You don’t have to look very far on the internet…

before you find fundamentalist Christians who associate the Covid-pandemic with the coming apocalypse…

the return of Christ…

and the end of the world.

And yet…

associations between the apocalypse and the current pandemic…

are really just the latest iteration of a phenomenon that’s been around for millennia.

The Black Death of the Late Middle Ages was interpreted… 

by many who lived through it… 

as a sign of the “end-times”.

Similarly…

in nineteen-eighteen…

contemporary religious pamphlets claimed that the Spanish Flu pandemic…

was a sign of the travails that would precede Christ’s return.

And now it’s Covid’s turn.

Add to that political unrest–– 

especially in the United States–– 

and a sense that governments are increasingly ‘godless’;

throw in the massive bushfires in Australia last summer…

and in Greece and the Mediterranean more recently;

and an earthquake in Utah that damaged the great Mormon Salt Lake Temple;

and Christian social media sites are awash with speculation.

Indeed, according to a recent survey…

forty percent of American adults believe that Jesus is likely to return before the year twenty-fifty.

 

Of course, predictions that the world would end and/or that Jesus would return…

have previously been made for July, twenty-twenty…

June, twenty-nineteen…

and September, twenty-fifteen.

Before that, it was supposed to end on the twenty-third of August, twenty-thirteen… 

according to the legendary Rasputin.

Many were convinced it was going to occur in December, twenty-twelve…

according to the ancient Mayan calendar.

An American preacher, Harold Camping, had many convinced that it was to be in October, twenty-eleven…

so much so, that they quit their jobs and sold their homes in preparation.

Then there was tele-evangelist Pat Robertson’s prediction for April, two thousand and seven;

the House of Yahweh cult predicted the end in September, two thousand and six;

and, of course, there were numerous predictions for the year two thousand itself.

And that’s only the ones this century!

Throughout history, there have been countless predictions of cataclysmic events––

and the end of the world as we know it.

And even among Christian groups that choose not to speculate about a particular date…

there is a belief–– 

as one religious scholar puts it––

“that history is moving inexorably to a catastrophic end”.

And coupled with that belief…

is the belief that, preceding that end, there will be a series of portentous events.

In part, Christians have derived such notions from the Book of Revelation.

In part, they have derived them from a particular prophecy attributed to Jesus…

which we find in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

And our reading this morning from Luke’s Gospel is a section of that.

Here…

we are told that…

preceding Jesus’ return…

there will be cosmic “signs”…

along with “distress among nations”;

and…

just before our section… 

it speaks of “great earthquakes…famines and plagues; and…dreadful portents and great signs from heaven”. 

And yet…

according to our reading…

it seems clear that Jesus, himself, seemed to believe that it was imminent.

Indeed…

“Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place”.

Clearly… 

taken literally…

that didn’t happen.

And fundamentalist Christians have always struggled with that…

and sought creative ways to try to circumvent it.

Others have simply assumed that… 

on this point… 

Jesus was wrong…

but they overwise take the rest of this fairly or quite literally.

But it’s wrong to do so!

Just like the book of Revelation…

this seemingly-prophetic saying was never meant to be read literally.

The ancient literary genre of “apocalyptic” was always intended to be symbolic…

and it was intended to be pastoral rather than prophetic––

at least in the sense in which we so frequently use that term today.

If it was prophetic…

then it was so in the sense of interpreting contemporary or near-contemporary events…

from God’s perspective.

As such, it was a symbolic form of socio-political analysis…

rather than some sort of distant future prediction.

 

And what we also miss…

because it occurs prior to our section…

is that this whole Jesus “prediction” follows from––

and expands upon––

Jesus’ “prediction” that the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed.

That took place in the year seventy.

And the author’s description of those events…

in the preceding section…

while symbolic…

clearly show that he’s writing after the event.

He’s writing this some ten or twenty years after Jerusalem––

and its Temple––

were destroyed by the Romans.

What we have…

then…

is not so much a future prophecy…

as a piece of socio-political and religious analysis.

To the extent that any of these words come from the lips of the historical Jesus…

then they were spoken as a warning about the direction that the nation of Israel was heading;

they were warning that the frustrations of the people…

and the actions of their leaders…

which were heading in the direction of violent rebellion…

would be a disaster for the nation and its people.

 

And yet…

writing as he does quite some time after the event…

the author wasn’t commenting dispassionately on those events.

Rather…

he includes all this here as an exhortation to his readers.

Yes, he includes an exhortation to “moral living”––

specifically, not to be “weighed down with hangovers and drunkenness”––

and the need to be alert and prayerful.

But…

in the context of all that he has been saying…

it’s so that they, themselves, don’t succumb to violent means…

when they experience frustrations, and persecution, and social calamities and upheavals.

And this comment on the fate of Jerusalem needs to be heard with another one that he makes––

a few chapters earlier––

when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem…

and bemoans the fact that they could not recognise “the things that make for peace”. 

Above all else…

this “prediction”, here, is a warning about––

as one scholar puts it––

“The failure of militaristic attempts to bring ultimate peace”.

Or, perhaps, as Martin Luther King jr once put it:

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows”.

And, as Afghanistan has shown, we still haven’t learned that lesson.

 

Today is the first Sunday in Advent…

a time when we pause and reflect…

and begin to prepare for our celebration of Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ.

But…

as I indicated in my most recent “Pastoral” in “Highlights”…

during Advent we aren’t called to remember back to Jesus’ birth––

and to celebrate it with some sort of saccharine-sentimentality.

Rather, Advent calls us to remember forward––

to ponder…

to reflect upon…

and to be motivated by––

the fulfilment of Christ’s work and the renewal of all things.

And that call to reflect and remember is not intended to be done selfishly––

as if the incarnation of Christ was for my personal benefit alone.

The point of the incarnation was…

in effect…

the inauguration of a new creation.

And…

our reading this morning reminds us…

that peace lies at the centre and core of that new creation.

And it’s only by being people of peace…

and people who work for peace…

that we celebrate Christ’s coming correctly.