When the world is about to end
we can huddle in the corner
crouched with our hands over our heads
…or we feed each other oysters
and dance.
That M. S. Merwin poem
lays it out quite nicely.
So does the 2021 political satire,
“Don’t Look Up!”
If you didn’t see it,
the plot hovers around a killer-meteor
heading for Earth
and a handful of people
trying desperately but unsuccessfully
to get the President,
military, and news media
to stop treating it as a political
and fundraising event.
The message and where it was pointed
was none too subtle.
But it is one of the last scenes of the movie
I am thinking about
in regard to the end of the world.
The hodgepodge group
of truth-tellers, some related
and some not,
sit down to a big meal together.
That is how they choose to embrace the end.
They eat.
They pray.
They laugh.
They tell stories.
The end of the world,
if we choose,
looks much like
the rest of our lives.
Or…it looks like fear
and shuddering
and a “what’s it all for, anyway” despair.
We get to choose.
And sometimes,
it turns out,
we were wrong.
Sometimes we just think
it is the end of the world
and it isn’t.
We have lost some good friends
in this community lately.
People whose faces, for those
with longevity
in this community,
were the very image
of Trinity.
We will lose others,
and all of us
sooner or later
fade from this green Earth.
We can react to this fact
as if it is the end of the world
or we can go on
with gratitude and grief,
resolve and woundedness,
recognition and hope.
We get to choose.
Isaiah and Luke’s Jesus
offer us two slices of bread
for our grief, sorrow, and fear sandwich.
I am not going to get into the weeds
of these two readings
as if a bible study,
rather, treat them more
as a song or a poem —
you know, as in, “hey, listen
to that music!”
Isaiah is riffing on a vision
of better times than the ones Israel
was actually going through.
But it is interesting to note
that his vision is of Earth.
It is not of an ethereal, other-worldly place
but a new heaven
and a new earth
in which the old one is remembered
and improved upon.
It is Jerusalem like now,
only better.
It is Eden, the first beginning,
and we won’t feel pain
or grief.
We won’t have this terrible
sense of loss
or fear
or dread.
It’s not the pearly gates of heaven
with angels playing harps,
it is Earth as we can imagine it
and yet, as we can’t quite realize it.
Then Luke has Jesus
going in the opposite direction.
When someone says how lovely
the stained glass windows are
and how inspiring those vaulted ceilings
of the sanctuary,
Jesus says, “Yeah, just wait.”
”It’s all coming down,” Jesus says.
But then he is so generic
in his description
that the signs and wonders
he describes
could be any time,
almost any year
of any millennium.
It is as if to say, “you don’t get to know
so don’t go around
acting like you know
when the end of the world is going to be.”
Now there is some other stuff
in that reading from Luke
that is kind of grim and disturbing —
about severe divisions
among families and friends —
and we all know
how very disturbing such divisions are.
We’ve got some now.
But all he really says about that
is, “endure.”
”By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
In other words, when things get really bad
keep going.
Just keep going
and keep living as if tomorrow
is another day.
There is no reason
to stop working for the kingdom
to come on Earth
as it is in heaven.
There is no reason
to stop being agents of God’s love.
Yes, there is death.
Yes, there is grief.
Yes, there is pain.
Yes, there is loss.
Yes, there is defeat.
Yes, there is betrayal.
Yes, there is violence.
Yes, there is disease.
Yes, there is debilitating woundedness.
Yes, there is chaos.
Yes, there is mismanagement.
Yes, there is negligence.
Yes, there is pestilence.
Yes, there is evil.
Yes, there is sorrow.
So what?
Keep on. Keep going. Endure.
In the midst of all of it
we are still living one day at a time
and our task is still
to live as agents of God’s love
regardless of what is going on around us
or what world we think is going to end tomorrow.
Endure, not survive.
We don’t get to survive,
but we can “endure” while we live.
Endure here, means
endure living as agents of God’s love
and builders of the kingdom on Earth
as it is in heaven.
Whether we are holding
Isaiah’s enraptured vision
or surrounded by the grim chaos
of the end of the world,
keep on
keeping on
living the gospel
to the very end.
Seriously.
We are all living on the edge —
all of us, just waiting
for the end of the world
as we have lived it.
Are we going to do that
huddled in fear and despair
or feeding oysters to the one we love?
Our life and death,
yours and mine,
don’t add or subtract
from the fact of God’s presence
in Creation
and the timeless effort
to bring the kingdom on Earth
as it is in heaven.
We come and go
but the new heaven and the new Earth
keep on being born
and evolving
and being created —
keep on enduring.
It is the privilege of our lifetimes
to be able to contribute to it.
So keep on…
keep on working for the kingdom on Earth
right up to the very end,
whenever that will be.
And one of the ways we do that…
one of the ways we lift our heads
and resist fear and despair
and endure grief and sorrow,
is by gathering
and singing.
Gathering and sharing a table.
Gathering and shedding tears together.
Gathering and looking one another in the eyes
and recognizing love.
Gathering with laughter.
Gathering in prayer.
Gathering in the arms of community.
Gathering and then going out
and living the gospel
and creating the new heaven
and the new earth
right up to the very end.
It’s what we do.
Endure.
We keep on.
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