“The Great Uncovering”
18 November 2012
Proper 28B
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
When I
was in second grade, my teacher suggested to my mother that I see an
optometrist. I was always sitting way
too close to the blackboard and burying my face in any book I was reading. She suspected I was near-sighted and needed
eyeglasses. I was pretty
suspicious. I had once put on my mother’s glasses; they just made things
look blurry and unrecognizable. My teacher, however, was right. When I first left the optometrist’s office
with my new thick-lensed horned-rimmed glasses on, I was stunned. There, on all the trees across the street,
were branches wreathed in hundred of individual leaves, rather than general
masses of green! There, in the reddish
wall of the building across from my parents’ office machines store, were
hundreds of individual bricks framed by white mortar!
Years
later it was similar, when I first wore polarized sunglasses. I had been working as a life guard and could
never see what was going on under the water because of the surface glare. I bought clip-on Foster Grant polarized lenses. It was magic.
Suddenly, the glare was gone and I could see everything clearly. Inside, however, they made everything dark
and difficult to see.
When I
first looked into the night sky with a telescope I was also pleasantly
surprised: what once had been a mere star, turned out to be a planet with rings
or striped bands or a distant galactic nebula.
But I could not make the telescope help me see anything up close that I
wanted to examine.
Lenses,
filters, magnifiers: they change our
vision and make what was difficult to descry clear. They give can give differentiation where
once was sameness, clarity and detail where once was vagueness, or sometimes
simply alter our view entirely and make us aware of reality that we never would
have guessed. In a real way, they
uncover what was always there, but lay it bare before our eyes. But
they all need to be used in the right context, for the right need.
Today’s
Hebrew Scripture and Gospel lesson are examples of what scholars call apocalyptic writings. The Greek word apokalypsis means an uncovering or a revelation of what is hidden. The question is: what do they uncover?
Early
Jewish writings like the Book of Daniel and the non-canonical Book of Enoch, as
well as Christian writings like the Apocalypse
or Revelation of John, are
included in the genre. Sections of other
books sometimes take on characteristics of this type of writing as well. The prime example of this is the “Little
Apocalypse” of Chapter 13 of Mark, together with its parallels in Matthew 24
and Luke 21.
This
literature is rich is images—often symbolic figures, numbers, angels, and
animals—and has, over the centuries, inspired a lot of varied interpretation. Much of the imagery in these books seems
disturbed or obsessive—a third of the sea or the moon turning to blood here,
the stars falling from heaven and killing most living things there, the “whore
of all the earth” fornicating with the kings of all nations here, a multi-headed
beast covered with eyes and horns devouring the righteous there. This has led, over the centuries, to many
interpreters taking this literature as if it were television-like predictions
of coming events in world history and especially what will happen when this
world system comes to an end.
In the
year 1,000, we had penitentes running
all over Europe whipping themselves and declaring the end of the world with
such images. In the 1970s, we had “the
Late Great Planet Earth”; today we have the Left
Behind novels.
But
this reading completely misunderstands apocalyptic, and goes against Jesus’
message in today’s Gospel.
Just
before Jesus’ arrest, Jesus and his disciples are at the Temple in
Jerusalem. It is pretty impressive: 10
stories high, with masonry stones embellished with smaller carved jewels
glittering in the sun, gold leaf covering large parts of it, truly a
marvel. A disciple says, “Wow! Look at
that, Jesus! Isn’t that impressive?” Jesus
replies by dismissing it all and saying, “Don’t
get too exited. Soon not one stone there
will be left standing on another. It’s
all going down.” Later, when they are
on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron valley opposite the Temple Mount, with
a panoramic view of the complex, the other disciples ask him about this. Such large buildings, such destruction, just
like those horrible scenes in Daniel or the later parts of Ezekiel. It is destruction on an apocalyptic level, so they ask him how his prediction fits into the
weeks, days, and schemes, the numerology and timetables of apocalyptic books: when
will this destruction happen, when is the end of the world? What will be the signs
preceding it?
Jesus
explains that such a scorecard approach to end-time signs is pointless—too many
people abuse such imagery for their own advantage (“many will come and
say…”). He says they shouldn’t be too
alarmed or overly excited by the appearance of apocalyptic standard stage props
of “wars and rumors of wars” or natural catastrophes. Such things, he says, are “but the beginning
of the birthpangs,” that is, Braxton-Hicks’ contractions or false labor. Jesus
is saying, “Don’t worry too much about any of these things. They’re just a false alarm. Keep calm and carry on!”
The
fact is, Apocalyptic is primarily about events and people in the world of its
authors, not our day. The Revelation of
John, the classic Christian Apocalypse, itself says that it is about things
that will "come to pass soon" (Rev 1:1).
That doesn't mean soon to us, but
soon to the writer.
What
is uncovered in apocalyptic is this: God's purposes and the final outcome of
things when all is said and done, not "coming events."
Apocalyptic is literature written during persecution. It seeks to understand the sufferings of the righteous and encourage them to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors. In John’s Revelation, these are Romans under the Emperors Nero and Domitian, who put Christians in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals because they declined to offer incense to a statue of the Emperor. In the Book of Daniel, they are Greek Syrians under Antiochus who flayed alive or boiled in oil whole families simply because they kept the Law of Moses.
Apocalyptic is literature written during persecution. It seeks to understand the sufferings of the righteous and encourage them to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors. In John’s Revelation, these are Romans under the Emperors Nero and Domitian, who put Christians in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals because they declined to offer incense to a statue of the Emperor. In the Book of Daniel, they are Greek Syrians under Antiochus who flayed alive or boiled in oil whole families simply because they kept the Law of Moses.
Apocalyptic
puts its message in rich images and code so that the readers can read it without
the censors and secret police catching on and then torturing and executing them. It is very much about “current events” as
seen by the author. It looks to the future to argue that no matter how
bad things get, in the end God and the righteous will triumph and all the
suffering will have been worth it.
These books
read sometimes as if a highly disturbed person wrote them. That is because the authors were people traumatized
by persecution and horrible faith-devouring events. And therein lies the importance of these
writings to us. Whatever the specifics
of what hardships we may have to go through, whatever the final consummation of
history that still waits us, we must remember that these books are about hope and perseverance, and the ultimate triumph of the Good.
Jesus’ “false alarm!” approach here suggests
that this is the real worth of Apocalyptic speculation. I think he would see its basic message as the
same as Winston Churchill’s famous line from World War II, “If you are going
through hell, then keep on going!”
Jesus denies that apocalyptic should
be read as a coded playbook of good guys versus bad guys.
Whenever anything horrible happens,
no matter what, count on it that someone somewhere will mark it up as an act of
God, as some punishment for some bad thing, the fault of some bad group of other people. You know what I’m talking about.
Pat Robertson said the 2010 Haitian
earthquake was God’s punishment on Haitians’ ‘historic pact with the Devil’,
dredging up a bit of Haitian revolutionary war propaganda from two centuries
ago. In 2001, Jerry Falwell blamed
the 9-11 attacks also on the victims, saying that God was punishing America for
lax sexual morality and casual acceptance of abortion. The severity
of Hurricane Sandy this last month was also in some quarters attributed to a Deity
angry with America’s supposed moral laxness, rather than on climate change. Louis Crew, founder of the GBLT-supporting
Episcopal ministry group Integrity, says that he personally over the years has
been blamed for earthquakes, tornadoes, and fires, all supposedly God’s punishments
for Louie’s depravities. “Oh, if only I
had such power!” he wistfully muses.
Jesus wants nothing to do with such
nonsense. He tells us in today’s Gospel,
“Don’t worry about apocalyptic—just keep calm and carry on! God’s kingdom is coming, and is in our midst
now. Don’t demonize others and don’t
blame God for bad stuff.”
Once, a man born blind was pointed
out to him: “Was it his parents sin or his that caused this?”
“Neither,” he said (John 9:3).
Another time people came to him and
said, “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours
who were worshipping in the Temple? Their own blood was mixed with that
of the animals they were sacrificing! What did they do that was so bad
that God punished them this way?” “They did nothing any worse than anyone
else,” he replies, and continues, “What about those people who died in
the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed? They were no worse than anyone
else.” “The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they
were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke
13:1-5).
Apocalyptic is a lens to help people
through bad, horrible times. Its vision amid
persecution of a bright future city of God where God will wipe away every tear
is like my clear vision of those leaves and bricks after years of fuzziness. Trying to turn Apocalyptic into something it
is not, into predictive television of coming events, is like me putting on my
mother’s glasses—it will only distort the world and bring more blindness, not
clarity.
Jesus is saying here that we should
take the traumatic events we experience, whether war or natural disasters, as
occasions for drawing closer to others, for helping them, for being helped by
them. This is the heart of the coming of
the Kingdom. Anything else is stageprops
that can and will be used by people wanting somehow to profit from it all.
In the coming week, I would like you
to ask yourself how you react to bad things in life. Do you blame God for them, or say God is
punishing someone, either you or some other group? In prayer, seek ways to help use the traumas
you experience or witness as ways to draw closer to others. Seek ways to thus bring closer the great day
when God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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