Y2K: Deja Vue All Over Again

 A Sermon Preached by Pastor Tom Davis

At Hanover St. Presbyterian Church
On Dec. 5, 1999

Texts:  Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a

Here it is again: Another of those end-of-the-world Advent passages from the lectionary. "The Day of the Lord will come like a thief," says our passage from Second Peter; "then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up!"

 Our two passages this morning are like opposite book ends. "Comfort, comfort my people" says the Isaiah text for today. But with end-of-the-world messages like the one from 2 Peter, it is hard to calm fearful minds. The Apocalypse, or Revelation of John speaks about a 1000 year reign of peace before the end of the world; and so, some folks are mighty jittery now, as the year two thousand approaches.

 Two recent news stories illustrate this millennial hysteria:  In the first, several young men were arrested in Jerusalem for planning to incite violence in order to hasten the end time, which they are convinced will come violently.  The second story concerns a very sincere guy who believes, on account of his interpretation of a passage in Revelation, that the end of the world will come when a red cow is born in Jerusalem.  So he is shipping 500 red breeding cattle over there to ensure that the vision will come true.

 Church, I invite you to contrast these two stories with the Jewish tradition that the Messiah will come when the people of God have already finished the work of doing justice, so that, to use a phrase from Isaiah, they will make God's way straight.  They will prepare the way for the Messiah, not by inciting violence, but by working for peace.  As a pastoral counselor I would say that a person who embraces this sort of end-of-time perspective demonstrates self-esteem and is ready to take appropriate responsibility for what goes on in the world.  On the other hand, the people in those two recent news stories, aren't concerned with reforming this world. They want it to pass away.  Violently would be fine with them, because they don't count on being on the receiving end of the violence. They exhibit grandiose fantasies about how they themselves will precipitate the Kingdom of God by performing deeds that are symbolically associated with the apocalypse.  This is magical thinking, a compensatory device used by people who lack the maturity and confidence required to do the hard work of reforming self and society.

 If the people of God do not grow up, so that they take responsibility for making God's way straight in the wilderness by working for peace, they will continue to think magically, and act maniacally. At Y2K, it will be deja vue all over again.

 When Professor Karl Koestler spoke at the South Florida Center for Theological Studies last year, he distinguished between eschatological and apocalyptic thinking.  You won't find this distinction in a dictionary.  It is his stipulated distinction, but a very useful one, nevertheless.  Religious people who think eschatogically, he said, hope that peace and justice will come sometime in the future; they believe that God is working God's purpose out in their own time, and that they have an important role in that process.  They do not regard the world as totally corrupt.  Rather, they believe that it already manifests some signs of redemption.  They differ in their opinions about what God will do when the end of time comes.  Some would say that complete redemption can come only by an act of God, that human beings can help move the world in the direction of redemption, but only God can finish the work.  Other eschatological thinkers maintain that God works entirely through people, and that the end will come when people, by the indwelling Spirit of God, bring about the Kingdom by obeying God's laws.  In either case, a key aspect of eschatological thinking is that one's own time counts.  One's own time is part of God's plan.  Therefore, it matters what we do.  God may very well keep for the end some of what humans have achieved (if not all of it).

 In apocalyptic thinking, however, the present time is viewed as utterly corrupt.  God will redeem the world by destroying the old order suddenly and completely, and then God will create new heavens and a new earth. Only a few people, a pure remnant, will survive the winnowing fire, the catastrophic earthquake, the warrior hordes, or whatever.  Apocalyptic thinkers attach no importance to reforming society, because God is going to destroy everything and create the Kingdom from scratch (except for the pure remnant, of course).  Author Dominic Crossan remarked that apocalyptic thinking boils down to who kills whom. Apocalyptic writing is vindictive. It is  produced by impotent dispossessed and oppressed peoples who are full of resentment and ache for the destruction of their enemies. Although apocalyptic literature sometimes is written in code to protect its possessors from persecution, for those who know the code there is no ambiguity at all about who the goodies and baddies are. The lines of good and evil are clearly drawn. That is a chief function of apocalyptic literature: to support the oppressed by assuring them that they are in the right and their oppressors, absolutely in the wrong.

 Eschatological and apocalyptic literature, do have one thing in common, though. They give people hope that justice will be done. I was in a hospital waiting room recently, watching one of those fabulously popular courtroom programs. You know the genre: Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, and so on. Law abiding citizens have always delighted in seeing scoundrels get theirs. That's what public hangings and lashings were about, and the stocks. Society has done away with these more lurid administrations of justice, but many of us still like to see people punished. It reassures our faith in law and order. I think people especially crave that reassurance these days, because the world is becoming  more and more confusing, dangerous, and I think it not an exaggeration to say, crazy.  So, it is no surprise that the Judge Judies are popular, nor that apocalyptic thinking is in. Of course, the magic number 2000 has a lot to do with mounting apocalyptic fears, but crowding and the pace of social change have a lot more to do with it.

Christians need to take responsibility for calming millennial fears, because it is our

literature, especially the Revelation of John, that has created end-of-the-world hysteria. What can Christians do about that hysteria? Well, it helps to recognize the distinction between eschatological and apocalyptic literature within our scriptures. If you stop to think about it, all the Christian scriptures are eschatological in the sense that they were written by people who expected the end of the world to come very soon. A few of the Christian writings are apocalyptic, and these, are sometimes dangerous, because they have a dualistic quality to them. That is, they tend to encourage self-righteousness, and paranoia. Apocalyptic thinking pits us against them. We're pure, they're impure. We're right, they're wrong. We're enlightened, they live in darkness. This dualistic quality of apocalyptic literature fuels fanaticism and undermines collaboration and reconciliation in a world that is?I hate to say it, but it's true?becoming more and more Balkanized. Eschatological thinking, on the other hand, gives faithful people hope, but without hardening the lines between us and them.

A verse from our Epistle reading illustrates this more compassionate and humble perspective on the future . "The Lord is not slow about his promise, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

 As we wait for the second coming of our Lord, let us do so compassionately and humbly, not presuming that we are the righteous remnant. Rather, let us accept the mystery of God's grace toward all. That grace will open our hearts and minds so that we become more like the Christ whom we await, able to love even our enemies.