{"id":614,"date":"2012-08-05T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=614"},"modified":"2019-12-03T11:57:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T16:57:26","slug":"endings-and-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/08\/05\/endings-and-beginnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Endings and Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the whole service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you heard!?\u00a0 The world is ending!!\u00a0 It\u2019s very exciting.\u00a0 Fires.\u00a0 Floods.\u00a0 Hail.\u00a0 Earthquakes.\u00a0 Wars.\u00a0 All manner of natural and human-made destruction.<\/p>\n

At least, this is what most readily comes to mind when the language of apocalypse is invoked in our late modern context.\u00a0 It is a bit distant from the Greek definition of something hidden being made manifest or revealed, which is far tamer.\u00a0 Interestingly, in the biblical witness it is not the fires and floods and hail and earthquakes and wars that in themselves constitute the apocalypse, but rather they are signs pointing to what will immanently be revealed.\u00a0 Biblical apocalyptic vision arose in continuity with the prophetic tradition of Israel.\u00a0 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and all the rest spent half their careers warning of all of the bad things that would happen to the Israelites if they did not repent and return to right relationship with Yahweh and then they spent the rest of their careers warning that the nations of the world would come to naught if they failed to recognize Yahweh and the chosen people Israel.\u00a0 There are at times glimmers of more positive prospects in the prophetic witness, of what good things will come upon turning back to Yahweh.\u00a0 Apocalyptic follows in this pattern of warning of dire times ahead after which a new, just, righteous age will follow.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, as I am returning to the chapel from hither and yon on campus, I encounter an apocalyptic preacher on the sidewalk along Commonwealth Avenue in front of Marsh Plaza.\u00a0 These preachers usually have a great deal to say about how tragic, unfortunate, and painful events in our world are signs of God\u2019s judgment upon society for all manner of evils.\u00a0 They have a constitutionally protected right to freely speak their views on a public sidewalk, just as I have a constitutionally protected right to think them wrong.\u00a0 I have two problems with contemporary apocalyptic preachers. \u00a0The first is that the social and cultural evils that these preachers are decrying are the very same sociocultural changes that I take to be achievements over prejudice, violence, and inhumanity.\u00a0 Gay marriage and a woman\u2019s right to control her own body often top their, and my, lists.\u00a0 Apart from our contrasting ethical visions, however, my second problem with the contemporary apocalyptic preachers I encounter is that they almost never provide the second half of the apocalyptic vision.\u00a0 There is much talk of judgment, damnation, and destruction, but no talk of the new order to be ushered in in place of the judged, damned, and destroyed one.\u00a0 While biblical apocalyptic can be considered good news as it offers the promise of a better tomorrow in spite of the toil and tribulation of today, contemporary apocalyptic seems to offer nothing but toil and tribulation, which is nothing more than bad news.<\/p>\n

One of the things that differentiates the apocalyptic worldview in the bible from the prophetic view is that in the prophetic view it is still possible for humans to self-correct, while in the apocalyptic view humanity has passed the tipping point.\u00a0 The prophets were constantly adjuring Israel to repent and return to Yahweh.\u00a0 \u201cIf we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.\u00a0 Thanks be to God!\u201d\u00a0 It is actually not the case that apocalyptic figures and writers actually thought things were worse in their societies than prophetic figures did.\u00a0 Rather, the prophetic figures felt that the leaders of their society still had enough control over the society to bring about changes that would return Israel to Yahweh.\u00a0 Apocalyptic figures, by contrast, felt entirely out of control.\u00a0 This largely had to do with the fact that they were living under the occupation of the Roman Empire.\u00a0 Even if Israel wanted to go in a different direction and become more godly, they could not because they did not have any control over their own destinies.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus it is that since humans are unable to rectify the situation, only God can step in and fix things.\u00a0 Only God can overturn the present order and usher in a new order of peace, prosperity, and right relationship with God.<\/p>\n

This feeling of being out of control marks the apocalyptic view in our contemporary context as well.\u00a0 Karen Armstrong, an independent scholar of religion, spoke at Ithaca College during my freshman year there in October of 2001.\u00a0 She was extraordinarily helpful in interpreting the events of September 11th of that year in terms of the fundamentalist mindset that inspired and motivated that day of death and destruction.\u00a0 Her book The Battle for God explores how fundamentalisms across religious traditions are responses by religious people to a loss of control brought about by the apparently secularizing forces and assumptions of modernity.\u00a0 These religious people then follow their fight or flight instinct, and those who follow the fight path often understand themselves to be instruments of God in righting the world.\u00a0 Certainly, there is a great deal more to religious fundamentalism that an apocalyptic worldview, and not all people with apocalyptic views are religious fundamentalists.\u00a0 However, the feeling of having lost control that drives the modern rejection of modernity that is fundamentalism is the same feeling of having lost control that inspired the apocalyptic texts of the bible.<\/p>\n

One of the challenges in responding to apocalyptic texts, apocalyptic preachers, and fundamentalists is that the view that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and there is nothing to be done about it but wait for God to set it right can feel very foreign.\u00a0 I wonder, however, if we might not be a bit too quick to abide in the feeling of otherness, perhaps as a strategy for not having to face how familiar the apocalyptic view might be.\u00a0 Perhaps I am the odd ball out, and perhaps none of you have ever felt like things had gotten totally out of control.\u00a0 Life in ministry, I have discovered, provides frequent exposure to the feeling and experience of things being totally out of control.\u00a0 Ministry also provides ample opportunity to see how, if people would simply make this, that, or the other decision and act on it, as opposed to the one they did decide on and act upon, things would have gone so much better.\u00a0 I confess, I have at times found myself daydreaming about how things might have gone had someone wiser been in charge.<\/p>\n

Is this really so much different than the apocalyptic vision?\u00a0 Not really. \u00a0After all, the apocalyptic vision is very much an imagination that things do go better when someone of infinite wisdom, namely God, is in charge.\u00a0 On the other hand, my imagination of how things might have been better inspires me to decide and act more wisely.\u00a0 This is to say that I learn something from watching how the decisions and actions I and others take work out, as well as from the imaginings of how things might have gone.\u00a0 At the end of the day, however, my imaginings remain in the subjunctive mood of what might have been or what might yet become.\u00a0 This is in stark contrast to the way in which the apocalyptic imagination of what might be inspires fundamentalist decision-making and action.\u00a0 The fundamentalist is so inspired by the apocalyptic imagination that she or he attempts to impress the subjunctive mood of what might become into the indicative mood of what actually is.<\/p>\n

The work we do together here in this space, week by week, in gathering together in worship, is very much a subjunctive imagining of what life might be like if God were in charge.\u00a0 The readings, prayers, sermon, music, and sacrament of the liturgy reveal to us the ways in which we ought to live in the ideal world of God\u2019s realm.\u00a0 Live justly, walk humbly, confess your shortcomings, forgive one another, rejoice in joy, weep in lamentation, and break bread with one another.\u00a0 Of course, life in the world is not nearly so ideal.\u00a0 Justice is ambiguous.\u00a0 Humility is mistaken for weakness.\u00a0 Confession leads to judgment without forgiveness.\u00a0 The joy of one is the sorrow of another.\u00a0 Those we break bread with may stab us in the back.\u00a0 We learn from these experiences as well as the imagination we return to, week by week, of what would be better.\u00a0 Furthermore, our worship practice provides a safeguard from thinking that we should attempt to impose the subjunctive mood of worship on the indicative mood of life.\u00a0 That safeguard is the strangeness of the liturgy.\u00a0 The clergy wear funny robes.\u00a0 The windows are made of stained glass.\u00a0 The pews have no cushions.\u00a0 These things, and many others, provide a sense of strangeness to remind us that, while much of what we experience here may point to a better way of being, in the end, a worship service is not life.\u00a0 That better way of being exists apart from the day-to-day walk of life.\u00a0 The better vision informs life, and so transforms our lives, by reminding us that life is not always and necessarily out of control.\u00a0 The ongoing work of transformation by information indicates that at every moment of our lives the world is ending, and is beginning anew out of what was and what might yet be.\u00a0 Thanks be to God.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

~Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, LC+<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the whole service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   Have you heard!?\u00a0 The world is ending!!\u00a0 It\u2019s very exciting.\u00a0 Fires.\u00a0 Floods.\u00a0 Hail.\u00a0 Earthquakes.\u00a0 Wars.\u00a0 All manner of natural and human-made destruction. At least, this is what most readily comes to mind when the language of apocalypse is invoked in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2532,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/2532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}