PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Daniel 12:1-3; Mark 13:1-8                                                                                 Apocalypse
Sermon November 15, 2009:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

          Every year the church reads and prays through the life of Christ and the growth of the church.  This is as much a devotional process as it is a list of church seasons.  We begin with Advent—the prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament and John the Baptist.  Then comes Christmas—Christ is born; Epiphany—Christ is shown to the world; the baptism of Jesus—Christ begins his ministry.  This takes us up through the second Sunday in January.  For the next six to eight weeks, then, the scripture lessons point us toward Jesus’ teaching, gathering his apostles, and their (or our) learning.  Sometime in February comes Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, when Christians prepare our lives and our hearts to share in the Passion and Resurrection—the central story of the gospel.  Then come the crucifixion on Good Friday, and the triumph of Easter Day.  After Easter this devotional calendar takes us through more of Jesus’ teaching, preparing the church for its mission in the world.  On Pentecost, in late May or early June, we welcome the Holy Spirit and the church’s mission begins.  This season after Pentecost runs from June to November—the church grows and serves the world.  But when we come to November, the last two or three Sundays of this devotional year, what’s the conclusion of the story?  Isn’t it the triumph of God, the return of Christ to transform all things, and the beginning of the Kingdom of God?  And with this come the Judgment Day, the End Times, the Battle of Armageddon, the Great Tribulation, and on and on.  These last two or three Sundays in our devotional year are about what we read in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation; and that’s upsetting for a lot of people, and for a lot of preachers (including me) it’s hard to preach—especially since the last Sunday of this story is either the Sunday before or the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and we really do want to get off the End Times and talk about Thanksgiving.  We want to dodge Judgment Day and the questions of heaven and hell.  But today we are right smack in the middle of this part of the church’s story—the End Times; so I thought we ought to talk about it for a few minutes. 

          The kind of End-Time literature we find in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation is called “apocalyptic” literature, and these books are called “apocalypses.”[1]  An “apocalypse” uses symbols, numbers, predictions and visits to heaven to pull back the veil say something important about what God is up to:  but what is this important message?  And is it good news or bad news?  The point I want to make is this:  There’s nothing to be afraid of in the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. 

          Yes, it can be scary the first time you read the Book of Revelation and see the stories of what one of my professors called “the eschatological zoo”—the beast, the dragon, the seven-headed ten-horned ruler, the Antichrist, the Four Horsemen.  Those visions can fill your mind and disturb your sleep if you’re too young or very vulnerable when you first encounter them.  And not just the first time.  On the radio, on the internet, on television, and in a lot of pulpits there are many preachers who have made that scary “zoo” the centerpiece of their message. 

          Our daughter and son-in-law have just moved to Newport News from a tiny village up in the mountains of coal-mining country in far southwestern Virginia.  During this past year Beth has gone through what can only be described as “culture shock”—she’s never lived in a community like Coburn, Virginia, before; and she had a lot of adjusting to do.  One of the most striking differences there is church.  If you live there and you want to go to a UCC church, or a Presbyterian church, or Methodist or Lutheran or Catholic or Baptist, you have to drive nearly ten miles to the nearest town—none of those denominations are represented.  The churches of the back country are mostly apocalyptic or charismatic groups led by ministers who either emphasize faith-healing or the End-Times.  The people out there are deeply frightened and anxious.  They see the wars we’re fighting, the rise of Al Qaeda, the growing conflict around Israel, and the election of a president who (they’re told) is a “socialist”—they see all these things as signs that the End-Times are about to happen.  They really are scared.  Beth told me about one woman she knew whose expectation of the Rapture (that is, the idea that believers will all be taken to heaven in an instant)—her expectation of the Rapture was so intense that she was talking to her neighbors to find somebody who would take care of her dog when she disappears from the earth.  So when I say a lot of people are very anxious about the symbols and stories in apocalyptic literature, I’m speaking literally—they’re scared.  Maybe you yourself know somebody who feels the same way.  So my message this morning is simple and straightforward:  There’s nothing to be afraid of in the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. 

          First of all, what if God’s intention in pulling back the veil is to reveal blessings beyond our imagining?  To the authors of the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, the message was understood as good news, not bad news.  They were writing to people who believed in God, and who were being persecuted and martyred because of their faith; and the message was—remain faithful:  God is about to shower you with inconceivable blessings. 

The Book of Daniel was written about a hundred fifty years before the birth of Jesus, when the Jews living around Jerusalem were being forced to worship the gods of Syria.  There was a revolution, the Jews took back control of the temple and ran the Syrians out; but the war continued.  The Book of Daniel is a coded message to the fighters to remain faithful to God and continue the fight, because God will win, and they will be blessed. 

          The Book of Revelation was written just before 100 AD.  When the Roman army destroyed the temple in Jerusalem thirty years before, the Jews across the empire shifted their center of worship to synagogues; and they threw the Christians out.[2]  This created a real crisis for the Christians.  The Jews had an agreement with the Roman government:  although all the other countries Rome had conquered were required to offer sacrifices TO Caesar as a god, Rome permitted the Jews to offer prayers FOR Caesar.  When they evicted the Christians from the synagogues, the Christians didn’t have this protection, and the Roman government went after them.  Christians all over the empire were arrested and forced to offer sacrifices TO Caesar:  many of them gave in and did; many others refused to the very end, and they were martyred.  It was a terrible, bloody, scary time; and so the Book of Revelation was written as a coded message to the Christians under persecution, urging them to remain faithful even if they had to die, because God would ultimately win, and they would share the blessings of the Kingdom of God.  It’s a message of hope and courage.  All those scary symbols represented all the scary things that were already happening to them right then. 

          So today what I’m saying is this:  There’s nothing to be afraid of in the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. 

          I’ve spent some time trying to think of all the questions people ask about the apocalypses in the Bible.  Here are some of the concerns.  Are the things described in Revelation really going to happen?  What do people mean by the phrase “end times”?  Are we witnessing the signs of the End of the World right now?  What should I be doing so that I won’t be “left behind”?  Will Israel really throw the Muslims out and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem?  And a question I came up with several times when I was in high school:  might Jesus return before Monday and I won’t have to take that algebra test I’m not ready for?  And somebody asks, Are you kidding?  Isn’t it easier just to ignore all this scary stuff, think of it as Christianity’s nightmares, and try to live well while I’m alive?  Why would a religion of grace and a God of forgiveness suddenly turn into a regime of world brutality?  Why would Jesus Christ stop being the Savior and become a raging superhero on a tear?  And why would God destroy the world after we humans, God’s highest creation, have begun to make some progress toward universal law, human rights, economic development, education and art?  Maybe you’ve thought of some other questions.

          If we understand the apocalypses in the Bible in their historical context, the way I just described them, we see that they’re not meant to be taken literally: they’re code language for believers during persecution.  So every time there is a persecution of Christians, these books take on real life and a positive meaning.  But apocalyptic literature is only a very small part of the Bible.  There are 1,407 pages in the Bible; and only 47.17 pages are apocalyptic—that’s just 3.4% of the Bible:  Daniel, Revelation, one chapter each in Matthew Mark and Luke, and a total of about 2²/₃  pages in Paul’s earliest letters (in Paul’s later letters apocalyptic is almost completely absent).[3]  Yes, the images are colorful; but 96.6% of the Bible is the story of your redemption and blessing:  our faith needs to be just as balanced toward hope.  Applying apocalyptic to our lives as the dominant part of our faith would be like a bee-keeper following the instructions in a book on dog training:  that’s not what it’s for.  So I say:  There’s nothing to be afraid of in the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. 

          So here we are, coming down to the end of the church’s devotional year; and the lectionary sends us to apocalyptic literature.  But the real point for our devotional lives is not all that scary stuff:  the real point is the promise of God that you have a home and a blessing waiting for you in God’s love, and “nothing can separate us from the love of God.”  Not war, nor recession; not global warming, nor illness; not a hard life, nor death; not demons, nor human monsters; not time, age, failure, or even success can break the bond of love that God holds for you.  And Armageddon?  God will take care of all that.

AMEN