The Near End

Joel 2:23-32; Luke 18:9-14

October 23, 2016

When I was a teenager there was a man in Chattanooga who used to walk back and forth on Market St. down town carrying a sign that proclaimed “the end is near.” Seems that so many towns had people like that with signs like that that it became a meme before memes became, well, memes.

I was only a teenager at the time, so I didn’t have a great deal of experience to judge whether or not the end felt particularly near in the mid 1970s. I suppose some combination of Vietnam, Watergate, and disco may have made it feel more apocalyptic, but I wonder how often, over the countless years of human history, it has felt like “the end was near.”

Some people seem to think that our present times feel like end time. Knowing that, I tried to do a bit of research to find some history of end-times prophecies, but I got stuck quickly upon discovering that, according to Armageddon News – which is apparently a thing – the end will be October 31 of this year. I reckon there’s no real need to worry that there are only 62 more days until Christmas. Never mind that, according to those same folks, the world was supposed to have come to its end back in July, and, before that, some time last year, and before that some other time and date.

Of course, the end has always been near in the human imagination. The text from Joel this morning is a fine reminder: “I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

Not a single word about this fall’s presidential campaign.

That human beings have always harbored apocalyptic visions about the near end of everything is not news, and, in and of itself, it’s barely even interesting. No, the run-of-the-mill end-time prophets of doom can be occasionally entertaining, but their predictions don’t much concern me.

Their motivations, on the other hand, can be fascinating. For example, the predictions at Armageddon News are clearly designed to be click bait for the advertising embedded in their YouTube content. Apparently there’s money to be made in end-times predictions.

That makes a bit of sense if you think about it. After all, most of us wish we knew more about the future than we do, and fixing an end point to it all limits the amount of time about which we know so much less than we wish we could. If it’s all coming to an end on Halloween I don’t even need to worry about trick-or-treat candy … unless the end is coming after 9:00 p.m. or so. Dang, I’m going to have to go back and check on that!

Or not. Seriously. There’s a ton of bad biblical interpretation out there, and probably none more unfaithful and, well, just plain wrong than that which has been wasted on end-times prophecies. Sure, scripture is filled with apocalyptic warnings about the wrath of God or the final salvation of the faithful, but the same scripture also always assures us that we cannot know the time.

As I said, there’s a ton of bad interpretation out there. Most of it has one thing in common: it is used to maintain an unjust status quo. It’s pretty easy to see this when it comes to the use of scripture to, for example, uphold patriarchy or slavery or heterosexism. But the same patterns hold true in end-times prophecy.

Indeed, the pattern of using poorly interpreted texts to maintain the status quo around particular issues of injustice often intersects with end-times prophecy. We’ve all heard about preachers who tell their followers that women in places of power or gays getting married are sure signs of that God is fixin’ to destroy the earth. To be fair, I guess they’d call such things “causes” rather than “signs” of the end times.

But such preaching is pretty much exactly what Jesus is calling out in this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Luke tells us straight off why Jesus told this story: there were some people who trusted that they, themselves, were righteous, and they regarded others with contempt. There were, apparently, some folks who believed so strongly in their own righteousness that they could never possibly be wrong. There were some folks who believed themselves to be so much on the straight-and-narrow that they could never be crooked. There were some folks who believed themselves to be so pure that they could never possibly be … oh, it’s so tempting to say “nasty” here, but let’s just go with “unclean.”

Moreover, these same folks were in positions of power and influence. They were leaders in their communities, and, in particular, in their religious institutions.

Now, despite the obvious allusions I’m making, let me rush to assure you that, when it comes to self-righteous self-deception, this really is one of those cases where both sides do it. Indeed, all sides do it.

We do not want to see ourselves as the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, but that leaves us with only one option: the unclean, sinful, deeply compromised, deceitful, duplicitous, collaborating tax collector.

Hm … self-righteous prick or deeply broken human being? Isn’t there a third choice?

Truth is, no. There’s not. This is the muck in which we are mired. This is the human condition that Paul understood so well when he observed, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

However, Jesus’ parable does over an invitation to a way through. It’s not a way out. There is no way out of the human condition. But there are various paths.

Jesus names the path he offers as a way of justification, and it begins with acts of repentance.

The Greek word translated as repentance in the New Testament is metanoia. It’s a fascinating little word that means, literally, to turn, as one might do on a path in order to see other possibilities, as well as to see the road already travelled. In other words, repentance involves understanding honestly where one has been and seeking out a path forward that may well include, or even require, a change in direction.

Self-righteousness, on the other hand, is self-delusional because it does not bother to look around. In its certainty, self-righteousness blinds one not only to one’s own brokenness, but also to other ways of living in the world. Moreover, it blinds one to others and to the gifts they might bring to one’s life if one could only see them.

Blind to others is not quite right, though. It would be more accurate to say that, in self-righteousness, we are blind not only to an accurate view of ourselves, but also to an accurate view of others. We can see them, but mostly what we can see of others is how wrong they are.

It’s easy to grasp this pattern in a hyper-partisan political season, and a story I saw on Facebook last week illustrates it so well. While this example will be recognizably partisan, it doesn’t take much imagination to flip the script in terms of liberal and conservative characters.

Heath Rada, who is the immediate-past moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) shared this story of standing in line to vote last week:

Well, I just voted. What has always been a wonderful and rather exciting outing was not this time. Here's why. A conversation in the long line with the three people standing behind us -

Them - Hillary is so crooked. She is really the devil. And Democrats are all cheaters. 

Me - (having been listening to this type of banter from them for 10 minutes already, with references to the faith included) I wish you wouldn't say that about Democrats. Neither all Democrats nor Republicans are all cheaters and that just isn't accurate. 

Them - Oh yes they are. And Hillary is evil.

Me - Well, I think there are issues and concerns in many camps around this election, and we really need to look at facts.

Them - The facts are in the Bible, and Hillary is not born again, so she is not a Christian.

Me - Silence for a bit

Them -( to each other but obviously so I could hear them) - I went to a Presbyterian Church recently and they were friendly but the sermon was milk toast. They didn't preach the Bible. In fact, I understand all Presbyterian sermons are canned and read.

Me - (couldn't be quiet any longer - despite my wife's pleading) No, you are wrong. I’m a Presbyterian, and our preacher's sermons are not canned. But you know what, this conversation isn't healthy. Let's agree that we are all God's children, and try to look for ways to show our love and care for one another.

Them - No that is absolutely untrue. Hillary and you are NOT God's children. 

Me - Then who created us?

Them - God is your creator but until you are born again you are not claimed by him as his children.

Me - I'm sorry you feel that way. I beleive that God loves each person in this world, and claims them as his own. I am going to love you even if we disagree.

Them Are you a politician?

Me No

Them Well you sure talk like one and look like one.

In the lengthy comment thread, Heath’s godson shared this:

Isn't it interesting how mystery and certainty play out in our faith stories. When we are completely certain we know who God is, we don't have to keep reaching and changing. The world makes more sense because we can organize and categorize people and action. With mystery, we approach the stranger with hope and humility, we mold and remold ourselves as we stretch towards new understandings and ways of being. I desperately hold on to the mystery of God, because in mystery I find my only path of spirituality and humanity.

There is so much that we do not know, that we cannot know. Creation is unimaginably vast, and the depths of the human heart are unfathomable. How can we possibly, credibly claim to know the fullness of the Creator of all of that? How can we possibly claim to know if – much less when – that profoundly mysterious God will call an end to it all?

What we can know is this: Jesus points a way through the living of these days. It is a way of honesty – with ourselves, with one another, with our God. It is, thus, a way that requires honesty about our own limits, our own faults, our own failures.

But it is also a way that teaches us, over and over and over again, that those limits are not the final limit. What feels like the end – apocalyptic nightmares and all – is not the end. God is not finished with us yet.

We may feel often timid, fearful, and utterly alone. That’s paranoia, and paranoia is part of the human condition. But the way through paranoia is not self-righteousness – that denial of mystery which is, ultimately, a denial of self and of the God of all righteousness. No, the way through paranoia is metanoia – that ongoing and transformative journey of repentance that leads us, ultimately, into koinonia – another rich New Testament word that means community.

That is our purpose. That is our goal. That is the chief end of humankind: to live together in harmonious community in the joy of the One who calls us together. The end is near. If we want it. Amen.