A Rerun At The End of the World

Archived Sermon: 2012

If you were going to watch a movie
starring, Steve Carell (star of “The Office”),
and Keira Knightley (think “Pirates of the Caribbean”),
wouldn’t you imagine it was a Romantic Comedy?
That is what Katy and I thought
when we sat down to watch,
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.”

But…it was actually about the end of the world.

There was a romantic comedy embedded in it,
but it was an apocalyptic tale
about the last three weeks
before a meteor smashes into Earth.

Have you noticed that
there is a lot of that going around lately?
Apocalyptic imagination, that is.
Not just the Mayan Calendar craziness,
but a bunch of apocalyptic movies:
“2012”
“The Road”
“The Book of Eli”
“I am Legend”
“Knowing”
“The Day After Tomorrow”
“28 Weeks”…and now,
on television, “Revolution”
and some weird thing about Zombies.
As someone who has had
apocalyptic dreams
off and on
throughout much of my life,
I notice such things.

At the same time, as a Christian
and as a religious type,
I have always been embarrassed
by what some preachers
and traditions
have done with
our apocalyptic literature
like the Books of Daniel and Revelation.
For years and years,
as a preacher and teacher,
I ignored such imagery and literature
as an embarrassment
to the more important and credible
parts of our tradition.
Now, not
because I believe these are
specific prophesies
about the end of time,
I think a lot of apocalyptic imagery
is pretty cool –
as poetry
that gives voice
to a deep down grief in the human soul.

Something has changed in the world.

(Now, as you listen to me talk,
you are going to think that this sermon
is about the end of the world,
or the apocalypse.
But that would be to miss the point.
This sermon is really about how an idea,
what we think
and how we think it,
actually comes to define the life we live.
You see, we imagine
that what we see around us
is the way that life and the world
actually is –
but in fact,
what we see
is filtered through what we expect to see,
and what we think we will see.

And we all see something different.
There is no single reality.
What we see
is not the world as it is,
it is the world as we see it and interpret it.
So hold that thought
as I keep talking about
the end of the world.)

Something has changed in the world.

Since the Shoah, or
Holocaust –
both the Holocaust in Nazi Occupied Europe
as well as the Holocaust in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki –
apocalyptic images
and stories
and books,
have changed dramatically.
Twenty-one centuries ago,
when Daniel
wrote down his night visions
or hallucinations
or whatever you want to call them,
the end of the world was seen
as an ACT OF GOD.
The end of the world,
throughout all but the last 75 years or so
of human history, was
imagined to be the explosive
consummation of human history.
The end of the world
was to bring about the Messianic reign, when
the good are pardoned
and the bad are punished.

But since WWII,
and the thunderous flood of human evil
pouring like a river of pus
and coating the human character
like tar-oil fouling seabirds,
the end of the world
has been envisioned as the result
of HUMAN action,
not divine.
The end of the world,
in the apocalyptic scenarios
of OUR day, instead of
a moment of reconciliation,
is the dark empty tunnel of
meaninglessness
and a human tragedy
without epilogue.

A planet in waste,
smoldering in the darkness of space
until it becomes a cold hunk of coal,
like the red planet we are so recently exploring,
has nothing to commend it –
no moral to tell,
no lesson to learn,
no punch line.
Nothing good comes of it.

A GODLY apocalypse
is imbued with meaning and purpose,
but a HUMANLY ignited one
is simply a dead end
without meaning.

Which narrative should we tell?
Which narrative should we believe?
Which narrative has your name on it?

I don’t know the answer, but
I do know
there is no single, factual answer.
I do know
there is no single reality.
I do know
it is a choice
which narrative we embrace.
I do know
that no one knows –
not the pope,
not the Dali,
not the heir to Einstein,
not anyone that breaths.

What is your narrative?

Is the end of the world on its way,
brought to us by human narcissism and stupidity?

Is the end of the world on its way,
carried on the wings of God’s avenging angels?

Is history moving toward
some grand human construction like a Marxian
vision of what there is to hope for?

Is it all just for naught, a haphazard
arbitrary and random chain of events
indifferent to human effort?

Isn’t it great that we do not get to know?
Isn’t it so much better
that we get to choose the narrative
by which our lives are shaped?

Or are you one of those people
who never chooses;
who imagines there is no such narrative
and you are a free radical
unimpeded by the need to decide?

I will tell you, very honestly,
that in my life’s work
I get to hear and see all around me,
the narrative choices people make.
It is one of the coolest things about my work.
Whether we know it or not,
you and I are continually
choosing and re-choosing
the narrative by which we will live our lives –
or the narrative by which
other people’s narrative
will shape our lives.

I get to hear those narratives a lot,
and sometimes people even ask me to
walk with them a bit
while they are choosing their narrative.

From all that listening
and all that observation,
I can tell you this:
the story we choose,
its plot,
its primary characters,
and the voice of the narrator,
makes all the difference in the world.

As I watch my own children,
and your kids who are their peers,
launch their independent lives,
and I see their reach
and their struggle
and whether or not they manage
to perceive hope and meaning
in the midst of it all,
it reminds me how much
the narrative we choose matters.

As I watched my parents age,
and have seen your parents age,
and as some of us have aged together,
and all of us feel the struggle to name
hope and meaning
when the body and mind
loses theirs,
I am reminded
how much the narrative we choose matters.

As we watched the political and cultural
battle lines form again,
and we hear gunshots in the night,
and sniff the hounds of war in places
that no longer seem all that far away,
and as we watch crisis after crisis rain upon
the landscape like enflamed grains of hail,
I am reminded
how much the narrative we choose matters.

In the midst of it all,
when the action never slows
and images of danger park themselves
in our peripheral vision,
we need to be armed
to do battle with the hail
of competing narratives.

We need to know,
deep down in our bones,
that the narrative is ours to choose,
and if we do not choose it,
someone else will choose it for us.

We need to know,
deep down in our bones,
that no one owns the truth
and there is no single reality standing before us.

We need to know,
deep down in our bones,
that the narrative we tell to others
and ourselves,
comes to shape the life we live;
and so it impacts the lives of those we live with.

For example, is every day a battle with depression?
For some people it is.
Do we imagine that pharmaceuticals alone,
if at all, is the answer?
The narrative we choose is powerful.

Do we contend each day with the results of an unjust economy and social order?
Some people do, that is their job
or the reality of those with whom they live.
Do we imagine that a better program
or a better law
or a better police force is the answer?
The narrative we choose is powerful.

Is the deterioration of the body or mind
a dark shadow standing in the doorway
right in front of us?
For some people
a life-threatening or demeaning illness
wraps daily life in a shroud.
Do we imagine that the only hope
worth hoping for
is a cure; a cure
that for nearly everyone else
has been out of reach?
The narrative we choose is powerful.

Does our narrative,
the story we tell that becomes the filter
through which we interpret the world around us,
name hope and
offer value-laden options?
Or…does it make all choices equal
and one thing as good as another,
because in the end we all die?

We need a narrative
that names hope
and then,
embodies hope
in a way that empowers us
to move forward
at least one step at a time.

Without that kind of a narrative –
without the characters,
and the voice of the narration,
and the plot guiding us forward and
constantly reminding us
of where we are moving
and what the meaning of our effort is,
we will find ourselves
floating in space
without enough gravity to ground us
in the mud of each day.

We must remember,
we can choose any narrative we want,
but if we choose a narrative without hope,
or in which hope is a minor whisper without force,
we will become the walking dead –
and maybe that is why
Zombie movies have made such a comeback lately,
because there are so many people
walking around with hopeless narratives.

What is more,
a narrative without hope
is no more actual
or factual
or reasonable
than a narrative anchored with hope;
even though, for some odd reason,
people who live with a cynical narrative
think they are so much more reasonable.

Whether we choose
meaning or
meaninglessness
for the background of the universe,
makes a huge difference
in how we live our lives;
and how grounded we are
when we face and endure the greatest
struggles of our lives.

We have before us today, four clear narratives:

1. Daniel, expects suffering and death
   but decides that such grief
   is only a small matter
   in the great scheme of things.
2. Wendell Berry, equates the physics of love
   with the properties of water,
   and then stakes it as a claim for the meaning
   and substance of life.
3. Pontus Pilate makes coercive power and winning the superstructure of his life,
   seemingly unaware
   that, like everything else,
   power and success are subject to rust and decay.
4. And Jesus refuses to allow the confines of an outer prison, or the terms of punishment and death, to define the freedom
   within his own heart and mind.

These narratives
are not
‘True’ or ‘False’,
‘Real’ or ‘Fantasy’.
Each of them makes a claim
about who or what is behind the curtain
we never get to open.
But which claim we make,
and how
and what
it empowers,
will make all the difference in our lives.

There is no single reality,
there is only the narrative we write,
and the characters we develop,
and the plot that we have a part in unfolding,
and the voice of the narrator
who keeps us company in our dark hours
and lonely struggles,
and that guides us
along the way.

If you do not know your narrative,
or you wrongly imagine
that you do not have one already,
it might go well for you, if instead,
you reconsidered.

If you know your narrative,
or something within it has been agitating
for a change or revision,
go ahead
and jump back in.
You can adapt the story
or even re-write it as you go along.

There is no single reality,
rather, there is only the narrative we chose
or that we allow to be chosen for us.

What will actually happen in the end,
or if there will be an end to the world,
none of us gets to know.

I do not know why you keep coming back here
week after week,
month after month,
year after year.
But the reason I do
is the narrative that I find here.
Whether it is the notion from the Exodus story
that God actually hears the cries of slaves;
or the Gospel notion that
God is made present when
two or three gather together
and act god-like;
or the Eucharistic notion that
when a community gathers together
around a common table and gives thanks,
God is present somehow
in the most unremarkable way;
such narratives keep me coming back.
Such narratives have caused me
to see
and know
and understand things
that without them
I would have missed completely.
How do I know?
Because these narratives were not always
the narratives I told.

We have come to the end of
the calendar year
on the Church calendar.
Next Sunday is the beginning of Advent
and the New Year,
at least on the Church calendar.
Advent happens to be a season
dominated with stories and images
about the coming of the end.
But they are narratives
laced with hope
the way a quilt is patched with thread.
It is a good time
for us to think about our own narrative
and whether it is one we have chosen
or one that was chosen for us;
and whether or not
the narrative we live by
is something we may be wanting to
adapt
or re-write
or revise.

Endings and beginnings
are always good occasions
for thinking about
what we may want or need to change.
So I invite us to be thinking
about our narratives
and remembering that there is no single reality,
not now
not know how.