Unimagination

Text: Mark 13:1-8
Other texts: Daniel 12:1-3

Forty years ago it seemed like the world was on a roll. It was the beginning, everyone thought, of a new age. The dawning of the age of Aquarius. The Berlin wall, a symbol of the old, national, hateful way of international politics, had fallen. And not long after, our scary enemy, the Soviet Union, would collapse. Possibilities were expanding. Humans were walking on the moon. Ancient limitations were yielding to human cleverness. The old generations, stuck in century-long patterns and traditions, were being replaced by a new, younger, smarter, more adventurous generation.

And here we are. War, starvation, oppression, and greed are still among us. The stability of the world’s climate is threatened. There seem to be no good and simple solutions to anything. Everything seems much too complicated to even think about. Is the world falling apart? Can anything hold?

In times like this, things are beyond our powers. Things cannot go on like this, people say. The more powerless people feel, the more they begin to hope for a quick and radical solution. And some begin to hope for a kind of divine restart. Seeing no human fix, some hope that God will wipe the desk clean and start over. A clean install.

This kind of thinking is called apocalyptic, a word that comes from the title of the Book of Revelation. Revelation is the most extensive example of apocalyptic writing in the Christian tradition, but there are others in the Bible, starting with Daniel, about whom we heard in the first lesson. And in the Gospels, including Mark, there are little apocalypses, as they are called. In all these writings there is a slightly sweet and rotten combination of fear, antsiness, and hope.

These end-of-the world stories come from people and times of oppression and occupation. So they ask God to share with them their urgency. They are not about faraway redemption, but rescue now, this moment. Soon.

But predictions made two thousand, twenty-five hundred, years ago, have not come to pass. We are still here. The world continues to exist. It turns out that God is not us. That God is not like us.

God’s patience is greater than ours. God seems to be in it for the long haul. God is evidently more willing to see how things work out, and to let them work out. God is less likely to panic than we are.

God’s forgiveness is greater than ours. Maybe the worst things that can happen are not quite as bad in God’s eyes as they are in ours. Maybe we are like little children for whom every slight and sin is a major event. Maybe God is more even tempered.

God’s flexibility is greater than ours. God seems less doctrinaire than we can be. God allows a little slack in the affairs of the world. God is opinionated but not unmovable. God changes God’s mind and reverses judgments. God is influenced by argument, as God is by Abraham and Moses, and by repentance, prayer, and extenuating circumstances. And by intercession.

And mostly, God’s compassion is greater than ours. The apocalyptic writings predict anguish and violence and death to the oppressors and enemies and sinners. People left behind suffer horribly. It is vengeful and retributive. But it seems that God loves us too much to zap us all in a divine cataclysm. Forgive those who harm you, says God in Jesus. And in older scripture God seems to be less wrathful and instead disappointed and saddened by the sins of the people of God.

It is not right that we should usurp the calendar of the end of time and to lobby God to destroy all of creation, which after all was made in God’s hope. It is arrogance and hubris to think that because we are freaked out God would be too, or should be too. How can we think that our own particular sorrows—even though they be great—and our anger, and our hysteria could justify the end of the world? How can we believe that the spirit of God in creation would let life fade so easily? How can we hope for “anguish that has never before occurred,” as it says in Daniel? Or famines and war? It is almost pornographic.

Scary times seem to demand extreme measures. That’s because it is hard to think about solutions when the problems seem so enormous and immediate. Apocalyptic hopes reflect lack of imagination. They are sort of: I don’t know what to do, so tomorrow is cancelled. All of us feel this way from time to time, but it doesn’t mean we hope for the end of the world. At least not usually. Apocalyptic thinking is kind of an extreme form of the geographic cure. When in trouble and in doubt, leave. Go somewhere else.

In scary times, cosmically or personally, we first of all are convinced that the future will be the same as today. We see the future as just one long and tiresome stretched-out present. We cannot imagine a different future. And second, even if we could, the steps we’d have to take to get there seem impossible. We cannot imagine how we could get realistically from today to tomorrow. And third, it seems to be all or nothing. We cannot imagine how any intermediate actions would make a difference. In good times you know that things change, that small steps make a difference, that intermediate actions are effective. In scary times, you forget.

But Jesus reminds us. It is basic and fundamental to Christianity that something new is possible. Not only possible but inevitable. The good news that Jesus brings is that tomorrow need not be the same as today. That to hope to be healed, and to be restored, and to be refreshed is realistic, not fantastic.

Both to nourish this hope, and as result of the teachings of Jesus, we do three things. First thing, we forgive the past and know that we will be able forgive the present. Second thing, we can count on the constant and intimate presence of God. There is nothing, as the apostle Paul says, that can separate us from the love of God. And third thing, we gather into communities of people who look out for one another and remind one another of the first two things.

So here we are. In whatever circumstances. In hope or worry. In concern or celebration. But we will not be here for long. Not because things will end, but because they continue. The walls of no temple are permanent, no matter how big and unmovable they seem. God draws us forward into life. We may resist or we may welcome this divine pull. But God, patient, forgiving, open-minded, and compassionate, makes things new.