A Sermon preached on April 17th, Easter
IV, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Acts 9:36-43,
Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30
So, this morning I
thought I would talk about eschatology. Eschatology is the theology of the last
things or the end times and not to be confused with escapology, which is what
Houdini did when he escaped from chains and locked boxes. Although for some
people, eschatology is a form of escapism, a way of ignoring or denying current
problems by pushing them into the far, far future.
Eschatology
permeates the Bible. It is in the Old Testament, you find it in all the books
of the prophets, especially in the Book of Daniel in his wonderful vision of one like a Son of Man coming “with the
clouds of heaven, and he came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented
before him. And to him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom that all the
peoples, nations and men of every language might serve him.” (Daniel 7:13-14) Eschatology
is part of the Lord's Prayer: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
Jesus often talks about the end times: “At that time they will see the Son of
Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” (Luke 21:27) Paul writes
about the last things: “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be
caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so
we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17) And the whole book of
Revelation is about the end. At its core, eschatology is simply a reminder that
God not only has the first word, but also the last word. And that is a good
thing!
What is not always
a good thing however, is how some Christians approach eschatology in general,
and the Book of Revelation in particular. One article I recently read summarized
the problem very nicely: “the expectation of other-worldly realities quickly degenerates
into an ethically, politically, or ecologically irresponsible attitude to the
here and now.” By that the author meant the tendency to simply withdraw from practical,
social, and political concerns, or to tolerate conditions of injustice and oppression
because the present state of affairs is seen as temporary and penultimate. It
won’t last and will eventually be replaced by a “kingdom of peace and justice
and unimaginable bliss.”
Perhaps even more damaging
are those forms of obsession with the
end-times, with the coming apocalypse that take the biblical promises that God
will fashion a new heaven and a new earth as a sort of notice served from on
high that this current world is already marked for destruction. “This can be seen
as a license to treat the world and its resources carelessly, or even in a
ruthlessly exploitative manner.”[1] This
attitude is one motivation behind the denial of climate change that is
prevalent among some evangelical Christians; the other motivation, particularly
on the part of those with a vested interest in fossil fuels, is greed. In
extreme cases this attitude can be taken to the - frankly blasphemous - conclusion
that we can actually hasten the coming of the end times not just be rebuilding the
Temple in Jerusalem, but by causing the very destruction that Revelation and
other apocalyptic writings describe. The whole concept is based on the false
premise that God will destroy and replace the world and creation, when in fact
what God promises is renewal and redemption for all of creation: the new heaven
and the new earth will be fashioned out of the old.
The opposite
approach is to ignore the whole topic and to take what we might call a secular
Christian approach, focusing on the here and now, and on improving our current
situation. This attitude is based on the myth of progress, the idea that all
natural and historical processes have an inbuilt tendency towards perfection. Put
simply, things get better as time passes. Well, some things do, and some things
don’t. Our ability to heal and to cure has certainly got better, unfortunately
also our ability to kill one another. I still prefer this approach to the first
one. Improving our lot, caring more for one another, and for the world God has given
us to look after is a good thing. But without a vision, goal, or purpose beyond
ourselves, it can easily become self-serving and even selfish in the definition
of those who deserve care, in the way care is restricted on family, tribal, or
national lines.
What about John of
Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation? What was his approach to
eschatology, to the end times? He wrote down his vision as an encouragement for
his Christian communities, the seven churches, in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira,
Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. It was meant to encourage them in the here
and now. To give them the strength and courage and the hope to continue
worshipping and acting as Christians, to carry on witnessing to the living God
in their lives, to continue with their transformation, even in times of
persecution.
John’s vision of a
heavenly reality, of God’s ultimate victory, is something for them to hold on
to. God has won and we share in that victory. The song that the “great
multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and
peoples and languages” sings is a song of victory. God’s promise of salvation is
physical, emotional, and spiritual: “The one who is seated on the throne will
shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not
strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17) Like a
mother, God wants nothing more than to wipe every tear from our eyes. This is the
same message of salvation and protection that Jesus gives in today’s gospel: “I
give (my sheep) eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch
them out of my hand.” (John 10:30) The Revelation version is just a little more
dramatic and uses more images.
I quite like the
Book of Revelation because it is so full of images: beautiful images, such as
the ones we heard this morning, but also terrifying ones, and some that are
just plain weird. It is not always suitable for Sunday school – so children,
today we are going to make the beast with seven heads and ten horns out of
papier-mâché. That is probably a challenge even for our Sunday school teachers,
and they are very good. John’s visions speak to both our fears and our hopes. “The
worst of all nightmares ends not in terror but in a glorious new world, radiant
with the light of God’s presence, abounding in joy and delight.”[2]
We must not get
hung up on the exact descriptions of the future. What is important is the
message behind the pictures: God triumphs, and with God justice, mercy and love
prevail. Inspired by this vision, Martin Luther King famously said, “The arc of
the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,”[3] in
fact part of his memorial in Washington DC is an arced wall with all his famous
quotes on it. He took this vision as a call to work on making this transformation
come about, to follow if you will the trajectory that God has already set.
No initiative
or action of ours can establish God’s kingdom; God has already done that. However,
as Christians are called to live today in ways that already correspond to the
shape of God’s promise, to model our lives according to the values of God’s
kingdom, to act sure in the knowledge that justice, mercy and love will prevail,
and in doing so to fashion “living parables of God’s new creation even in the
midst, and under the conditions of the old.”[4]
Amen
[1] Trevor
Hart, The myth of progress, (Church
Times, 18.3.2016)
[2] Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics
in the Book of Revelation (Viking Penguin, 2012), 175
[3] Speech of August 1967
to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
[4] Trevor Hart, The myth of progress, (Church Times, 18.3.2016)
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