the NRA and the New York Yankees may appear invincible. But you never know, even the Cleveland Indians might emerge as the team to beat.
2. I have never been completely surprised by apocalyptic events. On August 11, 2001, most of my extended family stayed at the Marriott at the World Trade Center in New York City - a Saturday night - to celebrate our son Jim's wedding the next day at Hebrew Union College Chapel. I remember standing at the foot of those tall buildings looking up until the tops of the towers were lost in the fog and wondering what could possibly take such buildings down? I knew that they would have to come down someday. So, a month later, I can honestly say that I was shocked - deeply shocked - but not entirely surprised. 
3. I don't believe in Messiahs who don't bring the World-as-We-Know-It to an end. Like everyone else, I weigh the claims of politicians who want to be my President, Senator, Governor, State Rep or Mayor and I admit that I tend to vote for those who say they value peace and human rights and caring for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. But if, after two and a half years, they haven't closed Guantanamo and the line at the Monday hot meals program at St. Andrews next door is longer than ever,  I am disappointed, but not disillusioned. I don't have illusions about human leaders. The Messiah is the Messiah and politicians, good as they are - and I've had several as parishioners and consider them some of the best people I know - are just people working in the realm of the possible, not creating an ideal. 
4. Even the end of the world is not the end of the world. Jesus said that there would be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines in various places, but the end is not yet.   I'm not sure what a nuclear holocaust would imply - or a direct hit from an asteroid. It would probably be the end of me - but not necessarily the end of everything. Humbling, but still hopeful. 
5. I may not use a pencil on my calendar, but I am aware that "tomorrow", 'next week", "next year" are myths.  So is the strategic plan that I'm helping our church draw up for 2015. The future is fundamentally unpredictable and it can go either way. Yes, terrorists have blown up skyscrapers, but the Iron Curtain fell down, too. I've often been surprised that other people actually believe that a graph that has headed up or down for months or years can't possibly change direction.
6. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, certainty is. Even most Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants were critical of Mr. Campbell's prediction. In their Bibles, like mine, Jesus says, "No one knows the day nor the hour, not even the Son, but only the Father."  
7. I may not equate Big Government or Big Business or Big Religion with the Antichrist, but I do have a healthy skepticism about the motives of institutions that have some kind of power over my life. I thought everyone did, but I've discovered through the years that there are people who really believe that their employer, their government, their local baseball team or Fox or MSNBC, really have their best interests at heart and they are ready to sacrifice their marriages, their children, their money or their reason to these entities and others who demand from us what only (you may enter the Deity of your choice, but I'll put "Christ" here) has a right to demand.

I really didn't appreciate growing up in a climate of fear in which a thunderstorm or a train whistle in the night might be interpreted as a signal that the world was coming to an end. On the other hand, I do appreciate the fact that when I look at my calendar  everything on it is under the caveat: "If God wills . . . "  and that all the tyrants and all the Masters of the Universe, will someday wind up like Ozymandias in that wonderful little poem by Shelley.

Steerage Voyage or Cruise Ship?

Coming up this Sunday are the words of Jesus, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places." (John 14:2 NRSV)



I know these words by heart because I say them so often at funerals. When I started preaching four decades ago, I used to always use the King James Version’s promise of “many mansions”, because the older members of the congregation always heard the old Revised Version’s “many rooms” as a downward revision of their expectations. “Many dwelling places” is a good translation and works for most people today.

So, how do we read this passage the week after the smartest man in the world has said that heaven is a “fairy tale”?

The way we have always read it - sociologically.

Even the wealthy will nod their heads and have a tear in their eyes when I read these words at a funeral. It is a comfort to believe that Grandpa, age 96, has been transferred to that Great Rest Home in the Sky and has his own - not just a room - a dwelling place. The Lord knows he doesn’t need a mansion anymore. Just a “dwelling place”  - a comfortable suite of rooms with a nice view of the heavenly golf course.

These words were not spoken to comfort the comfortable.

They were spoken to the poor, the battered, and the oppressed. They were spoken to people who saw their lives as a journey to a better place - not just where they could eat pie in the sky and wear their shoes all over God's heaven, but a place where God's will is done on earth and everyone has his or her daily bread. They were spoken to people who saw their life as a journey toward a destination rather than just a cruise.

In his review of The Liner: Retrospect and Renaissance, Timothy Larson says that even if we put a “2” next to the storied name of the Queen Mary, we aren’t recreating the huge ocean-going ferries that got people from New York to London  before airliners became the preferred mode of travel. There is a huge difference between a person who is traveling to a destination and a person who is cruising around for a week and then returning to the same port from which he embarked.

Unless you are 100% Native American (or one of the European or Singaporean readers of this blog), your ancestors came to this country on one of these vessels and I’ll bet most of them did not travel first-class. Passengers in steerage couldn’t wait for the journey to be over. They were looking for that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, for the Ellis Island gateway to that City whose streets, they had heard whispered, were paved with gold.

So, it wasn’t as good as that, but it was better for most of them than what they had left behind. Those that came in the holds of slave ships didn’t find a Promised Land, but they heard tales about that Land and about how God had called slaves to come to that Land where everyone has shoes and there are no more tears.

If our lives are as comfortable as a cruise ship; if we can get off and tour the markets and see the children begging in the streets and then return to the ship for the buffet and the after-dinner show and if we can stroll back to our comfortable cabin and say to one another, “What could be better than this?” We won’t be able to hear what Jesus is really saying when he says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Some Christians believe those words mean that people have to join their private club to get to heaven. They really mean that the Way to Life and the Truth about Life is that there isn’t any real life on board the cruise ship, because the cruise ship isn’t going anywhere. The Way to Life is to get on the liner that is heading toward that place where justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing spring, and where, even for the poor, there is no more crying, no more pain and no more death.