Luke 21:25-36
December 2, 2012
The Badder Things Get, the Bigger We Hope
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
Every family has its customs at Christmastime. In our family my dad would read Charles
Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
aloud. I remember the thrill of horror as
Ebenezer Scrooge sat eating gruel in his darkened rooms and the ghost of Jacob
Marley made its way up the stairs, dragging its burden of chains and
strongboxes along behind. For sheer
terror, nothing beat the fourth chapter—or stave the fourth as Dickens called
it—“The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”
Scrooge is already a changed man. The review of his life offered by the Ghost
of Christmas Past and the insight into the way that others live offered by the
Ghost of Christmas Present—especially the others whose lives are connected with
Scrooge’s—have accomplished a changed perspective and a reordered set of
priorities. The Ghost of Christmas Yet
to Come showed him a number of scenes in which people were talking about someone
who had died, someone unloved and unmourned.
When confronted with a tombstone that the Ghost insisted he read, there
is something that Scrooge wants to know: "Before I draw nearer to that
stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are
these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things
that May be, only?"[1]
Will the change of character that he has experienced allow
Scrooge to escape this gloomy future? Is
his future predetermined or will the choices that he makes result in a
different one? These are issues that
philosophers have debated for centuries.
For Scrooge, however, they are not abstract concepts. It is his
future that is on the line. The answers
to those questions are important and relevant.
If the future cannot be changed then it won’t matter very much how
Scrooge behaves or what values govern his choices. As it turned out, the future that the Ghost
of Christmas Yet to Come showed to Scrooge was not inevitable. The choices that
flowed from his changed character led to a much happier future.
Dickens’s story suggests that the grasping selfishness that
he saw all around him in industrial England did not bring the happiness that it
promised and that, on the small scale of the individual, the older virtues
would reap their own reward.
But what if the scale is not that of the individual? What if the forces let loose in a particular period
of history were at work on such a large scale that an individual’s effort could
not influence the outcome? How do we
behave and what do we do when we are caught in the grip of forces we cannot
control?
There is a type of writing in the Bible that deals with
these questions, but most of us educated folk are likely to dismiss it as
unbelievable. Scholars call this type of
writing “apocalyptic.” This term comes
from a Greek word that means “to uncover, unveil, reveal.” In apocalyptic writing it is the future that
is uncovered, unveiled, revealed. Often
this revelation takes the form of book given to a figure from the past, as in
the biblical books of Daniel and the Revelation. The generation that reads the book is
privileged to read what had been hidden up until then.
Apocalyptic writing is filled with symbolism—lakes of fire,
seven-headed beasts, and the like. The
scope is cosmic, rather than personal. This
is none of your Chinese fortune cookie kind of stuff: “Your investments will
soon meet with great success.” In
apocalyptic, the whole of the creation is at stake. The sun, the moon and all the stars are
involved. There may be floods,
pestilence and widespread chaos. Then,
when human life becomes unsustainable, intolerable, impossible, God intervenes
and rescues those who have been faithful through it all.
We may smile indulgently at this sort of thing. We entertain apocalyptic mostly as, well,entertainment.
Currently we have the movie Rise of the
Guardians in which Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the
Sandman and Jack Frost team up to save the world from an evil spirit named
Pitch.
There are some more serious forms of apocalyptic. Any tale that tells the story of the future in
terms of world-wide disaster begins to take on the features of
apocalyptic. Any doomsday scenario will
do: a pandemic, climate change, a world-wide collapse of financial markets, or thermonuclear
warfare, either singly or in any combination.
But there is something more to biblical apocalyptic than to
these modern variations. Stories like
the one in today’s reading from Luke are not simply tales of a dreadful
future. What makes these stories so
powerful is whose stories they
are. The tale that Jesus tells in
today’s gospel reading is a tale of God’s
future.
Chaos will rule world affairs. So deeply will the order of the cosmos be
shaken that the very heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon, and the stars—will be
disturbed in their orderly courses. But
this is not simply the universe falling apart.
The universe remains in God’s hands and chaos is not the end of the
story. God’s redemption is approaching; God’s
reign is being ushered in. To invoke the
metaphor that we heard from Mark two weeks ago, these are birth pangs.
Still, we have a hard time taking biblical apocalyptic
seriously. The stars are not going to
fall to earth. We know that they are not
the tiny points of light the ancients believed that they were, but suns that
are often larger than our own. The sun
and moon are as indifferent to the fortunes of the human race as they were to
the dinosaurs. If we are determined to
destroy ourselves, the sun will continue to shine and the moon will continue to
wax and wane. It is hard for us to see
anything here other than gross exaggeration, some sort of holy hyperbole.
But looking past all that I see something of value for
us. Two things, actually. I see a description of the human condition in
our time that is a little too close to home for my comfort. And I see a remedy.
Luke’s Jesus warns us against “dissipation and drunkenness and
the worries of this life.” At first
glance this doesn’t look like a mirror that shows us who we really are. I’m not so sure. Merriam-Webster defines dissipation as “a
wasteful expenditure.”[2] If we listen to the reports on the economy we
may believe that wasteful expenditure is a duty, especially at this
time of year. But I’m not sure that
Jesus has only this sort of spending in mind.
We dissipate our lives in a whole variety of ways. Ninety percent of the time we spend in front
of the television is dissipation. The
same goes for the time we spend playing video games. We are passing time, killing time. Our time is spent and neither we nor the
world around us are the better for it.
Recreation is a good thing.
But if what we are calling recreation does not leave us “re-created,” refreshed,
restored, then it wasn’t recreation at all, but dissipation.
Drunkenness seems obvious, but I think it needs to be
extended to all forms of addiction. I
suspect that when the history of our times is written it will feature addiction
prominently. There are addictions to
alcohol and drugs, of course. But we now
know that there are also addictions to gambling, sex, work, risk-taking
behavior, food, shopping, well, you name it.
The object of addiction isn’t so important, although addictions
differ. Common to all addictions is a
cycle of tension and release around some action, a cycle that crowds other
things in life to one side until subject and object switch places. She no longer consumes alcohol; alcohol
consumes her. He no longer consumes food;
food consumes him.
And then there is worry.
Who isn’t worried these days? What
will happen to the economy? What will
happen to our retirement plans? In the
middle of the night when sleep escapes us our worries seem impossible to
overcome.
The result of it all is that our hearts are weighed
down. We are anxious and depressed. Much of our energy is tied up. We are spending it foolishly. Or we are trying unsuccessfully to manage our
addictions. Or we are chasing our
worried thoughts around in circles. It’s
no wonder we are tired!
If only we could get on top of it somehow! If only we could master our world, our time, our
selves! But we can’t seem to, no matter
how much we try.
Now here is the good news!
Our world does not belong to us. Our
time does not belong to us. Even we
ourselves do not belong to us. Jesus’
announcement of good news in this text is that all of these things are in God’s
hands. What Jesus wants for his
followers is that we should see clearly the nature of the times. That we should be alert. That we should be focused on the nearness of
God’s reign and realm. That we should be
light-hearted.
So we begin Advent with these things in mind. Advent is not about getting the shopping
done, or the decorating finished, or the cards written and sent. Advent is not about maintaining the mindless
and mandatory cheerfulness that is called “the Christmas spirit.” It’s about the light-heartedness of those who
know whose they are, who know in whose story they are characters, who know that
the story we are in will turn out far better than we could even imagine.
[1] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
(London & New York: G. Routledge and sons, 1843).
[2] "Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online," http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
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