November 17, 2013

Reflection for November 17, 2013: What about the End of the World?

Sometimes, when I read the newspaper, I get an uncomfortably twitchy feeling inside, as if God is looking over my shoulder at his creation and thinking: Mean-spirited, ungrateful, greedy bunch of primates –I, the LORD, have just about had it with them. One day, we’ll be going about business as usual: working and playing, loving and hating, killing and dying, feeding the cat and wondering what show to watch on the telly – when abruptly everything will change, and change utterly: There will be a tremendous heart-shaking kind of hush, and then a sudden horrendous lurch in the spinning of the planet. And Somebody will turn up the universal lights and a Voice will thunder: “LAST CALL! I’m shutting this Cosmos down in five minutes.”

People have always predicted Imminent Doom – in every culture throughout the history of the world. And many are sure that they, and they alone, know exactly when it will come. Check out “rapturereadycom” with its “Rapture Index,” where some 45 “signs” are listed, ranging from the Usual Suspects -- “Earthquakes” and “Plagues”-- to less obvious ones like “Ecumenism” and “the Peace Process.” Each “sign” is given a certain number of points; you add them up for a cosmic weather report, telling you if the odds of the “rapture” happening today are “high” or “low.” It’s odd that the folks who run this website claim to follow someone who told us, over and over, “No one knows the day or the hour.” Or as he warns us in today’s Gospel: “Do not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying … ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for such things must happen, but it will not immediately be the end.”

Still, it’s human nature to get existentially pessimistic now and then. And we are by nature short-sighted, unable to see beyond the times we live in. I think of Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming”: Things fall apart, the center cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are filled with passionate intensity. … His words sound painfully contemporary, don’t they? And yet Yeats wrote almost a century ago, back in 1921, after World War I, right as Ireland was splintering into a bitter civil war. What would he have written after World War II – after Auschwitz and Hiroshima? What would he have said about Stalin and Pol Pot, about Rwanda and Sudan and Congo, about people dying in poverty while gazillionaires jet-set around the globe? Yeats lived in a difficult time, and he thought that things couldn’t possibly get worse. But today we look at old black-and-white photos from 1921, and think, naively and wistfully: Those were the Good Old Days!

And everything was better in the Good Old Days. Children minded their parents; people were polite; folks weren’t always in a hurry. I think so myself, and yet I know enough about history to know that people were saying the exact same thing 3,000 years ago. Ancient cuneiform tablets complain about how “kids today are spoiled rotten”; Socrates shook his wise old head and spoke nostalgically of the past. Sometimes I find myself thinking sourly that I’m almost glad that I’m not any younger than I am, the world is such a mess. I suspect today’s young people will think the same, 40 years from now. Truth is, all the young people I know are almost unnervingly thoughtful and smart and hard-working and compassionate. But when I’m cranky, I think: The future is in the hands of people who don’t even use their hands – who spend the whole day fiddling with smartphones, iPods stuck to their ears. Hard to believe I used to be a Young Whippersnapper myself back in the day, riding around in my boyfriend’s VW beetle, our long hair flapping in the wind, singing along raucously to the ’70s rock ‘n’ roll on the radio. I tend to do my best to forget thatmy generation helped create the mess that I expect the next generation to repair, not to mention pay for. It’s hard to be an Honest Curmudgeon without blushing.

In Jesus’ day – like ours – there was a big market for prophecies of doom. People followed oracles and watched the stars, they cut out the entrails of geese and read the patterns birds made in flight; even observant Jews looked at the omens and figured, This is it, guys, just like the prophets warned! Things fall apart, and the center never holds. And one fine unlikely day this world will end. The eviction notice will be served; the power shutoff; it’ll be time to reap what we have sown. (Yikes!) Jesus told us it would happen. But despite what some fundamentalists say, he never told us when.

People sometimes use today’s reading from Thessalonians as an excuse for lack of charity: “If you don’t work, slacker then you can’t eat! Being a 3-year-old child, or a disabled person, or unable to find a job are no excuse.” But read the proceeding paragraphs of Thessalonians: Paul is talking, not about people who cannotwork, for whatever reason, but about those who simply refuse to work because they have decided there is no point, mainly because the world is ending any minute now and so we might as well clock out early and have a good time. If you know when the Boss is coming in, you’re sure to be found hard at work; you won’t be caught with your feet up on the desk, sending e-mail jokes to your pals and spilling beer on the annual report. But none of us knows when The Final Inspection will be made. Nobody does. That’s why Jesus is always reminding us to “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour!” That doesn’t mean we should stand on street corners, waving signs that say “THE END IS NEAR” like characters in New Yorkercartoons. And it certainly doesn’t mean we might as well go ahead and trash the planet and start a nuclear war if want to – as if God can’t quite be trusted to end the world on His own, so we’d better jump in and do it for Him. Instead, Jesus tells us, over and over, to live while we can -- to do our part, as long as we live, in building the Kingdom of God. Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, he says. Stay awake, and do your job. Do what I’ve already told you to do: Love your neighbor and lead a good life. Tend the sick and feed the poor and be kind to children and welcome strangers and show mercy to everyone and speak the truth. Don’t be caught napping, for nobody knows the day or the hour -- nobody!

Yeats’ poem is a powerful augury of the End. It’s hard not to watch the news and think: The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity. And the end might be tomorrow, for all I know. But that doesn’t let any of us off the hook. If anything, it makes our job as Christians more clear and urgent. If the landlord is going to show up soon, we’d better do our best now to get the place in order! Let’s get cracking while there’s still time. For the night cometh when no one can work. In Jesus’ name. --- Diane Sylvain