Do not be alarmed
Our readings today are all very apocalyptic. In fact, they seem to talk about the end of the world almost as much as we hear people talking about the end of the world on the news these days. In that way, they are very timely. But, predictions of the end of the world are nothing new, really. They’ve been made for thousands of years. And here we are. The world has not ended. Since we’re still here despite the countless predictions of the end, we could choose not to pay a lot of attention to them, we could think folks who make these predictions are alarmist, they’re exaggerating, or crazy, as we often accuse them of “crying wolf.” We’re still here today, despite the fact that our climate is certainly in crisis, wars are waging around the globe, nuclear weapons still pose an existential threat, and authoritarianism is yet again on the rise. These seem like pretty significant threats to the world as we know it. Should we as Christians pay any attention to them? When the demise of the world has been predicted over and over again, wouldn’t it make sense to ignore these warnings, like a faulty fire alarm that goes off even when there is no fire? And after all, isn’t that what Jesus is telling us in this gospel reading?
The short answer is no, that is not what Jesus is telling us. Jesus is clearly warning his disciples against trying to predict the end of the world through current events, but as he does so, what Jesus says is, “do not be alarmed”. He doesn’t say, “don’t pay any attention.” And there is a world of difference between the two. He says don’t put your trust in the people who claim to speak for him as they predict the end of the world. The end will surely come and as God’s Kingdom is fulfilled it will bring great things. Figuring out how or when this will happen is not up to us. On the way, horrible things will happen, but our trust should always be in God. Not in great buildings or other human accomplishments. Not in false prophets. In God. Because God is with us in the midst of everything. And our task remains the same: love God and love our neighbor, a task that must include stepping into those places where there is hurt in the world.
Jesus says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” All the typical human disasters must take place, wars will be fought, people will starve, the natural world will suffer right along with us, because we are human, and this is what we do. Old Testament prophets used to predict all these things too, because they saw the ways people turned away from God, they stopped worshipping God and they stopped taking care of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. They did not love God and love their neighbor, so surely things were going to get a whole lot worse for them. Their contemporaries wrote them off as alarmists too. But they weren’t merely raising an alarm, they were reminding people they had a choice, reminding them they were called to something better.
Jesus was reminding his disciples of the same thing. Despite all the horrible ways humans treat one another, they were called to something better, something much more difficult, they were called to a life of discipleship. And so it is with us as well. The so-called alarmists among us today who call out any number of things, from climate emergency to fascism, are those who remind us we can do better, who remind us we are called to something better. We can hear this message in their tone even if we don’t hear it in their words. As followers of Jesus, we are called to a life of discipleship, especially during those times when it seems like everything around us is falling apart.
If we are at all unsure of what that looks like today, the genius that is the Revised Common Lectionary provides us this passage from the book of Hebrews that speaks to this question so very well. In the traumatic days after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as his followers were trying to understand what it looks like to be a disciple at a time of such upheaval and transition, the writer of the book of Hebrews offers some encouragement in what has become my new favorite verse of scripture, because of how well it seems to speak to the moment we are living in now. He writes this, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
“All the more as you see the Day approaching.” Things are dire outside of our church walls. Whether or not this suggests we are on some path of destruction, our call, our mission, as followers of Jesus, is just the same now as it ever was, only it’s more important. We are called to something better. Called to hold onto our “confession of hope,” our belief that God is with us in our suffering and that God makes all things right in the end. God is with us. And we are called to “provoke one another to love and good deeds,” pushing one another to hear and respond to the need in our world. I have thought before that the sentence, “let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds” sounded like the perfect description of the vocation of a Deacon, but it’s not. It’s the perfect description of our vocation as Christians. And central to all of this is the recognition that we cannot do this on our own; we need each other. Discipleship is communal, it is shared hope, and it is shared responsibility to love.
This might be what is most painful about the moment we are living in now. Just like the early Christians in the book of Hebrews, the political trauma we are living through after surviving a pandemic and navigating elections that feel like personal betrayals makes it so hard to imagine drawing together. The statements and posturing that look and feel dangerous and life threatening to some are minimized and dismissed by others, and there they go crying wolf again. We forget that those who see this danger are not so much making predictions, as shining a spotlight, less boy who cried wolf, and more canary in the coal mine, as within their words we can hear Jesus reminding us we are called to something better. But it hurts to live and work and worship together with those we have come to distrust, those who see what is happening so differently. Discipleship tells us that even if we don’t want to hope together, to love together, our call remains the same as always and we must do so anyway. When it is as hard as it feels today, I have no other answer for how to do that other than to keep trying. To keep showing up as we have today even though we are so unsure of what will happen next. Even though things are scary, and we may have grown skeptical of one another and skeptical of our neighbors. God is still here with us. And showing up together is what hope looks like. Amen.