The End Times: Creating the Eternal in Community

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Savior of the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.

We were driving on the curvy, up-and-down, carsickness-inducing road that is Highway 38 in far central northern Minnesota one summer day when my grandparents told my seven-year-old self some really devastating news: they were going to be selling their cabin on the lake and moving. My mind immediately became consumed with questions that only a young child would be concerned about: what would happen to our swimming spots, or the sand pit that we always used to play in? What about the old pontoon that only started every other time we tried to get it going? I loved that house and its land – from the fire-orange shag carpet in the living room to the warmth of the fireplace to all the mosquitoes that swarmed in the summer to crisp winter mornings where you could see your breath on the air. To think of having to now go somewhere else – where this home on Little North Star Lake had been my place since forever to my seven-year-old-mind – was inconceivable. My grandmother tried her best to make me feel better – “What color should we paint the new house?” she asked, and I remember being defiant. “I don’t want to go there”, I said, “I want you to keep this house.” However, my young will was no match, and my grandparents eventually made the move – closing on a house down the road, one lake over. Eventually, new memories were made. The house that my grandparents bought back in 1997 has now been in our family ever since, and we continue to find it a place for rest, relaxation, and memory making on northern Minnesota’s lake shores. This is a lighthearted story to illustrate a more profound reality: What I thought in my younger years should have been eternal was truly only temporary, and that is a dynamic that in the last few years I have been trying to live into. So much of our lives are so fragile, and we do our best to cling to some sort of certainty that will help us through our days. What if, instead of fearing the reality of the temporary, we embraced it as a gift? Let me explain further.

In today’s Gospel text, we are faced with a portrait of what the end times will look like; when the things of this earth will pass away and God will come to inhabit all that is. The “end times” is a broad category of theological, social, and scientific thought that has gained much traction in our culture – from series such as “Left Behind”, to conspiracy theories, to scientific suggestions, to people trying to read the Bible in ways that suggest when a rapture will happen. I want us to disregard those notions, because I don’t believe that they are necessarily so helpful in thinking about our own finality in relationship to God’s eternity. I feel like much of the conversation around the “end times” are used to invoke fear, uncertainty, and a sense of judgment around how we live our lives in light of eternity. Rather, I would encourage us to reframe this text in this way: that we think about our lives as gifts from God, that we are given community, our bodies, our possessions, and our commitments only for a certain time. In the time we are given, we would do well to live richly, and to love well, within ourselves and for our world and our local communities. In the time we are given, our lives should reflect service toward the marginalized, the hurting, and the disenfranchised.

To illustrate this point, Jesus meets us in today’s Gospel as some around him are speaking of the temple in Jerusalem and remarking on the ways that it seemed so solid and unmoving: it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts to God, a sign of the community’s adoration to Yahweh for all that God had done to for them in their nation’s history. This temple of worship, it seemed, so strong and certain, would last forever, as long as God’s promises to them. Jesus quickly counters their thoughts. He says, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” I can imagine the people’s responses: “Wait, what? What do you mean?” To that end, they ask what signs will take place that indicate this destruction is about to happen. Jesus responds, and many of us are familiar with it: nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, there will be great earthquakes, and famines and plagues, and there will be great signs from heaven. They will arrest and persecute you, and you will be brought before rulers to testify. You will be betrayed by family, and some may even lose their lives. This paints a really grim picture of the human condition, and Jesus’ words have been used by many to speculate on when God will come again to put the evil on our earth asunder. There are, however, certain truths to Christ’s statement that are worth lifting up: in times of uncertainty, war, and separation, there is a lot at stake. We risk our lives, we risk our hurt, we risk the loss of family or friends, and we risk even losing our own sense of identity and self. Jesus gives instruction in this regard: to not lose heart, to continue to persevere, to rely upon the Spirit and Christ’s presence to help you know what to say when it comes your time to witness to truthfulness.

Think of the moments in your own life when you have felt the weight of life: a diagnosis, the loss of a job, the loss of an important relationship, financial hardship, or other difficulty. It is easy in those moments to turn inward, to turn to behaviors that might not be helpful, or to try and cope on your own. When this happens, we lose sight of the larger purpose of our existence and the importance of community, and our voices become muted. In the face of our temporality, Christ promises us that we can rely upon the Spirit for words to say. In the face of destruction, Christ promises us that we can look toward another way: a way that endures, where we will not perish. In this way, our lives are put into a larger context in which we recognize God’s purposes to call us to belong to one another, to persist with one another, and to share in life together even when, and especially when, it proves difficult or seems impossible. This, my friends, the very gift of our communities of faith, is what we are given to sustain our lives as we create God’s new world among us. When we celebrate that, we live into Jesus’s words in this passage, which call us to not be terrified, but to trust that God is with us. To endure, and not let the scripts of this world that engage war, violence, and discord have authority over how we think, live, or conduct ourselves. To celebrate that we are alive and we love and we are here for one another and that is enough for this moment, and that is what God promises will last into eternity. The things of this world – pain, isolation, war, and grief will one day pass away, but the things of God – love, community, belonging, and communion – will last forever into the world to come.

Might we this day and always my friends live in this spirit. Might we live so that we do not fear the weight of this world or the weight of our lives, but rather celebrate the gifts we have been given: ourselves, our bodies, and our possessions, which God has first given us. I give thanks for our ministry together and for the commitments we share: to speak roundly to sin and injustice, and proclaim that God’s love will live forever. Might we take heart, for this promise is continually being created among us. Thanks be to God, my friends. Amen.