Second Sunday before Advent, 17 November 2019
Austwick, Clapham
“An apocalypse happened,” said Antonella Rossi, a jewellery shop owner in St Mark’s Square, Venice on Wednesday evening, as she and other shop owners mopped their floors and cleared debris while assessing the cost of the damage caused by the worst floods since the 1960s. St Mark’s Square was submerged by more than a metre of water on Wednesday and the adjacent St Mark’s Basilica flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years - but the fourth in the last two decades.
Meanwhile Claudio Vernier, president of the St Mark’s Square Traders’ Association, avoided the word ‘apocalyptic’ but not its spirit, when he said, “We feel helpless in the face of nature, but we are also disappointed that either politics or technology has failed. They’ve been talking about defending this city for decades but that’s all they do – talk.” [1]
In this week’s bushfires in New South Wales a man called Barry Parsons died alone. Just days before his body was found, Parsons had left a message on Facebook detailing the terrifying scenes around him, saying “it seriously looks and sounds like apocalypse out there”. [2]
Australia's climate has been trending toward more bushfire weather over the last 30 years. Without needing to mention ‘apocalypse’ Australian researchers have detailed evidence that climate change is making hot days hotter, and heatwaves longer and more frequent, as human activity has caused significant changes in Australia's bushfire season. [3]
Are we a little bit free and easy with our use of the term ‘apocalypse’? Or can such language guide us towards the truth? An editorial in the Spectator this week, said, of the floods in South Yorkshire, like those in Cumbria and Somerset before them: we keep suffering them, but they are not apocalyptic: they are symptoms of our failure to manage the threat of flooding which is, for the most part, avoidable. [4]
What do we mean by ‘apocalyptic’? The word is often used to describe scenes of devastation - ones we can see with our eyes today, and ones we foresee coming. It’s tied in with judgement: ‘The days are coming…’ people say, apocalyptically, as they prepare to overturn unpopular leaders; and it’s also an expression of hope. ‘The days are coming…’ people say, apocalyptically, when looking for a new world to break through the old.
If we think we’re reasoned level-headed people we might tend to dismiss apocalyptic talk as scaremongering or as a form of folksy revenge fantasy against the powers-that-be; we may judge it to be the talk of people being misled into panic by circumstances beyond their control.
But if we are to be true to our faith tradition then we can’t dismiss apocalyptic talk out of hand. Our scriptures are full of the apocalypse; look at today’s examples. These are readings to make us tremble. Malachi’s vision of God bringing down fire on those who would stand in God's way, whilst energising the faithful; and Luke’s portrait of Jesus in full apocalyptic flow, describing the imminent fall of the Jerusalem temple and its terrifying aftermath.
In these passages the imagery of judgement is dark - stubble and fire, stones cast down, war, famine, and plague. Even the positive imagery is strange and awesome - the Lord as a rising sun, dreadful portents and signs in the skies; and in the midst of all this, the faithful leaping like new-born calves. This is apocalyptic language - and although it may discomfort us, it is language for today, carrying truth for today. Disturbing truth, no doubt, but God's truth, if we would allow ourselves, trembling, to embrace it and believe it.
Apocalyptic language always flows from peoples under pressure, like Malachi’s people newly-returned from exile striving to find ways to rebuild their society, and Luke, seeking to encourage the nascent Christian community at a time they were encountering oppression and martyrdom. Today we hear it from from peoples under pressure in our world, from Venice to Fishlake to New South Wales. Take for instance Native Americans, their 'ghost dance' religion rejecting the white man's conquest of their land as a short-lived and chaotic bad dream, looking forward to waking up one day to a new world restored and healed of the environmental destruction of today.
Apocalypse is such an over-used and cheapened term, [writes Mike Davis]. It is important to recall its precise meaning in the Abrahamic religions. An apocalypse is literally the revelation of the Secret History of the world as becomes possible under the terrible clarity of the Last Days. It is the alternate, despised history of the subaltern classes, the defeated peoples, the extinct cultures. [5]
He could be describing Luke and the people he wrote his gospel for. Although it’s unclear from today’s reading, when Luke wrote those words ‘the Temple of the Jews no longer existed. The city of the Jews no longer existed. The country of the Jews no longer existed.’ For Luke was writing in the wake of the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the middle months of AD70, which ended with the burning and destruction of the Second Temple, and the sacking of the Lower City.
Luke’s Apocalypse was him looking backwards from a position of weakness. With all the passion and creativity at his disposal he wrote to try to rally and encourage the Christians living vulnerably at that time. His Jesus, reading the signs of the times, then offers his people words and a wisdom with power exceeding that of anyone seeking to harm them. [6]
Luke’s apocalyptic language carries truth for his today, God's truth about the way God's world really is. Like all the apocalypses described in scripture Luke’s apocalyptic Jesus awakens us to the awesome power of God, who is still at the heart of the world, in our today. It's enough to make us terrified - and the tragedy of modern faith is that we seem incapable of being terrified. We aren't afraid of God, we aren't afraid of Jesus, we aren't afraid of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we have ended up with a form of faith that attracts few people... and transforms no one.
Apocalyptic invites us to open our Bibles with our hands shaking because of the Truth we find there. Unfortunately, those of us who have been entrusted with the terrifying, frightening, Good News have made Christianity awfully safe. We have defanged the tiger of Truth. We have tamed the Lion, and now Christianity is so sensible, so accepted, so palatable. [7]
Today’s apocalyptic talk carries truth, about the way our world really is. Truth, which can awaken us to the awesome power of God, who still holds history in his hands. Truth, enough to make us terrified, and by the grace of God, to make us wise. We should tread lightly around Apocalyptic language then, but never reject it. We should always be open to receiving it as a commentary on our present times - often from the insightful perspective of those suffering the most, and who thus can express most vividly just what are the signs of the times.
Notes
[1] Angela Giuffrida, 'An apocalypse happened': Venice counts cost of devastating floods. Guardian, 13 November 2019
[2] Olivia Lambert, 'Downright apocalyptic': The chilling last post of man found dead among bushfires. Yahoo News Australia,14 November 2019.
[3] Wikipedia, Bushfires in Australia: Climate change; Navene Elangovan, Explainer: The cause of Australia’s deadly bushfires, why they are worse this year and climate change's role. Today Online, 12 November 2019.
[4] Our flood defences aren’t fit for the climate we have now. Leading Article, The Spectator, 16 November 2019.
[5] Mike Davis, Dead Cities: and Other Tales. p.31. Quoted in my 2003 sermon Apocalyptic/Fear.
[6] Emmanuel Carrère, The Kingdom. p.322-323; Wikipedia: Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE).
[7] This passage about being terrified by God’s truth, quoted in my 2003 sermon Apocalyptic/Fear, originates in Mike Yaconelli’s essay The Safety of Fear, which also features in Michael Yaconelli: Selected Writings. [PDF Download]
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