“Setting the Stage” (Luke 3:1-6)

Biblical lineages are puzzling to many of us in our fast-paced, individualistic society.  The American zeitgeist, the American dream, is based on the notion of progress.  Moving forward.  Moving ahead.  And I don’t know about you, but my eyes tend to glaze over when I come up against one of those Old Testament laundry lists.   “These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood.  And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.  And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.  And Salah lived . . .”  (snore) . . . oh, excuse me . . . I fell asleep.

Where was I?  Oh yes: in our forward-looking, progressivist society, a lot of us don’t worry much about who begat who much further back than our grandparents and great-grandparents, but they did back in ancient times.  It was important for our Hebrew forebears to know where a person came from . . . lines of inheritance were critical—one had to authenticate the line of inheritance of an hereditary stake-hold  . . . sometime it was a matter of life and death.

It was at least as important for theological reasons, for placing a person in the line of God’s people, for establishing them in the historical framework of God’s interaction with humankind.  Classic examples are the genealogies that establish the lineage of Jesus in Matthew and Luke.  It was vital for him to be seen as the heir to the throne of David to substantiate the early Christians claims that he was the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew scriptures.  The interesting thing about these geneologies is that they are different, both in length and who is mentioned, and they reflect the differing theological stances and agendas of their authors.

If genealogies set the historical stage, the verses with which Luke begins today’s passage set the immediate, contextual stage.  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.”  And this formal listing of who is what helps establish John as a prophetic voice: several Old Testament prophetic accounts—notably Jeremiah and Micah—begin with such a name-dropping of the ruling who’s who.  It also follows a pattern that Luke has used twice before: once to introduce John’s father, Zechariah himself, and once to introduce the birth of Jesus, which he begins by mentioning Emperor Augustus and Quirinius, governor of Syria.  Finally, it introduces both Herod, Pilate, and Caiaphus, who will be important players in the drama about to unfold.

But wait, there’s more!  It starts big and gets small.  It begins with the big Kahuna himself, the Emperor Tiberius, then follows up governors of the regions around where Jesus was born, then the head religious authorities, and finally, least of all, John, son of Zechariah.  And far from being some kind of convenient way to order things, perhaps some ancient version of alphabetization, the order of big to small is part of the point:  it was the days of big guns—the Tiberius’, the Pilates, and the Herods—and the word of God comes not to them, not to the glitterati of the Rome and Jerusalem set, but to a half-crazed, goat-skin-wrapped honey-muncher named John.  And what’s more, the word of God came not to the palaces or the temples, not to the homes of the rich and famous, no matter how much Robin Lynch might wish it, but to the dry, barren, fly-speckled wilderness of a backwards province in the great Roman machine.  Talk about your reversal of fortune, talk about your least of these.  Embedded in the very structure of how he presents the powers, Luke makes one of the fundamental points of the Gospel:  the last is literally the first to receive the word of God.

John is the embodiment of that point, what Paul refers to as “the foolishness of the cross” . . . remember?   “. . . God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”  Luke is implying the same thing:  God chose a smelly, itinerant preacher to shame the Herods.  God chose the barren wastelands, the wasted, blasted heath, to shame the dazzling centers of power, the Washingtons, the Paris’ and the Romes.  What is weak to the powers that be—the wandering preachers, the shepherds watching their flocks, the poor in the tenements of Cincinnati—are strong to the almighty God; what is weak to that God—the standing armies, the palace guards, the nuclear aircraft carriers and missile-defense systems—are strength to the powers that be.

And Luke says the word of God came to John in the wilderness, but it is not the capital-W word of God . . . the Greek phrase he uses is not logos tou theou, which he uses later in Acts for the Gospel embodied in Jesus Christ.  Instead, he uses rema theou, which might be better translated as “some words of God” or “a word of God.”  John is not the Word of God, nor has the Word come to him . . . yet.  His is a message from God, informing us of something . . . it’s a prophetic word, for that’s what John is: the last of the prophets.  He is not the one who will follow him, he is not the one whose sandals he is not fit to tie.  He is the mouthpiece of God, and the words of God, the rema of the creator, are put there just as they were burned onto Isaiah’s lips by the flying-snakes of the temple, just as they were when Ezekiel ate the parchment of God in his Babylonian exile.  Those words are put there and can be taken away at the whim of God.

And John preached this word in all the regions around the Jordan, in those very regions named by Luke:  In Herod’s Galilee and his brother Phillip’s Iturea and Trachonitis; in Pilate’s Judea and Lysanias’ Abilene, my Abilene.  In all the regions ruled by the rich and powerful, under the royal thumb of Tiberius, Emperor of all that was, John the baptizer preached his message from God.

And what was that message?  It was a message of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  Repentance—in Greek, metanoia—a turning around, a turning away from one’s old path, onto a new road, a new way of being . . . John was preaching a reversal of business as usual, a turning from the old ways, and this sets up yet another theme.  It’s dangerous to say to the powerful that they must change, it’s dangerous to imply that the path they are on is so morally bankrupt that they must turn around, do a figurative one-eighty, and go in the exact opposite direction.  Do you see the implicit rebuke in that?  Do you see the danger in preaching repentance to Herod and Pilate and Lysanias and Phillip?  Not to mention Annas and Caiphas, the two most powerful Jews in the land?

And of course,  John would pay the ultimate price for preaching change to the powers that be, and this passage foreshadows his beheading . . .  change of course is hard for anybody to stomach.  Especially if you have an ego as big as the Herods’.  But even in churches, where we’re supposed to be, you know, Christ-like.  We’ve all heard of church leaders—pastors and choir directors and elders—who have suffered the fate of John, who have been beheaded on the chopping block of change.

Well.  All this was done, says Luke, so that the scriptures would be fulfilled . . . John is that one crying in the wilderness predicted by Isaiah:  Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Smooth his way, make it easy for his passage.  "Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.”  The way shall be made smooth for the coming of the big-W word of God, the logos tou theou, the one for whom John is merely the prelude, the spear-holder, the warm-up act.

And here we are again, two thousand years later, and Jesus Christ is coming again, in a little over two weeks . . . and it falls upon us, in this time of waiting, this period of contemplation, to wonder where we are in all of this.  Have we made the ways straight for his coming?  Have we smoothed out the valleys, lowered the hills, removed all the barriers to the Word of God?

As his disciples, it falls to us to point out to our neighbors, to the culture in which we are embedded, that he is here.  It falls to us to proclaim the coming of the Lord . . . and have we done all we can to make easy the coming of Christ into our hurting world?  Have we resisted the siren call of the sparkling season, the consumer nightmare that is the most profitable season of the year?  Are we proclaiming the true Gospel, the big-W Word of God, or the happy-shiny message of the shopping mall, that all is right with the world, and pass me the X-Box, the Rolex and the Apple iPad mini?

Far from making smooth the pathways of the Gospel, do we put up barriers to its coming, roadblocks to its proclamation?  Are we stuck in the past, refusing to change so that the big-W Word of God can be proclaimed?  Have we resisted changing our old ways, our old modes of worship, beheading anyone who suggests that we do?

Sisters and brothers, advent is a time of contemplation, of preparation . . . far from being a happy shiny season, far from being fast paced and exhausting, it was meant to be slow and meditative, rich in thought and prayer.  And my prayer for us today is that it become that way again, that we listen to the words of God through John, that we slow down and smell the roses of Sharon.  My prayer is that we don’t rush to Christmas, that we savor its coming, for that’s what Advent means, Coming, which, believe it or not, is different from already here.  I say these words in the name of the one who creates, the one who comforts, and the coming one, who redeems us from our sins.  Amen.

“What Is Truth?” (John 18:28-40)

     The next time I stand in this pulpit, it’ll be the new year.  No . . . not that new year, but the new church year, the cosmic year of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Next Sunday is the first Sunday in Advent, when we’ll begin our tense anticipation of the Savior’s coming.  This Sunday is the last of the calendar – Christ the King Sunday – when we sum up Jesus’ life by declaring just who and what he is.  And the lectionary readings explore what it means to be king, to wield power, what it means for humans, and what it means for Christ.  In Samuel, we read the death-bed words of King David, where he admitted that when the spirit of the Lord spoke through him, it was not he who spoke, it was the Lord who spoke through him . . . and what God said was that David ruled in the fear of the Lord, wholly within God’s provenance and will.  And the Psalm appointed for today, Psalm 132, makes it clear that his dynasty is contingent as well, dependent upon the good graces of God.  “If your sons keep my covenant and my decrees that I shall teach them,” God says, “their sons also, forevermore, shall sit on your throne.”  The survival of David’s heirs on the throne is conditioned upon the grace and favor of God.

     Our Gospel reading looks at power as well, both political and theological, and what it means to say Jesus is King.  You will of course recognize it as part of the trial of Jesus by Pilate; many scholars think it’s John’s finest hour as a writer – it’s been studied in literature classes as a model example of dramatic irony.  John has structured the story into seven dramatic scenes, each one taking place on one of two “stages,” either inside Pilate’s headquarters, unclean for the religious authorities, or outside its doors, on the portico.  And the entire story revolves around Pilate moving back and forth between his governor’s headquarters – where Jesus is – and outside, where the religious authorities are, but – ironically – Jesus is not.  Talk about your shuttle diplomacy.

     But first there’s a prologue: the religious leaders – whom John calls “the Jews”  – take Jesus from the chief priest to Pilate’s Roman headquarters, but they themselves don’t enter it, to avoid ritual defilement.  The Passover’s the next day, and if they are ritually unclean, they can’t celebrate it, and so our drama begins with a picture of the religious leaders of the day, clearly bent on destroying Jesus, but unwilling to sully themselves by going into the unclean building.  So you can picture the scene: bearded and resplendent scribes milling around out on the front porch, muttering to one another in the early morning sun, up against stony, impassive columns, their shuffling presence versus silent Roman power . . .

     Scene One: They won’t go in, so Pilate comes out, standing on the porch . . . he surveys them for a few minutes, long enough to let them know who’s in control – and it’s not them, not these hick-country-bumpkin scribes and councilmen – and then he speaks: “What accusation do you bring against this man?”  But the religious authorities don’t really answer him, do they?  They just assure him that Jesus is a criminal, or else why would they have given him over to Pilate?  And note what this does . . . it asserts their authority – implicitly, at least – over and against the Roman overlord . . . it’s like “we’re the Sanhedrin . . . would we have handed you over to them if he wasn’t guilty?  We think not!”

     But Pilate’s having none of it – he’s not governor for nothing – and so he says “why don’t you judge him yourself?”  Why bother the Roman might and authority with your puny little problems?  And here’s where the truth is revealed: “We can’t put him to death,” they say, and by doing this, they reveal their agenda . . . they wanted Jesus dead, but they couldn’t – or wouldn’t  – do it themselves.  Just which one of those – couldn’t or wouldn’t – has been the cause of some debate.  Some think that the Sanhedrin wasn’t allowed to sentence criminals to death, but others think they were currying Roman favor . . . but for whatever reason, it caused Jesus to be executed in the Roman style – by crucifixion – rather than stoning.  And John tells us that this brings to fulfillment prophecies about the way he will die.

     And by interrupting the story with commentary, he’s making a statement right up front about the entire proceedings: all the machinations of the religious authorities, all the maneuvering about by Pilate, the cold-political power play, all are in the service of God’s agenda, not theirs . . .

     Scene two: Pilate goes back inside, where Jesus is, and right away asks him: “Are you the King of the Jews?”  And this serves immediately to show the intertwined political and religious agendas in Palestine, and that Pilate was well aware of the threat Jewish messianic hopes posed to the Roman government.  And so he asks him, straight out – “Are you the King of the Jews?”  And as always in John’s gospel, Jesus answers with another question; “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Like “did you come here on your own, or did yo’ mama send you?”  It’s insulting, insinuating, and it points up once again that Pilate may not be as in control as he thinks . . . but Pilate’s reply shows his contempt of the Jewish people “I am not a Jew, am I?”  and he asks him again: what have you done?

     And once again, Jesus doesn’t answer directly, but goes straight to the heart of the matter . . . Pilate’s worried about some rabble-rouser stirring up the peasants, and Jesus tells him the truth: “my kingdom” – and here a better translation might be “kingship” or “reign” – “my rein’s not from this world . . . if it were from this world, then you’d have to worry, my followers would be fighting, there’d be bloodshed . . . but as it is, my kingship is not from here.”  And we’re immediately reminded by these familiar words of Jesus telling his disciples “I am from above . . . not of this world” And so we know his kingship, his rule, his power is from God above.

     But Pilate doesn’t know that, and he doesn’t understand – “So . . . does that mean you’re a king?”  He’s single-minded, only interested in one thing, whether Jesus is a threat to him and his rule or not.  And all this talk about this world and the other are like water over the bridge . . . “so lemme get this straight – are you a king or not?”  And Jesus in effect tells him: You’re the one worried about that . . .  you say that I’m a king . . . I was born for one thing, and that’s what I came into the world to do, to testify – in Greek, to martyr – to the truth. . . . and anyone who belongs to that truth, anyone who is of that truth, listens to my voice, understands what I am saying.

     And Pilate, in his arrogance, in his single-minded pragmatism, wouldn’t know truth if it bit him on the nose, and he doesn’t seem to care, either, and our scene ends with his cynical “What is truth?”  And he turns to go back outside, to the waiting religious authorities.

     And in scene 3, we see his ultimate mastery of the machines of political control and intrigue . . . “I find no case against him,” he says “But!  But . . . you have a custom, that I release someone at Passover – do you want your King?  Do you want me to release the King of the Jews?”  And here he shows his contempt for them, taunting them by calling Jesus their king.  But the religious authorities take the bait – and after all, it gets them what they want as well – they take the bait and choose to release Barabbas, and thus sentence Jesus to die.

     And in that moment, as Pilate is symbolically outside, separated from Jesus, he’s with the religious authorities spiritually as well as physically.  We can see the full irony in the whole situation, as he who scorns the country-bumpkin temple officials,  he who asks in contempt “What am I, a Jew?”  shows that the answer, symbolically at least, is yes.  He indeed is one of the religious authorities as far as the Kingdom of God, he is no different: he does not belong to the truth, does not listen to Jesus’ voice . . . just as he is outside of his own headquarters, he is outside the reign of God, which is from above, not from this world.

     And what is the heart of this difference?  What is the way in which the rule of God, the kingship of Jesus Christ differs from that of the world?  The key is in Pilate’s behavior, in his very pragmatic handling of the whole affair . . . the first question out of his mouth is “Are you the king of the Jews?”  By which he means “Are you a threat to Roman rule?  Will you lead a rebellion, an uprising of the Hebrew people against me?”  For Pilate, king is synonymous with violence, with sedition, with holding onto power by whatever means possible.  As governor of Judea, stand-in for Emperor Tiberius, he knows no other kind of king than what he represents . . . for him, kings scheme and maneuver, put down armed revolts with Imperial shock troops, and order the crucifixion of political prisoners . . . that’s why he concludes that there’s nothing to charge Jesus with.  It’s not out of the goodness of his heart, not the result of some religious conversion . . . Jesus says his reign is not from the world . . . if it were, his followers would be using violence to keep the religious authorities at bay . . . it’s when he hears that, that Pilate knows that Jesus is no threat.

     Pilate’s reign, his kingship, if you will, is based on menace, on violence, and it’s maintained by soldiers with bow and spear and sword, and the threat of Imperial invasion.  Jesus’ kingship, the Kingdom of God, is based on non-retaliation, on non-violence, on the command to Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.

     Pilate asked “What is truth?” and turned and walked outside, away from truth, away from the king who came to testify to that truth . . . and by that symbolic action, he showed he did not belong to that truth, and he joined the religious authorities, he joined the people who were willing to commit violence – to execute political prisoners, to go to war –  to maintain their power.  Like  Pilate, I think we all make the choice: do we belong to the truth?  Do we hear Jesus’ voice?  Do we serve the violent leaders of the world, who talk about what great Christians they are, what men and women of God, and then use violence to preserve their power?  Do we support them with our votes and political contributions?  Or do we really follow Jesus, the innocent lamb who refused to use violence even to save his own life?  We cannot follow both.

     This is Christ the King Sunday, and it behooves us to remember what that means . . . it’s not Christ the Mighty Warrior King Sunday, not Christ the Lawgiver and dispenser of punishment Sunday . . . neither is it Christ who-bombs innocents to protect the national interests Sunday, or Christ who lies and cheats to stay in power Sunday . . . on the contrary, it’s Christ the King under arrest and interrogation Sunday, Christ the innocent victim Sunday.  It’s Christ the King being held hostage Sunday and Christ the King soon to be beaten and crucified Sunday . . . that’s whose Sunday it is, folks, and that’s the king we follow.

          Anybody who tells you different, who tells you that Christ – who is God after all, who is love, after all – wants us to go use force and violence to preserve our stuff – or even our lives – isn’t talking about any Christ that I know . . . the Christ I know loved the world so much that he came to earth, emptied himself of power, and became a martyr for truth, so that we may be set free.  Amen.

“Apocalypse Now?” (Mark 13:1-8)

It seems like “apocalypse” is a subject of endless fascination for us humans: the is Greek in origin, and it means “revelation.”  Our biblical book of Revelation, which of course was written in Greek, was originally referred to as “The Apocalypse of John,” because (a)  it is of the literary genre of apocalypse and (b) it was written by somebody named John, imprisoned we think on the Greek island of Patmos, which is actually closer to modern-day Turkey than to mainland Greece. Apocalyptic literature, apocalypse as a genre, was very popular in the few centuries surrounding the birth of Christ, and the Bible contains some fine examples of it, most notably Revelation, but also a few chapters in the Book of Daniel and a chapter each—give or take a few verses—in Matthew, Mark and Luke, of which this morning’s lectionary reading is a part.

By classic definition, apocalyptic literature is written in extremis; that is, it’s written as a reaction to extreme conditions, or in anticipation of those conditions.  That is certainly true of Revelation: it was written, we think, as a reaction to all that went on in the second half of the first century after Christ, which included most notably the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans and the destruction of the Temple, including its desecration, to use apocalyptic language, by the placing of the Emperor front and center instead of the Lord God almighty.  For Jews, the destruction of the Temple—it happened in 70 AD—was an event that was cataclysmic, far more so than would be the burning of a church for us.  The Temple was the center of religion for them, and equally important, the center of their culture and civilization.  God was literally thought to reside there; if the Temple wasn’t in Jerusalem, then neither was God.

 Of course, apocalyptic literature is written today, isn’t it?  Pam and Mike and I went to see the film Zombieland  when it first came out because, well, we like a good zombie flick, and it is set in the time after the zombie apocalypse, which will occur—behold!—because of our general environmental meddling and bad hygiene, which allows some kind of bacteria to get out of hand and turn a significant portion of the populace into, you know, zombies.  In at least a slightly higher literary vein, Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is set in the times after some unspecified conflagration, and follows the travels of a father and son across the blasted landscape.  It won the  Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which I can assure you that Zombieland did not, even though it’s a lot more fun, and shows how apocalypse has come up in the estimation of human culture since the first century AD.

It also shows how the definition has shifted: it originally meant “revelation,” as in the revelation of a final cataclysmic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, with the forces of light inevitably winning in the end, that will nevertheless end civilization as we know it.  Thus the naming of the literary genre.  Now, in our popular usage, it refers to the ultimate battle itself, or the ultimate conflagration, that ends our culture and technology and et cetera.

There’s another species of modern writing about things apocalyptic that most of us are familiar with; though it’s not apocalypse in a classic literary sense, it nevertheless trades on and profits from our fascination with all things apocalyptic every bit as much as Zombieland and The Road.  The most well-known example at present is the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which has 13 volumes in the original series and 3 or 4, now, in the prequel series, Before They Were Left Behind. But the apocalyptic craze of the latter half of the 20^th century all started with a guy named Hal Lindsey, who wrote a certain book that started the entire end-of-century popular Christian fascination with the end times.

Lindsey was educated theologically at Dallas Theological Seminary, after batting around as a tugboat captain, and went to work for what was then called Campus Crusade for Christ and is now simply Campus Crusade.  In 1970, he co-authored The Late Great Planet Earth with a ghost-writer who in later editions would receive author credit.  It was published by Zondervan Press, a Christian house associated with the Southern Baptists, and though a great many similar books had come before, the book’s breezy style and clear exposition of very complex ideas ensured it was a major hit amongst Christians.  Then, in 1973, it was picked up by Bantam, the first such book to be published by a secular publisher, and sales went through the roof.  When it was all said and done, The Late, Great Planet Earth had become the number one nonfiction bestseller of the 1970s, with over 9 million copies sold.  Its successor, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, to the general consternation, no doubt, of the New York Times.

The Late, Great Planet Earth and its sequel attempt to come up with a coherent set of predictions about the end times from the complex, highly symbolic, and often contradictory apocalyptic literature in Daniel, Revelation and the gospels.  Using a literal interpretive lens, they assign players on the contemporary world stage—both nations and individuals—to roles within the book of Revelation.  For example, the Soviet Union was the bear, and guess who was the eagle?  Guess who were the good guys?  And although Lindsey wouldn’t let himself get pinned down to exact dates, his reading of the apocalyptic passages in scripture convinced him that the end was near, and that it would probably happen sometime during the 1980s.  And I don’t know if you noticed, but that didn’t happen, and so he set about revising his prophecies, sharpening them up to try to make them more accurate and—just incidentally, of course—sell more books.

What makes people go ga-ga over apocalypse?  I myself, as an impressionable youth, spent many an hour discussing Lindsey’s book, and I even went with a college group to hear him speak.  Why do we spend millions of dollars on the enterprise, along with expending a large chunk of our lives reading about and talking and fulminating about the end times?  I think part of it is a simple, innocent desire to know the future, to know that despite what it looks like in the present—and nobody would doubt the prevalence of wars and rumors of war in the last part of the last century—things will come out in the end, that good will win over the forces that beset us, that God will win in the end.

But there’s a darker side as well, and it’s shown in Lindsey’s activities since it became apparent that he was, uh, a little off in his predictions.  At present, he holds forth on Trinity Broadcast Network, at his own expense, still prophesying, pointing out signs he thinks might be significant, such as whether Israel signs some particular treaty or not, and railing against the forces of the anti-christ.  Forces such as liberals, and Barack Obama, for example.  Now you may or may not agree with them politically, but most of us would hardly call align them with the anti-Christ . . . but Lindsey does, and the dark side of apocalyptic literature, and our tendency to pore over it, is that there always is a dark side, and it tends to consist of whomever we don’t like.  The apocalypse is often an excuse to demonize our enemies.

The Left Behind series shows this clearly: in the latter books, where the end-war—which some call Armageddon—is fairly under way, the books depict Christ melting the faces off of unbelievers, of slaughtering them on a great white steed, millions of them.  When questioned by interviewers how they could reconcile this with a God who the Bible says is love, and with God’s Son who is called the Prince of Peace, they shrug their shoulders and say: “Hey, I didn’t write it, it’s in the Bible.” 

Perhaps this is why the Bible itself takes something of a dim view of expending a lot of time and effort trying to figure out when it will all end.  Paul tells the people of the church at Thessalonica, in his first letter to them, that regarding the end times—what he calls the “times and seasons”—they don’t need anything written to them, because they themselves “know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” And he uses the Jewish-apocalyptic term “day of the Lord,” from which our concept of the Kingdom of God evolved.

Paul isn’t very keen on worrying too much about when the second coming is going to be; as he says, it’ll catch us unawares, it’ll come like a thief in the night . . . he just tells his congregation members to keep awake, by which he means “keep ready.”  You never know when it’s going to happen, you never know when it’s going to come.

In the so-called “little apocalypse” part of which we read today, Jesus says much the same thing.  First he predicts the destruction of Jerusalem—and he was right on the money about that—and the “desolating sacrilege”—i.e., the emperor, who sets himself as equal to God—which will come and occupy the temple, and then he says “Of course, you’ll see the signs like when the fig tree gives off its tender shoots you know that Summer is near.  And after those days”—after the destruction of Jerusalem, but note that he doesn’t say how long after—“after those days, people will see the coming of the Son of Man.”  Which, of course, is he himself.  But, he warns, “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only God.”

So it’s not surprising that Hal Lindsey doesn’t know, or Tim LaHaye, not even the Son knows, Jesus says, not even he knows, only God. Sorry Charlie, but that’s the way it is.  And why should we waste precious time and money and talent pursuing something that we aren’t meant to know in the first place?  Why should Christians spend millions of dollars on books purporting to tell us something we aren’t going to know in the first place?  Why should we spend millions of hours running after something, millions of dollars and talent that we could spend doing what is important, like, oh, I don’t know, spreading the Gospel, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick?

But there’s one other thing I’d like to point out before we leave the subject . . . and that’s the whole thing about God being in the wholesale slaughter business.  Jesus talks about what the end-timers call the “tribulation,” at least a bit, and while some—including me—interpret that as mostly about the Roman invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, note that whatever it will be, God will not be responsible.  The God of love, the God who is equated with love, is not responsible.  “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” he says.  “They will hand you over to councils, you will be beaten,” but not once does he say that it is God who will do it.  Go on, read all of Chapter 13 after we’re done.

Unlike Jenkins and LaHaye and Lindsey, Jesus does not blame God for our propensity toward war and destruction, for our inclinations to kill those we disagree with, of slaughtering those who stand in the way of getting our way.  Now, as in the past, it’s convenient to blame God, to project our own deadly fantasies upon the God who is the exact opposite of death.  God is a God of forgiveness, a God of peace, and God’s son the Prince of Peace.  Though I don’t know how, and certainly don’t know when, of that I am assured:  In our God there is no revenge, no slaughter, no violent retribution.  Our God is Life, and we are the children of Life.  Amen.