Community Parson: Prophecy and apocalypse: trust in the future

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Prophecy and apocalypse: trust in the future

Advent 1 C
Dec. 2, 2012

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Ps. 25

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

There are people in this world who like to hoard secrets. Someone I used to know drove me nuts, because he had a way of telling you something and leaving out the back story – the most crucial parts. It’s like he would tell me things in a way that implied I was “in the know” but I really didn't quite know what was going on. I always felt I was coming in in the middle of the story, but left outside of the secret.

There is a certain aspect of that to today’s readings, all about the apocalypse, the end time. Is everything really falling apart? When is this supposed to happen? I've said here before that there is quite a lot of popular fascination with the End Times, in a way that makes “apocalypse” equal “destruction.” But if we look at the meaning of the word in Greek, and how it was used in the New Testament – especially in the Mother Lode of all apocalyptic literature, the Revelation of St. John the Divine – the word “apocalypse” means taking the cover off that which has been hidden. It means discerning something’s deeper meaning, deeper purpose. It’s not about keeping secrets but about opening everything up. It’s not about figuring out some arcane puzzle – we don’t have to be theological detectives like Tom Hanks’ character in The DaVinci Code. When people of faith write “apocalypse” they are trying to make sense of the world – trying to discern the patterns of God’s work in the world around – they are trying to understand the meaning of what is going on, especially when what’s going on might be frightening or dangerous.

The partner of apocalypse is often “prophecy” – a word which also needs some unpacking. As a biblical scholar reminded me,

… prophecy is not a fortuneteller's prediction, but a projection forward, a warning of what may come if we don't change direction …

When a prophet speaks, as Jesus is speaking in this passage from the Gospel of Luke, or when the writer of the letter to the Thessalonians talks about “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints,” or when Jeremiah declares that the day of the Lord will be a day of righteousness and justice, that prophecy is not a secretive portent of bad things to come, but

… a vision of hope and trust in God's ability to save the world from whatever mess we've made of it. The truth of prophecy does not lie in whether it came true the way a weather prediction comes true; it lies in the deeper insight it gives into our existence and God's way of working in the world.[1]

Good prophecy spurs us to action, just like “good apocalypse” helps us understand what is going on. Global warming might indeed be apocalyptic even in the disaster-movie sense, but an environmentalist who is a good prophet tells us the terrible facts, along with the hope that there might indeed be something we can do to mitigate the disaster we might otherwise be heading for.

These apocalyptic readings in the Bible remind us also that we are not alone – we are not solitary Christians. More than any other writings, we read here about what God has in store for everyone, for the whole of creation. They were written thousands of years ago, in particular times and places, among particular people facing particular challenges, but they resonate deeply across time.

People of all times, who are facing terrible circumstances, can find their story and their experience in these words. But always, always, tempting as it can be to find a blueprint in these long-ago writings, we have to approach them with humility. Our interpretation can be only that: “There are always signs in the heavens and distress among nations, and we are always wondering how the story of this world will end.”[2] Being o-so-certain that this in the Bible really means that, or that gives the people or groups we don’t like the same condemnation as has been given to the long-ago enemies of the writer -- that kind of triumphalism we must guard against. It’s like my former friend and his “secret” knowledge; his was not the final interpretation of what was going on. If you ever feel you are getting it “right” and everyone around you is “wrong,” re-reading our psalm today – Psalm 25 – can help you put yourself in a better perspective.

Prophecy and apocalypse are not about secrets; they are about trust in the future. They are about humans taking a hard, discerning look at what is going on around them, and placing what is going on in the context of how God would have it go on.

We do not know how the world will end, but we do know that God does not want it to end. All the prophets want us to pay attention, to know that who we are, as a community and as individuals, matters, and that what we do matters. Reading these funny, ancient books reminds us, if nothing else does, that we are part of the whole stream of human history, and of the history of creation before human history. The truth of that creation – the meaning of our own lives -- is always being revealed, the cover of secrets is always being blown off, and we are always drawing closer to that glorious end time when we – all of us -- will be embraced by God.

[1] Janine A Goodwin, http://feministheology.blogspot.com/2012/11/advent-1.html

[2] Ibid.

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.